Slate.
Roofing slabs have been found in the ruins of Calder Abbey and the Well Chapel at Gosforth, both mediæval; in the mansion on Lord's Island, Derwentwater, destroyed before the end of the seventeenth century, we found green Borrowdale roofing slates. Purple Skiddaw roofing slates were also found in the ruins of a seventeenth and eighteenth century cottage at Causeway Head near Keswick. But it was not until the eighteenth century that quarrying began to develop. Mr. H. S. Cowper, in his History of Hawkshead, says that the Swainsons, from about 1720, worked a quarry in the Coniston flag formation near the Monk Coniston Tarns, and sent out their flags even as far as Ulverston Church. Fifty years later George Bownass, the Coniston blacksmith, was the great purveyor and repairer of tools, and from his ledger the names of his customers, gathered by Mr. Herbert Bownass, throw light on the history of the industry in the second half of the eighteenth century.
In 1770 appear William Jackson & Co. and Edward Jackson, no doubt of Tilberthwaite. In 1771, the Company of Slate-getters at Pennyrigg, Saddlestones, Cove and Hodge Close; Zachias Walker & Co., at Cove; George Tyson & Co., quarry owners; William Atkinson & Co., at Scoadcop Quarry; John Masacks & Co., at Cove; John Atkinson, slate merchant, Torver Fell Quarry; Wm. Fleming and Thomas Callan, Stang End Quarry; Matthew Carter, Stang End Quarry; also George Thompson and Wm. Vickers at a quarry with an unreadable name, and John Johnson, Jonathan Youdale, Wm. Wilson, Anthony Rigg and Wm. Stopart, slate-getters. In 1772, William Atkinson, Broadscop Quarry; John Speding & Co., quarry owners; slate-getters at Bove Beck or Gatecrag Quarries; Wm. Parker, slate merchant, Langdale; Wm. Fleming, Bessy Crag Quarry; Wm. Johnson, Pennyrigg Quarry; and John Vickers, Thomas and Rowland Wilson, John Casson, and George Bownass, slate-getters.
Of the quarries here mentioned as working 130 years ago Stang End and Bessy Crag are in Little Langdale, Pennyrigg and Hodge Close on opposite sides of the Tilberthwaite valley; Cove is on the flank of the Old Man above Gaitswater; Scoadcop and Broadscop look like variants of the name Goldscope, the quarry opposite Cove, and near Blind Tarn, to the right hand as you go up Walna Scar; Torverfell Quarry may be Ashgill; Saddlestones is the quarry seen on the way up the Old Man (page 3).
Father West in 1774 said that "the most considerable slate quarries in the kingdom" were in the Coniston Fells; the slate was shipped from Penny Bridge "for differents parts of the kingdom." In 1780, Green saw the quarry near the top of the Old Man "in high working condition." W. Rigge & Son of Hawkshead, who worked some of them, exported 1,100 tons and upward a year, and the carriage to Penny Bridge was 6s. 10d. to 7s. 10d. a ton. The slate was shipped at Kirkby Quay upon sailing boats, of which there were enough upon the water in 1819 to furnish the subject of a paragraph in Green's Guide describing a scene of "bustle and animation."
From papers given by Mr. John Gunson of Ulpha to the Coniston Museum, we can gather a few particulars of the slate trade in the early part of the nineteenth century. John Atkinson of Ivytree, Blawith, in 1803 was interested in the Tilberthwaite Quarries, and in 1804 applied for leave to redeem the Land Tax on the ground they covered, the annual sum being £2 13s. 4d. From 1820 we find John Atkinson & Co. working seven quarries—Ashgill (to the left hand as you go up Walna Scar) the most important, occupying usually about a dozen men, and worked at considerable profit until 1830, when it began to show a deficit; Tilberthwaite, after 1820 giving employment to about seven men, with fair profit until 1826, when the men seem to have been withdrawn to work a quarry at Wood in Tilberthwaite for a year and a half; Goldscope, employing from nine to fifteen men between 1821 and 1826, when the Cove Quarry seems to have been run with no great profit or energy until 1832; and Mosshead, on the north-east side of the Old Man, at the head of Scrow Moss, was worked in 1829 and at a loss. The Outcast Quarry, near Slater's Bridge (now Little Langdale Quarries), is mentioned only in 1830. The best workmen were paid 3s. 6d. a day; lads seem to have started at 6d. There are notes of indentures, in Atkinson's account-book, from which it seems that apprentices at the riving and dressing began at 1s. or 1s. 6d., with a yearly rise to 2s. 6d., before they were out of their time. The profits were fluctuating—Goldscope in two years (1821-23) produced £1,072 17s. worth of slates, and paid £719 18s. 10d. in wages; Ashgill in 1826 made £381 less powder, tools, candles, &c.; but these were good years. The royalties to Lady le Fleming on Cove and Mosshead for 1827-32 amounted to £33 6s.
Tilberthwaite was the old possession of the Jacksons. Their ancestor had come from Gosforth, Cumberland, about 1690, and is said to have acquired it by marriage from the Walkers, who held the land in freehold, not, as usual hereabouts, in customary tenure under a lord of the manor. The Jacksons held most of Tilberthwaite, Holm Ground, and Yewdale until their estates were bought by Mr. James Garth Marshall, and it was by marriage with an Elizabeth Jackson that John Woodburn of Kirkby Quarries came to have an interest in the slate trade here. His name appears in John Atkinson's account books after 1832, and he seems to have taken over the actual working of the quarries. In 1904 the total output of the Coniston quarries (Cove, High Fellside, Mossrigg and Klondyke, Parrock, Saddlestone, and Walna Scar) was 3438 tons; value at the quarries, £12,251.