Coniston Copper Mines
Things to do in the Lake District include boat trips on Windermere, visiting the Beatrix Potter Attraction, enjoying an evening at the Punchbowl Pub at Crosthwaite, which won the award for Michelin Pub of the Year, 2009, or simply strolling around the lakes.
At Coniston the remains of the famous copper mines are easily visited. The way lies alongside Church Beck as it rises above the village, then across Miner's Bridge and along the rough track into Copper mines Valley. Ahead is a scene of some devastation but considerable interest to industrial archaeologists.
To the right is a row of former miners' cottages; ahead are the main mine buildings, now used as a youth hostel, with the stony track leading up past a multitude of mine workings clearly visible as it makes for Levers Water (and, eventually, the main ridge of the Coniston Fells). The mining of copper ores began in the second half of the sixteenth century, but it was not until 1758, when the Macclesfield Copper Company took over the lease of the mines, that the most intensive period of exploitation began.
At first the copper ore was carried by packhorse all the way to Brigham, near Keswick, to be smelted, but later it was shipped down Coniston Water to the ports of Greenodd or Ulverston to be trans-ported to Wales.
Later still, the further option of rail transport was provided when the Foxfield to Coniston branch line was opened in 1859, but by now copper mining in Coniston was in decline and most of the better deposits had been worked out. Employment in the mines, which had reached 900 at times in the 1830s, when three hundred tons a week were being produced, contracted dramatically, and by the end of the 1880s it had all but ceased.
The landscape of Coppermines Valley still indicates the awesome scale of the mining activity, with huge spoil heaps, the remains of settling tanks, and the rusting wheel of the crushing plant still visible, together with mine entrances higher up the fellside towards Levers Water, a natural corrie lake but one whose level was.
Artificially raised to serve the mines. Coniston, in fact, is perhaps the most interesting of all the mineral working centres, largely because there has been little 20th century disruption of the main workings: a halfday spent in Copper mines Valley offers rich rewards.
Slate mining in the Lake District
Quarrying is the largest single employer in the National Park though tourism is not far behind, of course with more than one in ten employed in the industry. Slate accounts for the majority of the workforce and output, but it should not be forgotten that there are also granite quarries at Shap and Threlkeld, supplying roads tone , and a series of limestone quarries around the edge of the National Park.
Workable slates are contained in both the Borrowdale Volcanics and the sedimentary rocks of the Silurian series, though ironically the Skiddaw Slates are too friable to be commercially useful. The quality of the slate varies with the area of origin, as does its colour which varies from the attractive green of the Tilberthwaite and Honister quarries, located amongst the volcanic rocks, to the blue grey shades more characteristic of the Silurian slates from Broughton Moor and the southern Lake District.
Kirkby Moor Coniston Langdale and Honister Slate Mines
The peak of quarrying activity was probably reached in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, and quarry closures have been common since then (even since World War II some 25 quarries have shut down) but there are still six working slate quarries within or adjacent to the National Park and demand for their products is steadily increasing. These six surviving quarries are located at Kirkby Moor, in the southwest; Coniston and Tilberthwaite; Langdale; Honister; and Kirkstone.
Lake District slate first gained widespread popularity as a roofing material in the seventeenth century, when there was a general rebuilding in stone of houses which had hitherto been constructed of less durable materials and roofed with thatch or turf. Nevertheless, there is some evidence that it was in demand for particular purposes well before this date the barrack block at the Roman fort of Hardknott appears to have been roofed with local slate, as does the fort of Gala va, near Ambleside, and some of the grander houses in the region used slate from the twelfth century onwards.
The result is that the dales are peppered with small quarries which satisfied mainly local needs over a period of some centuries and which are now disused and overgrown, sometimes merging imperceptibly into the landscape and providing useful wildlife habitats, but occasionally intruding rather more into otherwise gentle scenes despite long periods of disuse. The quarries on the northern face of Wetherlam, together with their associated tip¬heaps, are an example of this latter category.
By no means all of the quarries remained small-scale in their operation, however, particularly when the superior qualities of the roofing slates they produced came to the attention of architects such as Wren, who by the late seventeenth century was using them widely in London as at Kensington Palace.
