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 before modern-style industrialisation) in which people living on the slopes of Coniston Old Man made a living from iron, copper and slate.

Coniston is not the only Lake District area to have a copper-producing history. The Keswick area was another centre of this metal extracting industry, especially the Newlands Valley. In their early years the Coniston copper mines sent their output to Keswick by packhorse to be processed. After the smelting facility there was destroyed in the late-1700s the ore was taken by boat down Coniston Water from a quay at Coniston Hall to the Nibthwaite Quay. It was then carried to the coast by cart. From the port at Greenodd, and later from Ulverston through its canal, much of the ore went to St. Helens in Lancashire. There it was smelted and and made into copper cladding for the hulls of sailing vessels.

Coniston Copper Mines: The Early Years

The Coniston coppermines certainly go as far back as the 1500s, and possibly longer, although most of what is still visible on the surface dates from the mid-19th century. The mines were worked up until the English Civil War of the 1640s but then there was a break before they were revived. For some of the time, as also at Keswick, the enterprise was led by experienced German miners. The Company of Mines Royal, which had also run other copper extraction enterprises in the Lake District, had control of Coniston’s “Coppermines Valley” toward the end of the 16th century.

The Antiquities of Furness (1774)

In 1774 the antiquarian Jesuit priest Thomas West wrote in his book, The Antiquities of Furness, as follows:

“The fells of Coniston have produced great quantities of copper ore. During the rage of the civil wars the copper mines in Coniston fells were shut up. After the Restoration, Sir Daniel Fleming had an inquest of all the old workmen then living, concerning them, with their opinion of the charges necessary for recovering the said mines. The following abstract is given here, as it may be of some service to future adventurers. The original is at Rydal hall. … “

[West then lists nine different areas of working with depths, thickness of the seams, and comments on the quality of the the ore, including mention of other metals present such as lead, silver and gold. He then continues .... ]

“About 140 workmen were employed in these works, and the ore was carried on horses backs to the smelting-house at Keswick. About 20 miles distant from some of the works the ore was raised at different prices, according to its goodness, from 2s.6d to 8s per kible, every kible being near a horseload. The ore was first beaten small, and washed and sifted then weighed or measured.

“Before the works were left off, a proposal was made for erecting a smelting-house at Coniston, as more convenient for building houses, a nd better supplied with wood and peat, with the convenience of an iron forge, then at Coniston, being only seven miles from the sea-port at Penny bridge, five of which were by water down the lake, and two miles of land carriage on a good road.”

For reasons now unknown West does not mention in his 1774 Antiquities that the Macclesfield Copper Company reopened the Coniston coppermines in 1758. For almost the next forty years they were again in production but then there was a hiatus of about thirty years before they were once again reopened. This time production took off in a big way controlled by the firm of John Barratt, and copper became the basis for several generations of local prosperity, at one point employing as many as 400 men.

Coniston Coppermines in the 19th Century

This prosperity rubbed off not only on Coniston village itself but also on the surrounding area. The 1851 census describes John Biggins of neighbouring Torver as a “calker-maker”. As John Dawson says in his history of Torver, “Calkers are pointed pieces on horseshoes placed so as to prevent slipping; no doubt in regular demand at a time when so many horses would be working up and down the steep and slippery ways to the mines and quarries. Numbers of horses were also employed inside the Coniston copper mines to haul out wagon-loads of ore, a situation in which calkers would give the animal a better grip where the surface was wet and uneven.” Dawson also mentions other makers of industrial equipment such as pick and hammer shafts.

Coniston Water now became an even busier commercial route than it had been previously. Boats were already carrying slate from the quarries. Now they also carried copper ore. At Nibthwaite Quay, near where Coniston lake becomes the River Crake, two buildings became known locally as the “Copper Houses”.

By the late 1840s the Furness Railway had its line running from the Furness area and up the coast of Cumberland. Already thought was being given to the possibility of a branch line to Coniston. After an earlier false start the line was opened in 1859. It was promoted heavily by the owners of interests in the Coniston copper mines because getting the increased volumes of copper ore down to the coast by the traditional water and land route was becoming more and more difficult. In the following year the line was extended to run beyond Coniston to the Copper House at the mines. Although in later years the Furness Railway emphasised the tourism aspects of the Foxfield-Coniston branchline, its reason for existence was copper.

The End of Coniston’s Copper Era

Copper-based prosperity did not last. Good quality ore became available in large quantities from other parts of the world, especially South America, at prices with which the Coniston copper mines could not compete. By the end of the nineteenth century it was all over.

