Gate Crag Quarry

Overview

Gate Crag appears in the 1930 List of Mines as a Borrowdale slate working of B. Johns of Keswick, with three men underground and five at the surface — and a remark in brackets that mining had been suspended the year before. Eight people on the books at a quarry already stopped is the shape of the Lakeland slate trade between the wars.

History

The 1930 List of Mines under the Metalliferous Mines Act enters Gate Crag in Borrowdale, owned by B. Johns of 2 Eskin Street, Keswick, with three men underground and five at the surface, working slate, and the parenthetical remark 'Mining suspended 1929'. Nothing further specific to this quarry has been found: no opening date, no output, and no record of whether work resumed. It belongs to the scatter of small workings that gave Borrowdale a living for more than 350 years — Honister, Yew Crag, Dubs, Rigghead, Quay Foot and others still, most of them worked by a handful of men at a time. The trade's methods were the same at every scale: blocks brought down by blasting were bored and blasted again, reduced with sledgehammer and wedge, and carried to the riving shed, where the river split them into sheets and the dresser shaped each slate with a heavy knife.

Geology

Borrowdale's green slate is the cleaved volcanic tuff of the Borrowdale Volcanic Group — Ordovician ash compressed until it split along an imposed cleavage that cuts across the original bedding. The same rock runs in a zone through the valley and gives Honister its slate. Workable stone was taken from surface outcrops first and followed underground by levels driven in along the vein, which is what the return's three men underground imply here.

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

Workings

Surface and underground together: the 1930 return splits its eight people three below and five above. Nothing read describes the levels or the faces.

Closure

The return itself records mining as suspended in 1929, the year before it was compiled. Whether the suspension became a closure is not established by anything read for this record.

What remains

Not established. No dated site report or photograph identifiable as this quarry has been found.

Not established. Nothing read for this record describes what survives at Gate Crag.

Related mines

• Rigg Head Quarry — Both were returned in the same 1930 Cumberland list as small Borrowdale slate workings — Gate Crag with eight people and mining already suspended, Rigg Head with two — and both belong to the scatter of family-scale quarries the valley's own history names together with Honister, Yew Crag, Dubs and Quay Foot.

Recorded claims

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

• The 1930 List of Mines records Gate Crag in Borrowdale, owned by B. Johns of 2 Eskin Street, Keswick, with three men underground and five at the surface, working slate, and the remark 'Mining suspended 1929'. ¹
• Borrowdale slate and stone was extracted at several places in the valley, including Honister, Yew Crag, Dubs, Rigghead and Quay Foot, which between them provided a livelihood in Borrowdale for over 350 years. ²
• Blasted blocks were bored and blasted again until manageable, reduced with sledgehammers and wedges, and carried to the riving shed, where the river split the stone into sheets and the dresser shaped each slate with a heavy knife. ³

Sources

1. (primary) 1930 List of Mines under the Metalliferous Mines Act: Cumberland — Durham Mining Museum
2. (secondary) Mining and Quarrying in Borrowdale — The Borrowdale Story
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