Burlington Slate Quarries.html |
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Burlington Slate Quarries are located near Kirkby in Furness in SW Cumbria,England. They have produced a characteristic blue grey slate for hundreds of years with large scale production starting in the early 1800s when the Cavendish family organised small scale quarrying activities by local farmers into a larger group of quarries which then attracted others into the area to live and work in the quarries from the 1820s onwards.
In 1840, Kirkby consisted of eight hamlets which had existed for two hundred years or more. These were;
Beckside
Soutergate
Chapples
Headcragg with Wallend
Friars' Ground with Bolton Ground
Beanthwaite
Grizebeck
A further hamlet was added in 1845 when the Burlington Slate Quarries built the 10 houses of Longrow with 4 houses opposite them. Many of these hamlets being dominated by the men of Burlington Slate Quarries and their families.
The quarry today
The quarry is not worked on a galleries system 'as many quarries are, but as an enormous pit several hundred feet in depth. The quarry operations have spread throughout and under Kirkby Moor, but now production only takes place at the very bottom of the quarry; with the rock being removed via a cutting from a shallower part of the pit.
- Various roads link the bottom of the pit quarry, which itself has a very smooth surface due to the diamond-wire sawing method, typical of all of Burlington Slate's Quarries. Pumping is also essential, as the quarry workings have now descended below the deepest drainage level. The water from the workings appears to be transported by a pipeline, running through one of many tunnels. There is also a shaft marked in what was the Hunter's Quarry, though there appears to be no mention of this in earlier records.
Inclines
Typical of many Welsh slate quarries such as Dinorwig, Penrhyn and Rhiw-Bach: Burlington adopted the use of inclined railways, to provide material transport from the quarries. The lowest of the series was the Sandside, or long Incline - which connected Burlington with the port and mainline railway at Sandside on the Duddon coast.