THE best thing about Killhope is that it is not a pretty, pretty place. This is not history through rose-coloured spectacles but history in wellies and hard hats. And it's much more fun. Once one of the biggest lead mines in the country and now an award-winning museum, it has been restored, repaired, re-vitalised and extended, but is still, in essence, the same lead mine, but one that offers a fascinating glimpse into the past, as well as a day out surrounded by stunning scenery.

Take the mine trip. In many heritage museums a mine trip is little more than a jolly ride underground in a little train. Not at Killhope. Here you go past bits of old machinery to the old stable beneath the mine shop, where you are given a pair of white wellies - probably a size too big - your hard hat and a battery operated torch to carry over your shoulder. Suddenly it begins to look quite serious.

Oh, and don't think you can get away without the wellies. The entrance into the mine, original, is under a couple of inches of water. As we all slosh through, Alison, the guide, cheerfully points out that, in 1878, the water would have been full of horse muck, discarded food, rats and, of course, there were no toilets in the mine.

The roof arches just above our heads. It is beautifully made, by craftsmen working by the light of tallow candles remember, and without a drop of cement or mortar. The boulder clay above squeezes it together. We gawp in nervous admiration, but not for long. Soon head room is limited to four feet and nine inches. Those hard hats aren't just for decoration. The mine trip is not for the claustrophobic and probably not for the very tall either.

Deep in the dark, water running down the walls, sound effects of explosions, we switch off our torches. Alison lights a candle. We can see her face and that's about it. The miners had to pay for their candles and so often did without them, finding their way round the mine in pitch dark. Sometimes the air underground was so bad that a candle simply wouldn't burn. The woman next to me shivers and cuddles into her husband's arm.

To cheer us up, Alison tells us about the rock fall and the trapped miner who survived by catching drops of water on his tongue and eating his tallow candle. However, it wasn't the dramatic accidents that killed the miners, but the foul air and awful conditions they worked in. Few miners lived past their fifties.

Although the mine is the real thing, there is a little loop off it where you are suddenly dry underfoot and where the walls sound suspiciously hollow. Here they have re-created scenes of men working.

Then there's time for a quick look down into the rest of the abandoned workings and then it's head down, splash, splash and back into the open air, where the heat of the day seems like an oven after the chill of the mine.

Down in the washing rake, a crowd of noisy children are cheerfully separating the lead ore from other minerals, a chance to try the job, not just look. They think it's great fun but, as they struggle, giggling, with the shovels, you realise that 130 years ago, children their age were doing that for real. While they are happily organised, the men wander off to look at Park Level Mill, home of the giant restored waterwheel. There's also a woodland walk past some other old workings.

In the mine shop you can see how the men lived, 32 of them squashed head to toe in bunk beds, their wet clothes draped round the smoking peat fire. ("Do you put this on the fire?" a sceptical small girl clutching a chunk of peat asks her grandfather. "Does it burn?" ) No sweet Laura Ashley wallpaper here. They shared their close quarters with rats and bugs and fortunately the museums is not too realistic - according to contemporary reports, the air was foul and the stench overwhelming.

So it's a real treat to see the exhibition of spar boxes. Amazing that miners working in those conditions still had an eye for the beauty around them. During the working day they would collect the "bonny bits" of discarded rock glittering with minerals and would fashion them into scenes and patterns in spar boxes. There are 47 in the exhibition, some simple, others breathtaking.

At the Visitor Centre, the only bit that's completely new - along with a canny cafe and well stocked shop - is an exhibition which presumably you're meant to look at before you go in, but we saw on the way out. Cheerfully entitled "A bidding to a funeral" it tells the story of how miners and their families lived.

Miners struck bargains to fix the price of ore every three months, were usually advanced about £2 a month but often when they were paid they found themselves still in debt to the mine owner. In the 1870s, the owner was said to get £100,000 a year from his mines. When the lead industry went from boom to bust, many miners were out of work. Some emigrated to New Zealand or America and in the exhibition there are some poignant letters. Lead miner John Graham writing to his brother Joseph in America, says "My brother Thomas has not had work these two or three years. He thinks that if you was where he worked, where a candle would not burn, you would not be so much against him going to America."

Across the years, these people and their lives are real. They're a tough lot in Weardale. This museum does them proud.

* Killhope Lead Mining Centre. Tel: (01388) 537505. Admission £3.40 adult; £1.70 child. Family ticket, two adults, two children £8.50. Supplement for the mine tour of £1.60/80p. Visitor Centre, shop, cafe, exhibition, easily accessible for disabled, site a bit tricky otherwise. But they have a Shopmobility scooter available which makes most of it accessible. Platform lift for wheelchairs gives access to the Spar Box Exhibition.