Coniston Copper Mines Today

Today the Coppermines Valley is virtually silent apart from voices of walkers. Many signs of the old industry survive and remain the subject of great interest to many thousands of visitors each year as well as to industrial archaeologists.

There are, however, considerable dangers lurking behind the entrances to the mine workings. Visitors to the area should under no cicumstances enter the mine workings unless properly authorised, equipped and accompanied. Unless you’re an experienced caver or mine explorer and are properly equipped look at them from the outside only, and when back down in Coniston village take a look at the Ruskin Museum where you’ll find a wealth of information about Coniston copper. For now as well you can take a look at this YouTube video from AditNow, Jun 25, 2009:

(NOTE:This post is a revised version of a 2009 page on our old Lake District site.

Related Posts:

Coniston Coppermines – includes links to interesting and useful books.

Lake District History and the Future

Where to Go and What to Do in the Lake District: South & Central

This morning I decided to take a look at the visitor statistics for the Around-England blog, and got some surprises.

The most visited places on the blog

Previously, if anyone had asked me which had been the most popular items I might have guessed at some of my posts about the Lake District.  For example, recently there were:

Holehird Gardens, Windermere and  Wordsworth and the Lake District Rivers

Going further back in time there were:

The Ruskin Monument – Coniston and  Visiting Coniston in Winter

However, it was none of the above that headed the list. Rather, apart from people arriving at whatever was at the time on the site’s front page, the most frequent entry point was a story I wrote some time ago on my childhood and teenage memories of Towneley Hall, Burnley:

Burnley, Lancashire – Towneley Hall and Woodland Park

Close second (actually joint-second) was another Lancashire location. Many people searched the site for Bowland, and its incredibly beautiful River Hodder took that second place:

The Hodder – Lancashire’s Most Beautiful River

Partnering the Hodder in second place was the first Lake District item:

Dove Cottage, Grasmere on Old Postcards

Maybe at some time I should write more about my collection of old Lake District postcards.  It’s not large, but I enjoy it.

“Cromwell’s Bridge” – from Lower Hodder Bridge on a rainy day

What does all this mean?

I’m not sure what lessons to draw from this quick look at the statistics, but I’ll keep watching in an attempt to understand what people find most interesting. Maybe it’s just that there are many other souces of information about the Lake District whereas fewer people write about Lancashire.

However, as someone born in the part of present-day Cumbria that used to be Lancashire, and remembering that Windermere and Coniston Water used to be known as the “Lancashire Lakes”, I guess I’ll keep on writing about both counties – and not forgetting my wife’s family background east of the Pennines in Yorkshire, the birth-county of three of my four grandchildren.

Yes I can admire, indeed love, many other areas of England and will continue to post articles now and again even about the deep south, but I’m unashamedly a Northerner and will continue to make “The Case for the North”.

Incidentally, the most common search term that led people to the blog from Google was especially surprising: Wastwater Gnomes.

Today’s post is a brief miscellany of Lake District and Cumbria news, ranging from the trivial to the serious, just what catches my attention.

Bluebird developments – The Westmorland Gazette reports that a driver, Ted Walsh of Cartmel, has been selected for the 2012 speed trials of Donald Campbell’s Bluebird, currently being reconstructed after recovery from the bed of Coniston Water.

Cumberland – As an aside, I just now made a mistake in entering something into Google and up came a link to the Cumberland Times-News.  No, not a new paper based in Carlisle.  According to the blurb it “serves Western Maryland and the Potomac Highlands of  West Virginia.”  Hmm.  They’ve been receiving parcel bombs at local government offices!  Let’s hurry back to Cumbria before I get diverted to Cumberland County, North Carolina, or Cumberland, Rhode Island.

Cockermouth recovery – Passing through Cockermouth just before Christmas I was so pleased to see the results of the herculean efforts of the local people to recover from the devastating floods of a year ago.  Apparently, though, according to the Times & Star, there is a proposal to introduce on-street parking charges in the town.  This seems to me to be just the kind of kick in the teeth that struggling local tradespeople do not need.  Let’s hope the bureaucrats come to their economic senses.

Bridge to re-open after 2009 floods – More than twelve months after the floods it’s easy to forget that what, for the national news media, was a passing story has had many continuing impacts on local communities.  On my occasional visits to family in the Workington area I have to navigate between the town centre and Seaton, and still get a bit confused by the one-way systems caused by missing bridges.  It is good, therefore, to learn that a few miles further inland the bridge at Lorton is due to re-open in January. This will be a great relief to the locals.

