Lake District – Cathedral Quarry Walk (Part Two)

Tuesday’s walk was relatively easy and the highlight of it was visiting the Cathedral Quarry site. I asked everyone who had one to bring a head torch, although I then promptly managed to forget my own….

Steve at the entrance to the caves.

The group getting ready to enter the cave. Sarah was particularly excited to use her new head-torch which she had purchased the day before. Maggie had also diligently purchased some new batteries for her head-torch, although it didn’t work anyway. I just entirely forgot mine.

The main chamber of the cave.

Inside the cave.

Some of us decided that this looked a bit slippery, so we didn’t climb up. Gordon and I just didn’t want to injure ourselves, Maggie was tempted and Dave was desperate to go, but he was concerned he might further damage his paper cut. However, the two Steves and Sarah had no fear and they set off, ready to enter a world of the unknown. Well, not quite, but it sounds exciting.

Looking up at Steve, Steve and Sarah (they’re in the middle of the photo, not particularly easy to see).

We were going to walk down into the cave system to meet the others, but it looked a little wet and slippery to me. And since I had done it before, and I’m very risk averse, I decided to have a little lunch instead. So we had a little wait whilst the three brave souls explored what there was to see.

One of the former quarry buildings at the top, this was once the blacksmith’s workshop. There is also a nearby row of 17 houses built at the end of the nineteenth century, where workers at the quarry lived, and a school was also built here to educate their children.

The entire site had been a stone quarry for some time (since at least the sixteenth century), and was especially busy in the nineteenth century when there was an increased demand for building materials. It remained in use until the 1950s and was purchased by Beatrix Potter in 1929, who later gifted it to the National Trust.