CONISTON and Tilberthwaite today are regarded as off the beaten track and places where visitors go to get away from it all.

But in the mid-19th century they were hives of industrial activity, where about 600 people were employed in copper mining.

The men worked at Coniston Copper Mines and Penny Rigg at Tilberthwaite in the shadow of Coniston Old Man.

Although it’s been decades since commercial mining ended, the landscape is still dotted with old mine workings, mill buildings where the ore was crushed, wheel pits, processing areas where ore and waste stone were separated and spoil heaps, which tell the story of an industry that dates back to the 16th century and was supported by Elizabeth I.

That history has been at risk but a two-year project to conserve it and to make it more widely known is now more than halfway through and has already been declared a success.

The project, which will end next March, has two parts - to conserve the old mine workings and preserve them for the next 50 to 100 years, and to provide information for local people, schools and visitors.

The project, which has been funded by a £455,000 Heritage Lottery Fund grant, was partly prompted because the Coniston Copper Mines site, which is a Scheduled Monument but which has been slowly deteriorating and is currently on the at-risk register.

The hope is that once the project is complete, it can be removed from the register.

Mining in the area began centuries ago and Elizabeth I was responsible for bringing over miners from the Tyrol in Austria who had the skills to work in the industry.

Some went to work in Keswick and others came to the Coniston area. A journal entry, made by a curate called Robert Dowson, records how he was brought to look at new mines at Tilberthwaite in 1617 by someone called Towsie, whose father had been one of the original Tyrollean miners.

Dowson watched miners carry out a technique called fire setting, which was a pre-gunpowder technique used to help them extract the copper ore.

Lake District National Park archaeologist Eleanor Kingston said the project would ensure the story of the area’s industrial past was preserved.

“The Copper Mines are a really important part of Cumbria’s history.

They’ve been here for over 400 years; they’re integral to the way the valley and Coniston village itself developed in terms of buildings and housing for miners.

“I think it’s something to be celebrated and to keep so that people are reminded of the heritage that’s on their doorstep.

“It’s important as well because Coniston itself, just in terms of mining history, is one of the important places in the north west.

"It’s one of the earliest starting places of industrialisation in that Elizabethan period. We always talk about Manchester and Liverpool but the mining and quarrying that were going on here were really important.”

Experts from a company called Heritage Consolidation Ltd are carrying out work to conserve the mine workings, taking down and rebuilding structures where necessary.

Meanwhile 87 volunteers have been involved in survey work to measure and make drawings of the sites and in research and pulling information together.

Volunteer Bob Mayhow travelled from his home in St Bees to take part, helping to produce detailed site surveys.

He said it was an evocative area where it was easy to imagine the harsh conditions and hardships that the men endured: “These people didn’t have Gore-Tex and Pertex, they had woollen clothing, maybe leather and they didn’t have safety equipment.”

Interpretation panels will be put up at key places and project work has been carried out with local schools.

Project partners are the Lake District National Park, the land owners, the Ruskin Museum in Coniston, Cumbria Amenity Trust Mining History Society, YHA Coniston and Grizedale Arts.

CATMHS chairman Warren Allison said that at its peak, not only did the area support about 600 miners but there were many other people involved in ancillary industries, such as gunpowder manufacture, which in turn required coppicing.

“If you think of Coniston and the Lake District, everybody thinks they’re out of the way and we’re isolated but we’re not. The Lake District really is an industrial landscape - it’s not a natural landscape, it’s been fashioned by man.

“People were coming in from all over the county to work there. It wasn’t just people from Cumbria, they were coming in from Ireland as well. You’ve got a huge influx of people coming in, in a very short period of time. In the 1850s it was one of the biggest copper mines in the country.”

He said the work in local schools was particularly important because the resources were on the doorstep but often unknown: “Most people would walk through those places and not realise what they’re walking on. The Lake District was a huge mining area.”