Slate & Copper Mining
Coniston has been Lakeland's centre for slate and copper mining for 500 years. The well known ‘Coniston copper mines’ are reputed to be some of the largest copper mines in Britain, with a vertical distance of around 2,000 ft (610 m).
The nearby slate mines on the North East flank of the Old Man, are known as "Old Man Quarries", though sometimes given the individual names of: Brandy Crag, SaddleStone and Moss Head. These slate mines have been worked since at least the 13th century. All the workings are more or less underground, apart from Low Brandy Crag, which was opened out into an opencast quarry in the 1980s by Burlington Stone, and is still operating today. Most of the lower levels in Saddlestone are blocked, though the Moss Head Quarries are still open.
Read more about this topic: Old Man Of Coniston
Famous quotes containing the words copper and/or mining:
“He had put, within his reach,
A box of counters and a red-veined stone,
A piece of glass abraded by the beach,
And six or seven shells,
A bottle with bluebells,
And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art,”
—Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore (1823–1896)
“For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish or a German girl scrubbing floors in that home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making “ladies” dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase.”
—Stephanie Coontz (20th century)