The Baptist Chapel was built in 1837, the youngest of many chapels
described in a booklet entitled _Old Baptist Meeting-houses in
Furness_, by F. N. Richardson (1904). Tottlebank, the oldest,
was founded in 1669. Sunnybank, in Torver, 1678, and Hawkshead
Hill, founded a few years later, no doubt took the early Baptists
of Coniston; one of whom, William Atkinson of Monk Coniston,
tanner, was fined in 1683 for attending a conventicle. These three
chapels are now open, though Sunnybank and Hawkshead Hill were
closed for some years before 1905. The seventeenth century chapel
at Scroggs, between Broughton and Coniston, was dilapidated in
1842, and is now a cattle shed. The Coniston Chapel ministers
were Mr. Kirkbride, Mr. Myers, and then for twenty-one years from
about 1865 the Rev. George Howells; he was succeeded by Rev.
Arthur Johnson. For nine years before 1904 there was no Baptist
congregation, and the chapel was let to the "Brethren," who built
a place of worship for themselves and opened it 1903. The Baptist
Sunday School had been carried on all the while by Mr. William
Shaw, and on regaining possession of the chapel a congregation was
once more formed with Rev. R. Jardine as pastor.
A Primitive Methodist Chapel was built in 1859, but some years ago
was converted into a Masonic Hall. A Wesleyan Chapel was built in
1875, but there is no settled minister.
The Roman Catholic Chapel was built in 1872 by Miss Aglionby of
Wigton; Prof. Ruskin gave a window to this chapel. It was served
for many years by Father Gibson; on his removal he was succeeded
by Father Laverty, at whose death in 1905 Father Bradshaw was
appointed to the cure.
VIII.--CONISTON INDUSTRIES.
COPPER.
That the copper mines were worked by the Romans and the Saxons
is only a surmise. Dr. A. C. Gibson, F.S.A., writing in 1866,
said:--"Recent operations have from time to time disclosed old
workings which have obviously been made at a very early period,
by the primitive method of lighting great fires upon the veins
containing ore and, when sufficiently heated, pouring cold water
upon the rock, and so, by the sudden abstraction of caloric,
rending, cracking and making a circumscribed portion workable by
the rude implements then in use, specimens of which are still
found occasionally in the very ancient parts of the mines,
especially small quadrangular wedges perforated for the reception
of a handle."
The mines of Cumberland were worked throughout the Middle Ages,
and it is not impossible that these rich veins in the Coniston
Fells were tried for ore; but we have no proof of the local
assertion that they have been worked continuously since the days
of the Romans. On the contrary, there seem to have been only two
periods, of about a century each, during which mining was actively
pushed. In the time of Queen Elizabeth we reach firm ground of
history.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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