Coniston

Coniston is a popular Lakeland destination; a small town of local green-grey slate buildings flanked by the magnificent Old Man of Coniston to the north west and the gentle Coniston Water to the south east. The town grew from the mineral wealth of copper, the miners establishing the town and being joined later by the slate-quarriers. The surrounding fells were mined heavily in the 18th and 19th centuries, and there remains much evidence of this past industry, particularly in the aptly-named Coppermines Valley. By the late 19th century, however, the mining industry began to decline, and the railway which had been built in 1859 to remove copper and slate from the town began, instead, to bring tourists.

The compact centre of Coniston offers quaint shops and fine pubs, such as the whitewashed 16th century Black Bull, which was frequented by Samuel Coleridge and Thomas De Quincey. The village is also accurately and beautifully portrayed in the 1982 animated classic film The Plague Dogs.

Coniston is an ideal base for fell-walking, yet the town also has much to offer those visitors who wish to sample the less strenuous charms of Lakeland; John Ruskin, one of the greatest figures of the Victorian era, is buried in the churchyard, while his former home of Brantwood, located across Coniston Water, is open to the public. Coniston also has a memorial to Donald Campbell, who lost his life while attempting to regain his world water speed record on the nearby lake.