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Mining

Copper was scarce in the area and therefore highly prized. Copper ore was mined in Elizabethan times near Jenny Brown’s Point, and a little later near Storth. Between 1800 and 1830 copper was mined at Crag Foot by Cornish miners. The ore was smelted at Jenny Brown’s Point in the smelt mill built at the end of the 18th century, using engines transported from North Wales.

The Higher and Lower Warton Mines at Crag Foot enjoyed a further lease of life between 1836 and 1840 when haematite was mined for reddle, a very powerful red dye used in the manufacture of paint and for colouring doorway threshold stones. The ore was floated, dried, crushed and screened, then roasted to give different colours. Leighton furnace was built in 1713 and operated into the 1800s.

Coppicing

Until around 1914 most of the woodland in this area was managed on the coppice-with-standards system, in which the standard trees, particularly oak, were allowed to grow normally, while the surrounding underwood, usually of hazel, was cut regularly. The felled tree stumps produced a growth of straight, slender poles of varying thickness which was then harvested for a wide range of uses including charcoal manufacture. The coppiced wood was also used for the flourishing bobbin industry of South Westmorland. The term coppice, or copse, derives from the French word couper – to cut. During the First World War many of the standards were cut down and coppicing went into decline.