A walk through the quarries on Coniston Old Man.

Pick a Day. Any Day will do, although a weekday from March through to November would be preferable. You need daylight to get the best views. Drive to the village of Coniston, turn up the hill, past the Sun Inn, where Donald Campbell enjoyed his last pint, and keep going. It is a narrow road, especially so after the last junction, the one that leads to the old station yard. (Yes, for those that don't know, there used to be a railway at Coniston, and it is linked to where we are heading).

A quarter of a mile up the hill you come to a gate, and beyond it the most informal car park in the Lake District. An old quarry, with a level surface, serves as the semi official car park, marked on OS maps and used for many years, but there are not many spaces and if you don't get there early then all will be taken, especially at weekends. If that happens you will have to do what the majority of people do and park beside the track that leads away from the gate and over the fellside. In fact, regular visitors sometimes ignore empty spaces in the car park and head up the track anyway, bagging their favourite spot before it is snatched.

The track has an official title; Walna Scar Road. It runs along the side of the Old Man of Coniston, over Walna Scar, and down into the Duddon Valley. Nowadays it is the start point for one of the most popular walks in the Lake District, but long before fell walkers came to the district the tracks hereabouts were used for very different purposes. Coniston, you see, was not a tourist village. In days past it's fortunes were very much linked to what was underneath the mountains as opposed to what was on the surface. 150 years ago, the boots marching up the fellside belonged not to fell walkers, but to the working men, women and children of Coniston.

Miners and quarry workers made their way up the fell on a daily basis. Not just men, but until the late Victorian period women and children as well. At one point over 600 people were employed on these fells on a daily basis. Copper ore and slate were their goal, and had been for the previous 300 years. Exactly when copper mining started in these hills is not known, however, it is fairly certain that by the 1560's German miners, brought to England by Elizabeth I, had uncovered rich veins of ore. By the mid 1800's the mines were thriving.

One problem had always been shipping the ore out of the area. Coniston has never been an easy place to get to by road, and moving the heavy loads out was fraught with difficulty. A wagon down to the lake shore, a barge to the southern end, then another wagon to get the ore to the coast. That is a lot of loading and unloading. Until the Railway came in 1858, that is. 4 years later, the line was extended to the copper mines, such was the amount of Ore that was being hewn from these hills.

However, the link between the railway and the mines did not last long. Shortly after the Coniston line was extended to the quarries, the price of Copper began to drop. Production declined, and some of the deepest shafts were allowed to flood as continually pumping the water out was a costly business. By the turn of the 20th century, the mines were all but finished. They continued until the start of the first world war in 1914, and then production ceased. Limited workings were re-commenced after the war, but there was little profit to be made, and mining ceased permanently in 1940. 

The railway, copper mines and quarries may be no more, but their remains throughout the whole of  this region are extensive, stretching from the workings on the side of Coniston Old Man to the slate quarries of Little Langdale. Key areas are Tilberthwaite and Hodge Close, Cathedral Cave, close to Slater's Bridge, workings on the Little Langdale side of Lingmoor, and Greenburn Mine, situated at the head of the Little Langdale Valley. For those with a keen interest in industrial archaeology it is a wonderful region to explore. However, if, like me, you are simply interested in the relics of a bygone era, there is still plenty to spark your interest on the climb to the summit of Coniston Old Man, which, with so much of interest on the ascent, is a wonderful walk at any time of year.

The well preserved remains of workman's huts and a latrine, almost 1,000 feet above the village of Coniston, on the wide track up to the summit of Coniston Old Man

A little further up from the first picture, and more well preserved buildings are passed. In the past few years a certain amount of work has been carried out here to ensure that the buildings remain as safe as possible, however, exploration is certainly at your own risk.

Within a short space of time, this third set of buildings is passed. As can be seen, there is much interest in them from passing walkers.

High walls and thick steel girders that are well over 100 years old are a key feature as we approach a fourth level of quarry buildings

With high numbers of walkers passing through this area, the path has been restored to how it may have looked 100 years ago.

This building may have gone, but the doorway remains.

A sign urging fellwalkers to respect the integrity of the site and not remove artifacts.

One of the iron artifacts that the sign in the above picture was attempting to protect, a set of railway points over 1,500ft up the side of the mountain. The trackway was an important part of the site, and existed well before the railway from Broughton to Coniston was built. This particular set of points probably dates from the middle part of the 19th century.

The remains of heavy lifting gear, situated close to the set of points in the previous picture. It was part of the winding gear for the railway. There were no locomotives, the trucks being moved by a mixture of winches and gravity.

Low Water, which is situated above the quarries and mines, some 1,000 feet below the summit of Coniston Old Man. It is a natural tarn, but at some point was dammed to raise the water level in order to provide power and a water supply for the quarries below. After the quarries closed the dam was removed. A little further north is Levers Water, a larger tarn which was also dammed to provide water for the quarries and also Coniston, some 1500 feet below. Unlike Low Water, Levers Water has retained its dam.

 

Looking down on Low Water from the well used track up to the summit of Coniston Old Man. We've left the quarry workings behind now, as we head for the summit another 500 feet above. However, it is the case that many people who start out from the Walna Scar Road never reach this far. Their interest is not in reaching the fell top, but in exploring the quarry and mine working remains, which are amongst the best preserved in the North of England.