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Borrowdale in Cumberland County England History and GeographyBORROWDALE, a chapelry in that part of the parish of CROSTHWAITE which is in ALLERDALE ward above Darwent, county of CUMBERLAND, 7 miles (S. by W.) from Keswick, containing 346 inhabitants. The living is a perpetual curacy, in the archdeaconry and diocese of Carlisle, endowed with £200 private benefaction, and £600 royal bounty, and in the patronage of the Vicar of Crosth waite. The chapel has lately been rebuilt. There are meeting-houses for Dissenters at Grange and Rosth waite, hamlets in this chapelry. Near Seathwaite, another hamlet, is the cclebrated plumbago, wad, or black lead mine, in the side of a steep mountain, formed by a rock of grey felspar porphyry. Owing to the abundant produce, and the facility of obtaining it, the mine was formerly opened only once in five years, and that but for a short space of time; of late, however, it has been less productive, and the demand has greatly increased, so that about eight miners have been constantly engaged for several successive years in working it. The lead is found lying in lumps, or nodules, varying in weight from an ounce to fifty pounds, in the clefts of the rock. The finer sort is packed in barrels, sent to London. and deposited in the warehouse belonging to the proprietors of the mine, where it is exposed for sale to the pencil-makers on the first Monday in every month: that of an inferior description is chiefly used in the composition of crucibles, in giving a black polish to articlcs of cast-iron, and in various anti-attrition compositions. To protect the interests of the proprietors, an act was passed in 1752, whereby persons stealing, or receiving this article, knowing it to be stolen, are subjected to the same punishment as felons. A house has been built over the entrance, where the workmen undress, and are examined every time they leave the mine. Black lead is found in various parts of the world, but in none to so great an extent, and of the same degree of purity, as in this: an inferior kind has been discovered in the shires of Ayr and Inverness, in Scotland, but it is unfit for pencils. Here are also several quarries of blue slate: a copper mine was formerly worked; and lead-ore exists to a limited extent in the mountain. A soft, palish substance, commonly called Borrowdale soap, is found, which having undergone a chemical process, similar to that by which the black lead is hardened, is used for slate pencils. The romantic scenery of the district has elicited deserved eulogy from the pens of numerous tourists. Bowder stone, which has often formed a subject both for the pencil and the pen, is esteemed the largest detached piece of rock entitled to the denomination of a single stone in England; it is sixty-two feet in length, and eighty-four in circumference, containing about twenty-three thousand and ninety feet of solid stone, and weighing upwards of one thousand seven hundred and seventy-one tons: the upper part projects considerably over the small base on which it rests, and it is not unusual for parties of pleasure to regale under it. On the summit of Castle Crag, a conical hill covered with wood, are vestiges of a military work. Near a lake, at the lower extremity of the dale, there is a salt-spring, the water of which is of a quality somewhat similar to that at Cheltenham. A fair for sheep is held on the first Wednesday in September. From Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of England 1831, courtesy of Databases 4 Sale |
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