The demand was for easily workable fissile slates, usually found where the rocks had been subject to intense deformation. One of the earliest major sources of supply was Honister; indeed the Honister quarries, familiar. to all those travelling between Borrowdale and Buttermere, have been in continuous production since at least 1643.
In the early years of production at Honister one of the consequences was a new and particularly hazardous way of life for those employed as quarrymen. The best green slate was inconveniently located towards the top of Honister Crag (still worth seeing as a dramatic piece of rock scenery, despite the effects of centuries of quarrying). At first the slate had to be crammed into sledges and manoeuvred at considerable speed down the steep fellside to Honister Pass.
Lake District hotels and places to visit
Hotels and restaurants in the Lake District are among the best in England, and whether you want to enjoy local Cumbrian food in a café, sample michelin-starred food in a top class restaurant or visit the farm shops and delicatessens in the region, you will not be disappointed. Hotels in Windermere and Bowness are known for serving excellent local food, and providing superb accommodation at reasonable prices.
Originally the slate was then transported along Moses' Trod, still a spectacular high-level route across the head of Ennerdale and the screeIaden slopes of Great Gable, to Wasdale and eventually the sea at Drigg, near Ravenglass, but after the ports of Workington and Whitehaven came to prominence it was carted along Buttermere instead.
In the 1880s the sledges were replaced by gravitational railways running on inclined planes; now these are, in turn, disused and the slate is brought down to the splitting sheds by lorries which travel down from the exposed quarry face by an intricate zigzag route.
The workings are undoubtedly impressive in terms of their sheer scale and the audacity associated with their operation, but the scars of past and present quarrying are all too plain and form a notable contrast with the extremely attractive local environment.
The Burlington Quarry at Kirkby Moor
The largest slate quarry in England is the Burlington quarry on Kirkby Moor, the successor of the tiny quarries hacked out by the farmers on Gawthwaite Moor in the eighteenth century, as they slowly realised that quarrying was more profitable than farming. By 1810 more than 25,000 tons of 'Westmorland Dark Blue' slates (socalled despite the fact that they were produced in Lancashire) were being won every year from the Kirkby quarries and ferried down to ports such as Greenodd, which,enjoyed a brief prosperity based on slate while, as was reported in 1818, 'several sloops are constantly employed in the carriage of it to almost every principal seaport town in England and Ireland'.
The Woodland Industries in the Lake District
Within the National Park there are a number of fascinating and easily accessible sites which between them reveal a good deal of the history of the woodland industries in the Lake District. They illustrate, too, one of the pressures which dramatically reduced the woodland cover of the area in medieval times the other major factor being agricultural clearance for sheep farming. The source of this pressure was the burgeoning medieval iron industry of Furness, which required vast quantities of charcoal in order to smelt the iron ore.
So great was the demand for charcoal and hence so extensive was the area of woodland used by the monks of Furness Abbey, who were the prime movers in this industrialisation, established their smelting hearths, or bloomeries, in the woods of High Furness, rather than next to the iron ore deposits in the Dalton area of Low Furness. The bloomeries were concentrated in the Canis ton area and the Rusland and Leven valleys; a good example is the site (its name an evocative giveaway) at Cinder Hill on the wooded slopes of the Leven valley above Newby Bridge.
heir bloomeries close to the source of charcoal: their woodland resources in Borrowdale were exploited using a bloomery established in the unlikely location of Smithymire Island, a tiny island at the junction of Greenup Gill and Langstrath Beck. It is hard to believe that this delightful spot, with its foaming, cascading waters and miniature gorges, was the place where iron are from around Ore Gap, on the 800m (2,600ft) contour between Bowfell and Esk Pike, was brought forsmelting before being carted along Borrowdale for distribution.
These early, primitive and inefficient methods of charcoal burning and smelting proved inadequate to meet demands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially when the Society for the Mines Royal widened its sphere of operations to include the Coniston area. Pitsteads, or charcoal hearths, were built in many Lakeland valleys ¬not just in Coniston but around Ullswater and in the upper Troutbeck valley running up towards Kirkstone Pass.
Lake District hotels
If you are planning to stay more than a day in the Lake District, book into one of the many fabulous hotels near Windermere, Bowness or Keswick to make the most of this incredible region. Enjoy a romantic weekend in Bowness, a stay in a late-deal hotel in Windermere or make the most of the vast range of guesthouses and bed and breakfast accommodation in the area.
