Applethwaite Fell Slate Works

Overview

A green-slate openwork on the fell above Windermere, entered in the 1888 List of Mines under George H. Pattinson of Elim Grove — a Windermere builder and slate merchant working the stone on the doorstep of the town he was building. Applethwaite is the old township name for that side of Windermere, and the fell above it carries the workings.

History

The 1888 List of Mines, in its return of openworks, enters the Applethwaite Fell Slate Works at Applethwaite Fell, working green slate, owned by George H. Pattinson of Elim Grove, Windermere. The openworks return is a thin record — a name, a place, a mineral and an owner, with no workforce and no working status — and nothing else specific to this quarry has been found. The name repays a moment. Applethwaite is not a village here but the historic township on the eastern side of Windermere, recorded in the Westmorland hearth tax returns of the 1670s and covering the ground the Victorian town was built on; the fell is the high ground behind it. That the owner was a Windermere man is the point of the entry: the boom in villa building around the lake after the railway arrived in 1847 wanted green slate, and here was a working of it directly above the town. The trade it belonged to was expanding through exactly this period. Slate had been taken from Lakeland outcrops and open quarries since at least the 17th century, and the 18th and 19th centuries brought a great expansion driven by roofing demand in the industrial towns — with underground working following the rock in from the surface wherever the vein was worth chasing.

Geology

The green slate of this district is cleaved volcanic tuff of the Borrowdale Volcanic Group: Ordovician ash, compressed until it splits along a cleavage imposed across the original bedding. The same rocks give the green slates of Broughton Moor, Kirkstone and Elterwater and the silver-greys of Coniston Old Man; the blue-greys of Kirkby-in-Furness come from younger Silurian sediments instead.

Geological setting: Sedimentary Beds and Seams (historical documentary reference)

Workings

Returned in 1888 among the openworks rather than the mines, which places it as a surface quarry at that date. Nothing read describes its faces, its workforce or any underground extension.

Closure

No closure date has been established. The quarry does not appear in the 1930 Westmorland or Cumberland returns of the Lists of Mines.

What remains

Not established in any source read. An abandoned quarry named Applethwaite Slate Quarry is mapped on the fell above Windermere at the point this record uses for its coordinates.

Not established. Nothing read for this record describes what survives on the ground.

Related mines

• Loughrigg Fell Slate Quarry — Both were returned in the same 1888 list of openworks as green-slate quarries owned by individual Westmorland tradesmen rather than companies — Thomas Newton of Ambleside at Loughrigg, George H. Pattinson of Windermere here — and both worked the same Borrowdale Volcanic Group tuffs on fell ground above their owners' towns.

Nearby mines

• Troutbeck Park Green Slate Works — 3.1 km N
• Kirkstone Slate Quarry — 5.6 km NW
• Loughrigg Fell Slate Quarry — 9.4 km W
• Elterwater Quarry — 9.6 km W
• Tilberthwaite — 12.1 km W

Straight-line distance, within 15 km. Show on the map.

Recorded claims

Individual factual claims, each attached to the source(s) that support it below. Where sources disagree, both are kept.

• The 1888 List of Mines records the Applethwaite Fell Slate Works at Applethwaite Fell, working green slate, owned by George H. Pattinson of Elim Grove, Windermere. ¹
• Applethwaite is recorded as a locality of Windermere parish in the former Westmorland, appearing under that name in the Westmorland hearth tax returns of 1670 and 1675 — distinct from the Applethwaite under Skiddaw near Keswick. ²
• The workable slate of this district comes from the cleaved tuffs of the Ordovician Borrowdale Volcanic Group, which give the green slates of Broughton Moor, Hodge Close and Kirkstone as well as Elterwater, while the blue-greys of Kirkby-in-Furness come from younger Silurian sediments. ³

Sources

1. (primary) 1888 List of Mines under the Metalliferous Mines Act: Openworks (Durham inspection district) — Durham Mining Museum
2. (secondary) Applethwaite, Windermere (Old Cumbria Gazetteer) — Lakes Guides / Old Cumbria Gazetteer
3. (secondary) Slate — the Cumbrian slate industry, its geology, working and decline — Cumbria Industrial History Society

Record created: 5 September 2026 · Last researched: 6 September 2026