Situated in the beautiful hilly countryside of far west Gateshead, Greenside bestrides the old lead route that ran from the north Pennines to the Tyne.

Once home to some of the carriers who led trains of pack-horses and later horse-wagons on a wooden railway down to the silver-refinery at Blaydon, the village is now best remembered as a thriving coal-mining community.

But after 350 years or so of production , the last pit closed in 1966, since when Greenside has become part of the commuter-belt encircling Greater Tyneside.

The north-south road through Greenside is the B6315 from Ryton to Rowlands Gill. The east-west route, the Lead Road, is not numbered, but historically is of great importance, as it links the lead and silver producing areas of the northern Pennines with the Tyne at Stella, just west of Blaydon.

In the second half of the 1800s, the link was made by some of the earliest railway lines in the country, including the line from Hexham to Blaydon, where there was a silver-processing plant. But before that, trains of up to 24 pack-horses led by one man would wend their way over the moors to Slaley, then along the line of the present Lead Road to Greenside and Stella.

In the 1700s a rail line was built from Leadgate to the Tyne, not with iron rails but wooden rails and wooden sleepers, and not for steam locomotives which hadn't been invented, but for single big trucks, each holding as much as the load for 24 horses, but needing only one horse and one man. And downhill, the horse was not really needed, and walked behind the truck, while the man sat on the brake. These early wooden railways were called waggonways (with two g's, so as not to confuse them with later iron-railed wagonways).

Until the coming of metalled roads and the dredging of the lower Tyne, flooding and muddy ground made keeping to the high ground a sensible choice for long-distance travellers. Hence Bede, on his way from Jarrow to Hexham, is more likely to have come along the ridge through Greenside than kept to the valley. And in the days before magnetic compasses, keeping high meant a better chance of seeing where you were heading for.

If, going west from Stella, you follow the watershed between the Tyne and the Barlow Burn, then between the Tyne and the Derwent, then between Tyne and Wear, then between Tyne and Tees, you arrive at the top of the highest Pennine mountain, Cross Fell. Looked at it this way, Greenside is in the foothills of the Pennines.

These days you can go by car along the Lead Road as far as Slaley, with only one section near Stocksfield deviating from the old pack-horse route. After that you have to go on foot through Slaley Forest and over Hexhamshire Common towards Allendale, which together with the Blanchland area, was the most important lead-producing areas of the 17 and 1800s. From Dirt Pot in Allendale, the route goes over even bleaker moorland to Killhope, site of the famous lead-mining museum. After that you can follow the main road to Alston Moor, whose mines the Romans coveted not just for lead, but for silver.

The Lead Road was not one track. Heavy traffic churned up the mud, and tracks would be moved to drier ground, not just on the high moors, but round Greenside as well. The waggonway builders eventually discovered the benefits of raised embankments with drainage ditches, and of ballast between the rails rather than branches of broom or whins. Later road- builders made use of these waggonway routes: the Lead Road through Greenside as well as the main road from Ryton Runhead to Blaydon are built on waggonway enbankments. The very name Runhead recalls the top of the downhill "run" where the horse could take it easy, while the waggon-man struggled with the brake to stop his load running away and overturning. (The most dangerous of all these local waggonway runs was between Burnopfield and Rowlands Gill, which saw many an accident.)

In 1150, the route through Greenside was called "Ledeshepesweye", the reference being to ways (those parallel tracks) not just one single track. The "lead-heaps" no doubt referred to the spoil tips left from up to a thousand years before.

There is still a "Pack Horse Inn" at Greenside, and the sculpture on the Green celebrates the lead trade, but most other signs have disappeared. The Ryton Lead Company's smelter by the river lasted only a few years from its opening in 1694. Sensibly, smelting operations were moved to sites closer to the mines. The Durham Mint is long gone, though we can read in Boldon Book how land at Stella on Tyne at the terminus of the Lead Road was, fittingly, granted to the master of the Mint. The silver refinery at Blaydon has gone, and Silver Hill is now, more prosaically, called Blaydon Bank. Lead itself is out of fashion, no longer being used in cosmetics, or to whiten bread, or even added to paint or petrol.

For much more detailed information on the lead industry, read Les Turnbull's fascinating "History of Lead Mining in the North East of England" published by Ergo Press of Hexham, ISBN 0-9552758-2- 2 (www.ergopress.com).