At Coniston the remains of the famous copper mines are easily visited. The way lies alongside Church Beck as it rises above the village, then across Miner's Bridge and along the rough track into Copper mines Valley. Ahead is a scene of some devastation but considerable interest to industrial archaeologists.
To the right is a row of former miners' cottages; ahead are the main mine buildings, now used as a youth hostel, with the stony track leading up past a multitude of mine workings clearly visible as it makes for Levers Water (and, eventually, the main ridge of the Coniston Fells). The mining of copper ores began in the second half of the sixteenth century, but it was not until 1758, when the Macclesfield Copper Company took over the lease of the mines, that the most intensive period of exploitation began.
At first the copper ore was carried by packhorse all the way to Brigham, near Keswick, to be smelted, but later it was shipped down Coniston Water to the ports of Greenodd or Ulverston to be trans-ported to Wales.
Later still, the further option of rail transport was provided when the Foxfield to Coniston branch line was opened in 1859, but by now copper mining in Coniston was in decline and most of the better deposits had been worked out. Employment in the mines, which had reached 900 at times in the 1830s, when three hundred tons a week were being produced, contracted dramatically, and by the end of the 1880s it had all but ceased.
The landscape of Coppermines Valley still indicates the awesome scale of the mining activity, with huge spoil heaps, the remains of settling tanks, and the rusting wheel of the crushing plant still visible, together with mine entrances higher up the fellside towards Levers Water, a natural corrie lake but one whose level was.
Artificially raised to serve the mines. Coniston, in fact, is perhaps the most interesting of all the mineral working centres, largely because there has been little 20th century disruption of the main workings: a halfday spent in Copper mines Valley offers rich rewards.
Slate mining in the Lake District
Quarrying is the largest single employer in the National Park though tourism is not far behind, of course with more than one in ten employed in the industry. Slate accounts for the majority of the workforce and output, but it should not be forgotten that there are also granite quarries at Shap and Threlkeld, supplying roads tone , and a series of limestone quarries around the edge of the National Park.
Workable slates are contained in both the Borrowdale Volcanics and the sedimentary rocks of the Silurian series, though ironically the Skiddaw Slates are too friable to be commercially useful. The quality of the slate varies with the area of origin, as does its colour which varies from the attractive green of the Tilberthwaite and Honister quarries, located amongst the volcanic rocks, to the blue grey shades more characteristic of the Silurian slates from Broughton Moor and the southern Lake District.
Kirkby Moor Coniston Langdale and Honister Slate Mines
The peak of quarrying activity was probably reached in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, and quarry closures have been common since then (even since World War II some 25 quarries have shut down) but there are still six working slate quarries within or adjacent to the National Park and demand for their products is steadily increasing. These six surviving quarries are located at Kirkby Moor, in the southwest; Coniston and Tilberthwaite; Langdale; Honister; and Kirkstone.
Lake District slate first gained widespread popularity as a roofing material in the seventeenth century, when there was a general rebuilding in stone of houses which had hitherto been constructed of less durable materials and roofed with thatch or turf. Nevertheless, there is some evidence that it was in demand for particular purposes well before this date the barrack block at the Roman fort of Hardknott appears to have been roofed with local slate, as does the fort of Gala va, near Ambleside, and some of the grander houses in the region used slate from the twelfth century onwards.
The result is that the dales are peppered with small quarries which satisfied mainly local needs over a period of some centuries and which are now disused and overgrown, sometimes merging imperceptibly into the landscape and providing useful wildlife habitats, but occasionally intruding rather more into otherwise gentle scenes despite long periods of disuse. The quarries on the northern face of Wetherlam, together with their associated tip¬heaps, are an example of this latter category.
By no means all of the quarries remained small-scale in their operation, however, particularly when the superior qualities of the roofing slates they produced came to the attention of architects such as Wren, who by the late seventeenth century was using them widely in London as at Kensington Palace.
The demand was for easily workable fissile slates, usually found where the rocks had been subject to intense deformation. One of the earliest major sources of supply was Honister; indeed the Honister quarries, familiar. to all those travelling between Borrowdale and Buttermere, have been in continuous production since at least 1643.
