I looked at the map and wondered where the real Kentmere was, the “mere,” or water, of the River Kent. There is the reservoir, high in the dale, and there is Kentmere Tarn, a long, tranquil pool screened by trees, looking for all the world like untouched nature.
In truth, nature had its turn ten thousand years ago, when a glacier gouged out the valley and left behind a deep hollow. Meltwater filled it, and the River Kent obligingly dropped its silt upstream. The result was a clear tarn, ideal for swarms of microscopic creatures. Their remains—sixty million to the cubic inch—settled into a thick layer of diatomite, a whitish clay that would one day prove more interesting to industry than to wildlife.
The 1830s landowners drained the tarn in the hope of creating fertile farmland. They got a sour, marshy waste. Hence no tarn is shown on the 1863 map. A second attempt in the 1870s failed for the same reason: that impervious clay underfoot.
By the end of the nineteenth century, diatomite had become useful for making things ranging from TNT to toothpaste, though its real money lay in filtration and insulation. In 1929, with lead mining gone and slate in retreat, Kentmere entered the clay trade.
The lake bed was torn open by drag-line and dredger, its cargo hauled away on an overhead ropeway, drained, fired, ground and packed. By the late 1940s, ten thousand tonnes a year were leaving the dale and forty men were on the payroll. “Kencert Ltd.” started it, but Cape Asbestos soon took over. The works still appeared on the 1956 map, but in 1985 foreign suppliers and synthetic alternatives finished them off.
A research centre followed on the old site, but the abandoned workings filled with water, creating a new Kentmere Tarn. This one owed its shape not to glaciers but to industrial machinery. Today, Hollingsworth & Vose preside over the site, styling themselves “a global leader in filtration and energy solutions,” which is about as clear as the tarn wasn’t.
Source
A Lakeland Valley Through Time. Edited by Joe Scott. Page 45. Staveley and District History Society. 1995.
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