The Baptist Chapel was built in 1837, the youngest of many chapels described in a booklet entitled Old Baptist Meeting-houses in Furness, by F. N. Richardson (1904). Tottlebank, the oldest, was founded in 1669. Sunnybank, in Torver, 1678, and Hawkshead Hill, founded a few years later, no doubt took the early Baptists of Coniston; one of whom, William Atkinson of Monk Coniston, tanner, was fined in 1683 for attending a conventicle. These three chapels are now open, though Sunnybank and Hawkshead Hill were closed for some years before 1905. The seventeenth century chapel at Scroggs, between Broughton and Coniston, was dilapidated in 1842, and is now a cattle shed. The Coniston Chapel ministers were Mr. Kirkbride, Mr. Myers, and then for twenty-one years from about 1865 the Rev. George Howells; he was succeeded by Rev. Arthur Johnson. For nine years before 1904 there was no Baptist congregation, and the chapel was let to the "Brethren," who built a place of worship for themselves and opened it 1903. The Baptist Sunday School had been carried on all the while by Mr. William Shaw, and on regaining possession of the chapel a congregation was once more formed with Rev. R. Jardine as pastor.
A Primitive Methodist Chapel was built in 1859, but some years ago was converted into a Masonic Hall. A Wesleyan Chapel was built in 1875, but there is no settled minister.
The Roman Catholic Chapel was built in 1872 by Miss Aglionby of Wigton; Prof. Ruskin gave a window to this chapel. It was served for many years by Father Gibson; on his removal he was succeeded by Father Laverty, at whose death in 1905 Father Bradshaw was appointed to the cure.
VIII.—CONISTON INDUSTRIES.
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.)