• Alston
• Allonby And Aspatria
• Ambleside And Troutbeck
• Appleby In Westmoreland
• Askam In Furness
• Barrow In Furness
• Bassenthwaite
• Borrowdale
• Bowness On Windermere
• Brough
• Buttermere
• Brampton
• Broughton In Furness
• Carlisle
• Cartmel
• Cleator Moor
• Cockermouth
• Coniston
• Dalston
• Dalton In Furness
• Dent
• Grange Over Sands
• Grasmere
• Greenodd
• Grizedale
• Hawkshead
• Kendal
• Keswick
• Kirkby Lonsdale
• Wasdale And Gosforth
• Kirkby Stephen
• Longtown
• Loweswater
• Maryport
• Melmerby
• Milnthorpe
• Nenthead
• Newby Bridge
• Orton
• Penrith
• Pooley Bridge
• Ravenglass And Eskdale
• Sedbergh
• Seascale
• Shap
• Silloth And Solway
• St Bees
• Skiddaw
• Staveley
• Tebay
• The Duddon Valley
• Threlkeld
• Ulverston
• Vale Of Lorton
• Wasdale
• Wetheral
• Whitehaven
• Wigton
• Windermere
• Workington
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The people of the Lake District

From the ashes of the monastic period emerged a class of hardy, independent farmers, the 'statesmen', who were to be romanticized by Wordsworth. These self-reliant folk tended cattle and Hardwick sheep. They tilled the limited amount of level ground and grew a moderate amount of grain and roots. As economic conditions improved, the statesmen replaced their buildings of wattle-and-daub with attractive stone farmsteads, using local stone and slate.

Halfway through the sixteenth century, industrialization on a grand scale began with the appearance of experienced miners from Bavaria in I 564.The Company of the Mines Royal was empowered to 'search, dig, try, roast and melt all manner of mines and ores of gold, silver, copper and quick silver'. The copper was needed initially for encasing the keels of ships operated by the Royal Navy. There being no local miners skilled in following the mineral veins in days when explosives for mining were unknown and excavation was by hammer and chisel, Queen Elizabeth recruited overseas.
 
A dozen workmen, along with Daniel Hochstetler and Hans Loner, made their base in Keswick and workable deposits were found in the Newlands Valley, in Borrowdale, at Caldbeck and St John's in the Vale. The Crown took ten per cent of the income from gold and silver. The new industry, which in its heyday employed up to 200 foreign workers and produced up to fifteen hundredweight (760kg) of copper a day, made heavy demands for fuel from local woods, except those of Lady Katherine Radcliffe, who steadfastly refused permission for them to be used, leading to representations to the queen herself. The mining company bought Daren't Isle and settled the Bavarian miners upon it. The conditions under which they worked would be considered intolerable today. A miner hacked his way through rock, creating a passage little wider then himself a passage that in places was so constricted he could scarcely turn over.

The copper was transported by packhorse to the western shoreline of Derwentwater, thence by boat across to Keswick, where a smelter was operated at Brigham (on a site now spanned by the modern flyover). In 1671, Sir Daniel Fleming recalled when the smelting houses were within memory 'so numerous as they looked like a little Towne yet now there is not one house standing'. (The lead and copper mining industry had been ruined by the Civil War but was later resumed and continued well into the nineteenth century, when it could not match the cost of cheaper ores being imported from overseas countries, notably Spain.)

Another industry that blossomed was based on the discovery of graphite near Seathwaite, at the head of Borrowdale. Also known as plumb ago and wad, the graphite was first used for marking sheep or for curing a variety of human ailments. Pound for pound, graphite was more valuable than minerals such as copper or lead, so entrances to the levels were under guard and packhorse trains travelling to London had an armed escort. Pilfering of the graphite became so commonplace that an act of Parliament in 1752 decreed it was a crime 'to break into any mine or wadhole of wad or black cawke or to steal from thence'.

Mining was spasmodic, producing just enough graphite to meet industrial demands for a year or two. The jackpot was hit in 1803 when a mass of graphite, weighing over thirty tons and valued at over £100,000, was encountered. Graphite became the core product of the Keswick pencil making industry. When local deposits were exhausted, graphite and other materials needed for making pencils were imported.The vast slate deposits were the next to be exploited. Early in the eighteenth century, slate of an attractive green shade was taken from the tuff beds of the Borrowdale Volcanic rocks in Gatesgarthdale and on the 'house' or mountain pass at Hoister.

Tunneling for the best slate led to the creation of vast underground chambers. Hewn slate was brought down the fell side on special sleds, ridden by skilful drivers, who then had the unenviable task of taking them back to the workings. By late Victorian times, the sled transport had been superseded by tramways and aerial ropeways by which slate was taken to the sheds, where it was rive and trimmed, to be much used for roofing. (In 1878, another vast quarry was opened out at Thrilled.)

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