MOSS RIGG QUARRY: A QUIET RECLAIMATION.

Forty years ago Moss Rigg Quarry fell silent, and nature quietly and unobtrusively began her work. Things here are still raw, with the ring of loose slate loud underfoot, but those decades have seen the pioneers, the silver birch, emerge in quiet legions from the slate clitter of the working floors, followed by larch and grey willow, while a crab apple blossoms in the shelter of the last remaining building. Close to the ground patches of the bitter wood sage and dove’s foot cranesbill appear with the crimson stemmed herb robert and wild strawberry snaking through the chippings. Cushions of moss fur the low walls sheltering spidery maidenhair spleenwort. Reclamation is indeed in full swing.

Moss Rigg Quarry lies above the popular track from Tilberthwaite to Little Langdale and yet from all sides it is hidden amongst a woodland of sessile oak, holly and hazel, and becoming more hidden by the year. The quarry was first worked in the 17th century, producing the highly prized Westmorland green slate. There are only a few places in the Lake District where you can find slates of just this lovely lambent sea green, Honister, Broughton Moor, Elterwater and Hodge Close on the opposite side of the valley. Since the entrance tunnel collapsed some forty years ago it now forms a largely hidden world with the sheer rock faces rising to nearly 100m and the floor colonised by arrow straight larches, turning from antique gold to the first liquid green of spring.

Quarrying for slate is one of Cumbria’s oldest traditional occupations, with a resident of Bridge End, Little Langdale being referred to as ‘slater’ as early as 1579. As other rural industries were already in decline before the beginning of the nineteenth century, slate production was on the rise to the extent that the last decade of the 19th century saw one in two of all the employed labour in Little Langdale working in the industry. In 1881, Jane Hodgson, living at High Bield, had five sons aged between 16 and 22 all working as slate rivers or dressers.

In July 1902 the Millom Gazette reported on the blasting of 40,000 tons of rock ‘which overhang the chasm at the top of the peak known as Mossrigg’ by the Tilberthwaite Green Slate Company,

‘For this purpose the rock was mined in 21 places, and the blast holes were filled to a depth of 13ft or 14ft. with explosives. Five cwt of gelatine were used. The whole was connected by an electric fuse. The charges were fired by Miss Jeffreys, the daughter of the principal owner of the mines. The noise of the explosion is compared to the sound proceeding from the discharge of 1000 guns. The rock moved forward in a body and toppled over into the depth below. The gully was filled with a dense volume of smoke, and it was impossible to see a rock in the abyss, but the surface from which it was discharged was left as smooth as if planed. The party which witnessed the explosion, numbering about 10 persons were entertained to luncheon, and a silver casket was presented to Miss Jeffreys as a memento of the occasion.

This early 20th century flurry of activity came to an end with the First World War, reducing not only demand but also the skilled workforce. Less than 15 years after the ‘great blast’ of 1902 the Buttermere Green Slate Company, who had taken over as the owners of Moss Rigg decided to close it down, along with several others in the area. Bennett Johns quarry agent at Langdale, stated that ‘no business in the kingdom has been hit so badly as slate quarrying’. The announcement of closure, which was read to the men stated, ‘Owing to conditions caused by the war the building trade is practically dead, and the result is a large accumulation of slate, which is not likely to be required for an indefinite period. Therefore, the Company, with regret, have temporarily to cease raising slate.’ The hope was expressed that the day of reopening may not be far distant. Herbert Thompson, himself the son of a Langdale quarryman, started his own working life at Sty Rigg, Tilberthwaite in the early 1930 and recalled that despite the depression ‘there was always somebody buying slate’. However, for Moss Rigg it took over 30 years and another war.

 When Tilberthwaite quarryman Roly Myers, who had previously worked at Broughton Moor, and his pals George Brownlee and Harold Turnbull of Coniston, returned from the Second World War they resolved to find a place of their own. Two years later in 1948 they took a leap of faith and the lease of the abandoned Moss Rigg, despite being warned against it by local people who claimed it was worked out and unprofitable. They knew their trade and undaunted, established the Lakeland Green Slate and Stone Company.

  What they took over was a crater that had taken more than 400 years to excavate, and a mountain of spoil left by centuries of hewing and blasting. The first few blocks of Westmorland green slate were sold to Mr Newton the monumental mason in Ambleside who sent along his own transport to collect them. In these early days transport had to be hired and the slate had to be cut at Windermere or the old copper mines near Coniston. However in time the new company acquired its own machinery and erected buildings, a quarry managers office, cutting and polishing sheds and laid down more than 300 yards of railway track.

The Second World War had been a watershed for the quarrying industry of the Little Langdale area. A short post-war boom supplying slates for bomb-damaged housing was followed by a fundamental change away from roofing material and towards ‘monumental’ and building stone. By 1961 the Lakeland Green Slate Company at Moss Rigg was employing around forty men producing ‘steps, cills, copings, flooring, slabs, walling stone, crazy paving, memorials’ as well as roofing slate. This however was a short-lived revival and by the 1980s what Harry Griffin described as ‘the age-old craftsmanship of Lakeland reborn’, was no longer even a significant employer in the valley. Roly Myers retired in the 1970s and the quarry was taken over by Burlington who installed local quarryman Jim Birkett as manager. In 1984 Moss Rigg and Spout Crag Quarries closed. Work continued at Hodge Close, High Fellside and Burlington Slate at Elterwater but by now only a handful of men were employed.

Back in 1949 Norman Nicholson, a man who knew much about the legacy of heavy industry, wrote of the scars left by quarrying in the Coniston-Tilberthwaite-Langdale fells. He saw them as honest, true to the nature of the rock and the communities that had worked them for centuries. They introduced nothing alien and were soon mossed over by the seasons. Seventy years on we can see the truth of this. In the older quarries the buildings, always of slate, are quietly settling back into the scree. Water seeps through the empty levels as gorse, rowan, and tangles of briars are closing up the mouths of the shafts and ferns colonise the damp margins. The older quarry heaps have disappeared under the creep of moss. Relentless seasons blunt the edges of the slate.

At Moss Rigg the older buildings, set high above the 20th century dressing floors are disappearing into the oak woodlands. The niches that once housed tools now hold tiny colonies of wood sorrel growing through the leaf litter and in one, we found a wren’s nest, neat as a cupped hand, lined with moss. The cutting and polishing sheds built in the 1950s have gone and the machinery and slate trucks mangled and rusting on the spoil heaps. The roof of Jim Birkett’s office collapsed quite recently, but beside it, still in neat piles are samples of the rived and polished green slate. There is some sadness, some ambivalence in watching this hard green sea recede and with it those industries which helped to maintain ‘a true and diverse economy’. But there is also hope, as nature, unaware of the new orthodoxy of short-term economics, returns and reclaims. A few miles away at Elterwater, one of the last remaining green slate quarries is winding down for closure. If the present owners Burlington Quarries have their way, it will be transformed into what they term ‘a zip wire adventure tourism experience’. Meanwhile back at Moss Rigg we sit in silence to watch jackdaws exploding from the quarry face as a peregrine, razor sharp, cuts the air beneath them and fills the space with raw energy.

First published in ‘Cumbria’ magazine 2023