Celebrating slate mine craftsmanship

A Lake District business has launched a new website to celebrate the craftsmanship of its hard-working slate miners and factory workers.

Honister Slate Mine is England’s last working slate mine but in recent years has become more well known for its tourism experience than the vast range of unique slate products its workers hand-make onsite.

But now the family-run business has launched www.honistergreenslate.com to showcase its skills as well as promoting the beauty of real Lake District slate which is over 450 million years old.

The new website was made possible through a grant from the Manufacturing Advisory Service to help small and medium-sized companies modernise their website and promote declining industries.

The famous Buttermere and Westmorland Green slate mined at Honister is over 450 million years old and mined from 11 miles of underground tunnels inside 2,126ft Fleetwith Pike. The mine itself opened in 1643 but there has been slate mining at the site since Roman Times and it was once run by the Monks of Furness Abbey.

Much of the slate sold in Britain and even some parts of the Lake District is now imported from China and India at a huge cost to the environment. However, Honister Green Slate is revered nationwide for its green colour, density, longevity and low carbon footprint.

Factory workers at Honister make everything from kitchen and dining products like slate platters, table mats, cheeseboards, dining sets, clocks, wine racks and candle holders. Also popular are its range of house signs and house numbers which appear on many homes, hotels and businesses.

The factory also makes a highly-prized slate flooring, fire hearths, kitchen worktops and a highly-unique range of hand-made headstones and memorials.

The great inventor of the Bouncing Bomb, Sir Barnes Wallis, had his headstone made of Honister Green Slate as did the Godfather of British Rainfall, George James Symons, who is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, London.

Honister Green Slate is used as a popular walling stone and in gardens – having won awards at the Chelsea Flower Show, the Royal Horticultural Show at Tatton, Cheshire, and The Holker Garden Festival.

Honister produces famous roofing slate which appears on famous buildings such as Buckingham Palace, St James’s Palace, and New Scotland Yard in London.

Jan Wilkinson, of Honister Slate Mine, said: “The slate miners at Honister do an incredibly hard job all year round and we wanted to profile their work as well as showing everyone the beauty of real Lake District slate. We are proud to be caretakers of this industry here and to be manufacturing a British product which has been mined at Honister for centuries.”

Honister’s popular tourism website – Honister.com – will continue to run side-by-side the new one offering information about trying Honister’s mine tours, Via Ferrata, café and shop.

Visit www.honistergreenslate.com