Yew Craggs Quarry

Overview

Yew Craggs faces Honister Crag across the head of Honister Pass, and works the same volcanic green slate: the veins cross the high hause between Buttermere and Borrowdale from one crag to the other. Slate was carried down from both to the road below by hand-sledge for over a hundred years from the early eighteenth century. The 1930 List of Mines records Yew Craggs under the Buttermere Green Slate Quarries; its underground closeheads were abandoned in 1963.

History

The green slate of Honister is volcanic, and its veins cross the high hause between Buttermere and Borrowdale from Honister Crag to Yew Crag on the opposite side of the valley. By 1870 there were intermediate workings on the Yew Crag side, and for over a hundred years from the early eighteenth century slate was brought down from the workings on both crags to the road below by hand-sledge — a man running a loaded sled down a fellside on foot, which is among the more alarming methods of haulage the British slate trade produced.

After 1892 the Hause became the centre of operations and was linked to the quarries by road, tramway, aerial ropeway and huge inclines driven inside the mountain. The counterbalanced tramway that served Yew Crag can still be seen from the Honister side, running straight up the mountainside.

The 1930 List of Mines enters Yew Craggs at Honister Pass near Keswick under the Buttermere Green Slate Quarries Ltd. of Station Buildings, Keswick, with Commander Hoare as agent, working slate. Production continued through the 1950s and 1960s, but the Yew Crag workings closed in that period because of difficult roof conditions, and the closeheads — the underground chambers — were abandoned in 1963. The site has been allowed to decay since.

The Durham Mining Museum's company record for the Buttermere Green Slate Quarries shows how Yew Craggs stood within the firm. In 1930 the company worked High Fellside near Coniston, Honister, Lords at Elterwater, Parrock at Hodge Close, Quay Foot in Borrowdale and Yew Craggs, employing a hundred people in all; Yew Craggs returned no separate figures because its people were counted with Honister's thirty-seven underground and fifty-one at surface. The same arrangement holds in 1935. By 1950 the position had reversed entirely: Honister is entered as discontinued in December 1947 and Lords as working nobody, and Yew Craggs alone carried the company, with eight men underground and fifteen at surface — the whole of its workforce.

Geology

Honister green slate is not a slate in the strict sense of a cleaved mudstone. It is a volcanic rock — a fine-grained ash and tuff of the Borrowdale Volcanic Group, laid down as the debris of Ordovician eruptions and later compressed so that it splits along a cleavage. That origin is what gives it the green colour it is prized for, and why the trade calls the workable bands veins rather than beds. The veins run from Honister Crag across the high hause to Yew Crag, so the two sides of the pass work one deposit from opposite faces.

Geological setting: Slate and Regional Metamorphism (well documented example)

Workings

Both open quarry faces and underground closeheads — chambers driven into the crag. The 1930 return records the working without giving a workforce. Access and haulage are the striking part: hand-sledges down the fell for over a century, and after 1892 a system of road, tramway, aerial ropeway and inclines inside the mountain centred on the Hause, including a counterbalanced tramway climbing the Yew Crag side. Old mine tracks still climb from the valley towards the quarries.

Closure

Production continued into the 1950s and 1960s, but the Yew Crag workings closed in that period because of difficult roof conditions — the ordinary reason an underground slate working stops, and one that has nothing to do with the market. The closeheads were abandoned in 1963.

What remains

Decaying, and walked. The old mine tracks approaching the Yew Crag quarries climb from the head of the pass opposite the Honister mine buildings, and were followed and photographed in February 2023 to a high point of about 1,425 feet beside workings the map marks as disused levels. A 2011 party reached the workings from above, finding the direct line up incredibly steep across loose slate, and came down past the slate heaps to the old mine buildings, with mine entrances open on the upper level. The site is of real interest for industrial archaeology — the gravity inclines, the ropeways and the monumental architecture of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century slate quarrying.

Old mine tracks and inclines climbing the fellside, the line of the counterbalanced tramway, slate heaps, old mine buildings, and open mine entrances on the upper level.

Related mines

• Dubs Quarry — Both were served by the self-acting inclines the owners installed in 1879, and both were worked by the Buttermere Green Slate Company as parts of the same undertaking.
• Honister Slate Mine — Two faces of one deposit: the green slate veins cross the high hause between Buttermere and Borrowdale from Honister Crag to Yew Crag opposite, and slate was brought down from the workings on both crags to the road by hand-sledge for over a century before the Hause became the centre of operations after 1892.
• Quay Foot Quarry — Two of the six workings the Buttermere Green Slate Quarries returned in 1930, both getting the same Borrowdale green slate from the same set of veins — Quay Foot with three people on the road below the Bowder Stone, Yew Craggs on the fell above Honister Pass. Quay Foot had gone from the company's list by 1935; Yew Craggs outlasted every other mine it held.

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 Yew Craggs at Honister Pass near Keswick under the Buttermere Green Slate Quarries Ltd. of Station Buildings, Keswick, with Com. Hoare as agent, working slate. ¹
• Old mine tracks climb from the head of Honister Pass towards the Yew Crag quarries, reaching about 1,425 ft beside workings marked on the map as disused levels. ²
• The Yew Crag mine workings are reached across loose slate that is incredibly steep on the direct line; mine entrances stand open on the upper level, and slate heaps and old mine buildings survive below them. ³
• The Buttermere Green Slate Quarries Ltd. returned Yew Craggs without separate employment figures in 1930 and 1935, its people being included in Honister's; by 1950 Honister is recorded as discontinued in December 1947 and Yew Craggs is the company's only working mine, with 8 employed underground and 15 at surface. ⁴
• Roofing slate was extracted by explosives to give clogs, large lumps of slate, which were docked to reduce them in size — once by chisel and mallet, later by diamond saw — then riven, split down the grain by chisel, and the resulting thin pieces dressed to size; the slate was once transported down the mountainside by sled, with one man running before it controlling the load. ⁵

Photographs & further reading

Sources

1. (primary) 1930 List of Mines under the Metalliferous Mines Act: Cumberland — Durham Mining Museum
2. (observational) Honister — the Yew Crag side (walk report, February 2023) — Loweswatercam
3. (observational) Yew Crag Mine, Dale Head and Hindscarth (walk report, August 2011) — Walking the Cumbrian Mountains
4. (primary) Buttermere Green Slate Quarries Ltd. — Durham Mining Museum
5. (secondary) Mining and Quarrying in Borrowdale — The Borrowdale Story

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