Boxing Day Cricket – I’ve heard of many strange things being done on Boxing Day or New Years’s Day, but this is a new one on me.  The Cumberland & Westmorland Herald reports an eight-a-side cricket match (in full whites) on a snow-covered Latrigg summit on Boxing Day. And it attracted a crowd of around a hundred.

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 a link to it here for others to see.

Yes, I’ll eventually get around to writing what I’d planned for today, but for now you can enjoy Lucinda’s stimulating description of days on the water and camping at Coniston – and she didn’t restrict herself to the lake itself but also ventured a little way down the Crake, the river that flows out of the southern end of the lake and carries its water to the sea.

Swallow and Amazons (Coniston Water) – LucindaManouch.com
“… As we made the 3 hour trip to Cumbria I was still trying to decide which lake to visit. Some I had paddled before, some where just too small and some seemed a little tricky to get to. Then I saw Coniston water on the map and memories of playing Swallows and Amazons on the river as a child came flooding back. …”

By the way, if you have never read Swallows and Amazons you can get a copy here from Amazon.co.uk (no pun intended in referring to this bookseller).

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 day writing for a number of blogs and preparing photographs for them when I spotted that I had nothing for this blog today. So why not take a look at YouTube and see what might be interesting to people. There were several candidates, but eventually I plumped for something entirely different from usual, and here it is.

Plant life in coniston water

2 meters under the water at Coniston July 2009 Bailiff Wood

I can’t say that the underwater plant life of Coniston is especially exotic, but although I’m no freshwater biologist I do feel that it’s nice to see that there is life down there. As I understand it, however, Wastwater is quite different. Apparently there’s very little to be seen there … a least that used to be the case. As I wrote on my lake district web site a year or two ago, some clever guys decided to brighten up the bed of Wastwater with a collection of garden gnomes. It suddenly occurred to me that someone might have filmed it. Someone had, and put it on YouTube. So here goes:

Wastwater Gnome Garden

Well, I hope that might have entertained you. At least it’s a bit different from our normal fare

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 – cloudy and not so bright – all part of the fascination of the Lake District.

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 artistic figure, lived for many years at Brantwood across Coniston Water from the village. Ruskin was extremely influential in his support of traditional craft industries. He is strongly associated with the small lace industry of the area, which is one of the museum’s themes. John Ruskin died in 1900 and is buried in the village churchyard (I put photographs of the Ruskin monument in an earlier post).

Donald Campbell was very different. He was a mid-twentieth century speed enthusiast, breaking world records many times both on land and water. Coniston was host to many of his water-speed record attempts, and it was here that he died when his boat Bluebird II somersalted at high speed. He is buried in the new area of the village graveyard.

The achievements of both men are extensively portrayed in the Ruskin Museum, tucked in behind the buildings of Yewdale Road. Other major themes are the ancient local industries of copper mining and slate quarrying, as well as the distinctive stone walls of the Lake District field and fells.

During summer months the Ruskin Museum is open from 10:00am to 5:30pm, but in the winter may have shorter hours so do check before travelling far.

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 copy of Practical Photography for January 2010. Out of the packet fell a 40+ page guide to landscape photography – “Landscape Answers”. Toward the end of the booklet is a section entitled, “Where can I shoot an iconic landscape?” Among the nine suggested locations is Coniston Water.

Absolutely right. A good choice. I can’t wait to get back there in a few weeks’ time. After all I must introduce my new camera to the Lake District at the earliest possible opportunity

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 a source of large amounts of copper ore. This ore was initially carried by pack horses to be processed at Keswick but from the 18th century onwards was transported by boat down Coniston Water and then carted by road to the coast.

Today the homes of generations of Coniston copper mine workers are mostly holiday cottages and the old mine workings are a tourist attraction, albeit mostly for those with enough energy to do some walking.

Anyone interested in old industries, or simply in the ways our forefathers earned their livelihood, or in the processes by which today’s Lake District landscape was shaped, will want to explore this aspect of Coniston’s past – either on the ground or in an armchair (see Coniston Copper Mines: A Field Guide by Eric G Holland).

Eric Holland’s much larger book, Coniston Copper: A History, gives a more extensive treatment of the subject. It is out of print but can still be found, albeit often quite expensive, at some book dealers either new or secondhand.

There is also a later blog post on the Coppermines at Coniston, expanding on this fascinating aspect of Lake District history.