Coniston Water on the Around-England Blog

Copper Mines at Coniston

July 20, 2011

For many centuries the presence of copper in the Lake District mountain rocks above Coniston Water provided a livelihood for people in the area. Now Coniston coppermines are mostly visited by walkers and mine explorers (scroll down for video). Looking at the area today it is not easy to imagine a time (much of it [...]

Camping and Paddling at Coniston

January 20, 2010

Image via Wikipedia I was about to write another blog article about Coniston Water, but was browsing through some recent entries on other people’s blogs when I came cross a marvellous description of a weekend on the water from travel writer and photographer Lucinda Manouch. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to put [...]

Underwater at Coniston and Wastwater

January 6, 2010

The title of this post may have misled some people to think that I was going to write about the recent Cumbrian floods. Not at all. This is about the lakes, and getting under their surfaces, in particular Coniston Water and Wastwater. Actually it’s all a bit light-hearted. Last night I’d just spent an entire [...]

“Gondola” on Coniston Water 20 Years Ago

December 29, 2009

Searching through old photos today I came across the following picture of Gondola by a jetty on Coniston Water. It was taken on a cloudy day more than twenty years ago, and is not the world’s best photography, but I think it captures something of the atmosphere of Coniston on many days of the year [...]

The Ruskin Museum, Coniston

December 28, 2009

The Ruskin Museum has developed considerably over the years that I have known it. Nowadays it covers a wide range of local themes and deals extensively with the lives of two great men, from very different spheres of activity, associated with Coniston in the English Lake District. John Ruskin, the eminent nineteenth century literary and [...]

Landscape Photography and Coniston Water

December 23, 2009

Recently I’ve posted several articles here with reference to Coniston. They’ve included one on visiting Coniston in the winter, another linking to our lake district site about the Coniston Coppermines, and yet another with photos of the John Ruskin monument in Coniston churchyard. I was reminded again of Coniston yesterday when I picked up my [...]

Visiting Coniston in Winter

November 25, 2009

As I started to write this item for our blog the newspapers, radio and TV, both local and national, were full of Lake District and wider Cumbrian stories. More than a foot (>300 mm) of rain in little more than twentyfour hours had swollen rivers, formed lakes where previously there were none, and generally made [...]

Coniston Coppermines

November 23, 2009

The copper mines around Coniston were worked from at least the middle of the 16th century and, with a number of breaks in production in between, up to end of the 19th when competition from high-grade ore imported from overseas killed this local Lake District industry. Coniston Old Man, the mountain behind Coniston village, was [...]

The Ruskin Monument – Coniston

November 13, 2009

This morning while working on preparations for another new site, very little to do with England and nothing at all to do with the Lake District, I was searching through a crate of old photos. Yes, I do mean crate! I have several of them, and in this one I was digging for pictures from [...]