In the early years of production at Honister one of the consequences was a new and particularly hazardous way of life for those employed as quarrymen. The best green slate was inconveniently located towards the top of Honister Crag (still worth seeing as a dramatic piece of rock scenery, despite the effects of centuries of quarrying). At first the slate had to be crammed into sledges and manoeuvred at considerable speed down the steep fellside to Honister Pass.
Lake District hotels and places to visit
Hotels and restaurants in the Lake District are among the best in England, and whether you want to enjoy local Cumbrian food in a café, sample michelin-starred food in a top class restaurant or visit the farm shops and delicatessens in the region, you will not be disappointed. Hotels in Windermere and Bowness are known for serving excellent local food, and providing superb accommodation at reasonable prices.
Originally the slate was then transported along Moses' Trod, still a spectacular high-level route across the head of Ennerdale and the screeIaden slopes of Great Gable, to Wasdale and eventually the sea at Drigg, near Ravenglass, but after the ports of Workington and Whitehaven came to prominence it was carted along Buttermere instead.
In the 1880s the sledges were replaced by gravitational railways running on inclined planes; now these are, in turn, disused and the slate is brought down to the splitting sheds by lorries which travel down from the exposed quarry face by an intricate zigzag route.
The workings are undoubtedly impressive in terms of their sheer scale and the audacity associated with their operation, but the scars of past and present quarrying are all too plain and form a notable contrast with the extremely attractive local environment.
The Burlington Quarry at Kirkby Moor
The largest slate quarry in England is the Burlington quarry on Kirkby Moor, the successor of the tiny quarries hacked out by the farmers on Gawthwaite Moor in the eighteenth century, as they slowly realised that quarrying was more profitable than farming. By 1810 more than 25,000 tons of 'Westmorland Dark Blue' slates (socalled despite the fact that they were produced in Lancashire) were being won every year from the Kirkby quarries and ferried down to ports such as Greenodd, which,enjoyed a brief prosperity based on slate while, as was reported in 1818, 'several sloops are constantly employed in the carriage of it to almost every principal seaport town in England and Ireland'.
The Woodland Industries in the Lake District
Within the National Park there are a number of fascinating and easily accessible sites which between them reveal a good deal of the history of the woodland industries in the Lake District. They illustrate, too, one of the pressures which dramatically reduced the woodland cover of the area in medieval times the other major factor being agricultural clearance for sheep farming. The source of this pressure was the burgeoning medieval iron industry of Furness, which required vast quantities of charcoal in order to smelt the iron ore.
So great was the demand for charcoal and hence so extensive was the area of woodland used by the monks of Furness Abbey, who were the prime movers in this industrialisation, established their smelting hearths, or bloomeries, in the woods of High Furness, rather than next to the iron ore deposits in the Dalton area of Low Furness. The bloomeries were concentrated in the Canis ton area and the Rusland and Leven valleys; a good example is the site (its name an evocative giveaway) at Cinder Hill on the wooded slopes of the Leven valley above Newby Bridge.
heir bloomeries close to the source of charcoal: their woodland resources in Borrowdale were exploited using a bloomery established in the unlikely location of Smithymire Island, a tiny island at the junction of Greenup Gill and Langstrath Beck. It is hard to believe that this delightful spot, with its foaming, cascading waters and miniature gorges, was the place where iron are from around Ore Gap, on the 800m (2,600ft) contour between Bowfell and Esk Pike, was brought forsmelting before being carted along Borrowdale for distribution.
These early, primitive and inefficient methods of charcoal burning and smelting proved inadequate to meet demands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially when the Society for the Mines Royal widened its sphere of operations to include the Coniston area. Pitsteads, or charcoal hearths, were built in many Lakeland valleys ¬not just in Coniston but around Ullswater and in the upper Troutbeck valley running up towards Kirkstone Pass.
Lake District hotels
If you are planning to stay more than a day in the Lake District, book into one of the many fabulous hotels near Windermere, Bowness or Keswick to make the most of this incredible region. Enjoy a romantic weekend in Bowness, a stay in a late-deal hotel in Windermere or make the most of the vast range of guesthouses and bed and breakfast accommodation in the area.
Labels: Lake District hotels, Woodland Industries in the Lake District
posted by Windermere Boutique Hotels | 07:38
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