Loughrigg Fell Slate Quarry

Overview

A green-slate openwork on Loughrigg Fell, entered in the 1888 List of Mines at Elterwater under Thomas Newton of Ambleside. The fell has been quarried at several points and its most famous working, on the far side above Rydal Water, is now the flooded cavern walkers know as Rydal Cave — but the return puts this quarry on the Elterwater side, and which of the fell's workings it was is not known.

History

The 1888 List of Mines under the Metalliferous Mines Act, in its return of openworks, enters the Loughrigg Fell Slate Quarry at Elterwater, working green slate, owned by Thomas Newton of Elim View, Ambleside. The openworks return is a thinner record than the county lists that followed it: it gives a name, a place, a mineral and an owner, with no workforce and no working status, and nothing else about this quarry is known. What can be said is what it was part of. The Lakeland slate trade expanded through the 18th and 19th centuries on the back of demand for roofing in the growing industrial towns of northern England, working outcrops first, then open quarries, then levels driven underground along the workable rock. Loughrigg Fell was quarried at several points in that period. On its northern slopes above Rydal Water the working known then as Loughrigg Quarry was abandoned in the 19th century and left the huge flooded chamber now called Rydal Cave, which is among the most visited industrial remains in the Lakes. That is a different side of the fell from Elterwater, and the return's own 'where' column is the only guide to which working it meant.

Geology

The green slate of Elterwater and the fells around it is not a true slate but a cleaved volcanic tuff of the Borrowdale Volcanic Group — Ordovician ash, compressed until it split cleanly along an imposed cleavage. The same group gives the green slates of Broughton Moor, Hodge Close and Kirkstone and the silver-greys of Coniston Old Man; the blue-greys of Kirkby-in-Furness come from younger Silurian sediments instead. The colour and the ash veining that make Elterwater stone recognisable are features of the original volcanic material, not of the cleavage that made it workable.

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 on record describes its faces, its workforce or any underground extension.

Closure

The closure date is not known. Quarrying continues at Elterwater itself, which is one of the few Cumbrian workings still active, but nothing on record connects that operation to this 1888 entry.

What remains

Unknown. Loughrigg Fell is open access land carrying the remains of several quarries; the best known of them, Rydal Cave on the northern slopes, is a flooded chamber reached by a short walk from Rydal and is visited constantly.

Unknown. The fell carries quarry remains at several points, but nothing on record identifies which of them was the working returned in 1888.

Related mines

• Applethwaite Fell Slate Works — 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.

What's uncertain

Points where sources disagree or the record could not be settled; both accounts are kept. All open questions in the archive.

• Rydal Cave, on the northern slopes of Loughrigg Fell above Rydal Water, is a former slate mine — originally Loughrigg Quarry — abandoned in the 19th century and now a large chamber with a flooded floor. (uncertain) ²

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 Loughrigg Fell Slate Quarry at Elterwater, working green slate, owned by Thomas Newton of Elim View, Ambleside. ¹
• Rydal Cave, on the northern slopes of Loughrigg Fell above Rydal Water, is a former slate mine — originally Loughrigg Quarry — abandoned in the 19th century and now a large chamber with a flooded floor. (uncertain) 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) Rydal Cave (Loughrigg Quarry), Loughrigg Fell — Show Mines of Great Britain
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