YOU can find out how the forests of Furness and the Lake District provided our ancestors with fuel, tools and industrial products in a Woodland Crafts and Tales Weekend.

It is being held at Stott Park Bobbin Mill, Finsthwaite, near Newby Bridge, on Saturday and Sunday, June 24 and 25 June.

Among the attractions on offer is a greenwood workshop, hazel hurdle making, swill baskets, bobbin mill tours, walks, talks and storytelling with Taffy Thomas.

There is also the annual Coppice Association North West charcoal earthburn, plus food music and outdoor games.

The earthburn shows how charcoal was produced using traditional skills which stretch back more than 800 years.

Admission to the site is free from 10am to 5pm on both days, charges only apply for tours of the Bobbin Mill.

Stott Park Bobbin Mill is a 19 th century bobbin mill and now a working museum run by English Heritage.

It was built in 1835 and the mill is one of more than 65 such buildings in the Lake District, which provided wooden bobbins to the weaving and spinning industry primarily in Lancashire and Yorkshire.

THE combination of water power and charcoal for furnaces gave the area around Satterthwaite and the Grizedale forest a headstart in the Industrial Revolution.

During the reign of James I, the Sandys and Rawlinson families of Graythwaite and Grizedale acquired local estates.

These estates saw the growth of a new era of rural iron making when bloomery forges were introduced.

They used water power for heavy hammers which could forge blooms or ingots of iron weighing up to 250 pounds. Forges were built at Force Forge, Force Mill and Cunsey.

Force Forge ceased to work as a bloomery forge when the smelting furnaces were established, but was rebuilt in 1713 and used as a refinery forge until 1744, after which it became a ruin.

In 1851 it was noted that Force Forge had two extensive bobbin mills, worked by Henry Walker, and also a corn mill, owned by John Inman.