Coniston

Coniston Old Man

February 15, 2011

Here’s a nice photograph of Coniston Old Man, behind the village of Coniston, that I came across on Wikimedia. It all looks very pretty in the snow, but it’s worth remembering that not too long ago men would climb up, at all seasons of the year, to work in the Coniston coppermines. These mines were [...]

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A Lancashire Surprise

February 12, 2011

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, [...]

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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 [...]

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“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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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The Coniston Railway

February 3, 2009

In a previous posting I mentioned recently visiting the Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway after staying overnight at Muncaster Castle, Ravenglass.  During the same trip, while further north, I had a chance to slip into Michael Moon’s bookshop in Whitehaven.  I’d not gone for anything in particular but enjoyed maybe thirty minutes just browsing around and [...]

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Four seriously damp but totally delightful days among the English Lakes

August 11, 2008

I hesitated before starting to write this. After all, why should anyone else be interested in a record of how my wife and I spent a few days in the Lake District. We’d driven north to look after grandchildren for a few days, then there was a gap before I had to be north again [...]

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Historic Photographs – now available here!

July 11, 2008

I’m sure you’ve seen books about a particular town or village, possibly your own, made up almost entirely of old photographs.  If so, it’s more than likely that you’ve seen the work of the Francis Frith company.   They’ve been publishing photographs and photographic collections since the middle years of the nineteenth century. We’re now able [...]

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