Copper.
That the copper mines were worked by the Romans and the Saxons is only a surmise. Dr. A. C. Gibson, F.S.A., writing in 1866, said:—"Recent operations have from time to time disclosed old workings which have obviously been made at a very early period, by the primitive method of lighting great fires upon the veins containing ore and, when sufficiently heated, pouring cold water upon the rock, and so, by the sudden abstraction of caloric, rending, cracking and making a circumscribed portion workable by the rude implements then in use, specimens of which are still found occasionally in the very ancient parts of the mines, especially small quadrangular wedges perforated for the reception of a handle."
The mines of Cumberland were worked throughout the Middle Ages, and it is not impossible that these rich veins in the Coniston Fells were tried for ore; but we have no proof of the local assertion that they have been worked continuously since the days of the Romans. On the contrary, there seem to have been only two periods, of about a century each, during which mining was actively pushed. In the time of Queen Elizabeth we reach firm ground of history.
In 1561 a company was formed by several lords and London merchants to work the minerals of the kingdom under a patent from the Crown. They invited two German mining experts, Thomas Thurland and Daniel Hechstetter, who coming to England opened mines, and built smelting works at Keswick in 1565; and in spite of strong local opposition soon made a great success. (Their proceedings are described in a paper by J. Fisher Crosthwaite, F.S.A., in Transactions of the now defunct Cumberland Association, viii.)
They also took over the Coniston mines, and worked them with energy and profit. They opened out no less than nine new workings beside the old mine—the New or White Work, Tongue Brow (in Front of Kernel Crag), Thurlhead, Hencrag, Semy Work, Brimfell, Gray Crag, the Wide Work, and the Three Kings in Tilberthwaite; employing about 140 men. The ore was raised at a cost of 2s. 6d. to 8s. a kibble, each kibble being about a horse load, for it was carried on pack-horses to Keswick for smelting. To avoid this they proposed building a smelting house at Coniston, which was, they said, well supplied with wood and peat, and an iron forge was already there. It would be easy to boat the manufactured copper down the water, and ship it at Penny Bridge.
But in the civil wars the Corporation of "Governors, Assistants, and Commonalty of the Mines Royal" came to an end. The Parliament soldiers wrecked the works at Keswick, and operations at Coniston were stopped.
After the civil wars, Sir Daniel Fleming was several times approached on the subject of reopening the mines. He seems to have been willing. He notes on January 21st, 1658, "given unto the miller of Conistone for going along with me on to the fell, 1s.;" and on March 22nd, "given to Parce Corratts when hee came to looke at the blacke lead mine at Conistone, 2/6." This turned out a disappointment, for on May 2nd, 1665, he says, "given unto a Newlands man who came to look at the supposed wadd-mine at Coniston, 5/-." And so nothing seems to have been done.
In 1684 Roger Fleming at the Hall sent his brother, Sir Daniel, a report of the mines "which were first wrought by the Dutchmen" (Keswick Germans) and others discovered more recently. Only three of the old workmen were living, but from their evidence we get the details given above. On May 25th, 1686, John Blackwall wrote from Patterdale to Sir Daniel that he had examined the ground at Coniston and studied the evidence of the three old miners, and was prepared with a company to open the mines, if they could agree upon terms.
Sir Daniel died in 1701; and the Rev. Thomas Robinson's Natural History of Cumberland, &c., published in 1709, mentions that copper had been formerly got at Cunningston, by the Germans, and taken to Keswick, but says nothing about a revival of the industry. It was, however, prosecuted in a small way throughout the eighteenth century. A Company of Miners at Ulpha is mentioned in George Bownass' account for tools in 1772. West says, in 1774, merely, "the fells of Coniston have produced great quantities of copper ore," nothing of mining in his time; and the smith's accounts from 1770 to 1774 do not mention it. There must have been a revival shortly afterwards. Captain Budworth, about 1790, tells the story of the devil and the miner, retold by Dr. Gibson from local tradition, to the effect that Simon the miner found a paying vein in the crag—it is called Simon Nick to this day, and the cleft he made is seen yet on the left hand as you go up to Leverswater; but one night at the Black Bull he boasted of his luck, and said the fairies, or the devil, were his partners, upon which he found no more copper, and lost his life soon after in blasting.
In 1802 the mines were going. In 1820 the Lonsdale Magazine says that they had been worked at intervals for many centuries, and had lately been in the hands of "spirited adventurers," but were then discontinued.
About 1835 a new era of prosperity began, in which Mr. John Barratt became the leader. His skill and energy brought about such success that in 1849 they employed 400 men, and yielded 250 tons of ore monthly. In 1855 the monthly wage list amounted to £2,000. In 1866 Dr. Gibson said:—"For many years their shipments averaged 300 tons per month, and employed from five to six hundred people," but "the number of hands employed do not now exceed two hundred."
Up to this time the ore had been boated down the lake, and carted to Greenodd. Now the Coppermining Company promoted a railway connecting Coniston with Broughton and the Furness line. It was a separate concern when it was opened in 1859, but absorbed into the Furness system in 1862.
The mines, as they were in his days, are described at length by Dr. Gibson in The Old Man, or Ravings and Ramblings around Conistone. Alexander Craig Gibson, M.R.C.S., F.S.A., was born at Harrington, 1813, the son of a ship's captain, who died early. He was taken by his mother to her home at Lockerbie, and brought up there; afterwards apprenticed to a surgeon at Whitehaven. In 1844 he came to Coniston as medical officer to the mining company, and lived for seven years at Yewdale Bridge, where he wrote his "Ravings and Ramblings" as articles for the Kendal Mercury, afterwards collected into a volume, and subsequently republished with considerable revision. He left Coniston in January, 1851, and remained at Hawkshead for some years; then removed southward, and finally settled at Bebington in Cheshire, where he died in 1874. A collection of sketches in prose and verse, The Folk-speech of Cumberland, &c. (Coward, Carlisle, 1869; ed. ii., 1872), shows him to be master of the dialect of the north-west in various forms—Furness, Cumbrian, and Dumfriesshire; and his book on Coniston remains a valuable contribution to local anecdote. (I owe the data of his life to the Rev. T. Ellwood.)
After the middle of the nineteenth century the copper mines became less and less profitable, owing to the competition of foreign imports. During the "eighties," they were only just kept open, until the Coniston Mining Syndicate, under the energetic management of Mr. Thomas Warsop, tried to put new life into the old business. Mr. Warsop attempted to introduce a new system of smelting, but this smelting house was blown away by the storm of December 22nd, 1894. He took the watercourse from Leverswater to work a turbine, which superseded the old waterwheels for pumping, and also supplied power for boring in the mines, and for crushing and mixing the material from the old rubbish heaps, with which he made excellent concrete slabs, much in demand for pavements. But the development came to an end with Mr. Warsop's removal in 1905, and when the mines were offered for sale there was no purchaser.