Posted by Jock on May 28, 2011 at 12:50:56 user Jock.
In Reply to: Re: Gold in the Hills posted by Tom Napier on May 27, 2011 at 18:44:35:
Since the next stage would probably have been some multinational company strip-mining the Lake District...
The copper veins above Coniston are quite narrow and as they run almost vertically downwards they would not be amenable for strip mining.
The extension of the mines downwards was halted in the last decade of the 19th century and the deepest levels were allowed to flood, extraction of pockets of ore left in the higher levels continued until the turn of the century.
In the 1930s Oscar Gnosspelius – the real life Squashy Hat – employed John Shaw – the original Slater Bob – to dig trial levels and reopen collapsed workings looking for copper ore that the 19th century miners had missed. Presumably he had negotiated and obtained a prospecting and extraction licence from whoever owned the mineral rights.
In the event the prospecting was unsuccessful and afterwards Gnospelius set up Shaw mining slate at Tilberwaite – the location AR uses for the meeting between the Ss, As and Ds with Slater Bob.