Carrock Tungsten Mine

A return visit to the ruins of the Carrock Tungsten Mine at the head of Mosedale in the Northern Fells. Last year’s photo is here, almost a year to the day since my last visit. The circular bin is a bouse team where the ore was stored. These remains in the foreground operated between 1906 to 1917. For the first half of this period the mine was managed by two Germans, William Boss and Frederick Boehm who were replaced when the relationship with Germany deteriorated prior to World War One. Tungsten was a critical ingredient in the manufacture of munitions. During the early part of the war, memories of the German bosses were still fresh in the miners’ minds. A geologist from the Geological Society was captured by locals and ‘roughed up a bit’, locked up in the local school house, and his equipment and notes confiscated. Only then were the police informed that they had captured a ‘German spy’ who turned out to be nothing of the sort.

In the distance the plateau on the other side of Grainsgill Beck is the site of the 1970s mining operations.