I woke that morning to find the sunshine and blue sky were back; I'd briefly heard it raining during the night but it obviously hadn't amounted to much and it looked like another lovely day was on the cards. The main part of my day out this time was a visit to Ravenglass down the coast but first I was stopping off on the outskirts of Egremont for a bit of photography round Florence Mine, a derelict iron ore mine featured in my '111 Places' book.
The mine came into being in 1914 when that part of West Cumbria was rich with seams of hematite, and the iron ore pigment, which was a deep red colour, was used in the manufacture of paints, dyes and cosmetics. The mine produced a never-ending supply of pigment until it closed down in 1968 but it was reprieved when the newly nationalised British Steel Corporation bought the place, pumped water from the flooded tunnels and started reblasting the iron ore.
The second closure came in 1980 when British Steel carried out a severe cost cutting exercise and dropped Florence Mine from its holdings; this time it was saved by the miners themselves who used their redundancy money to purchase the place, and in a deal with British Nuclear Fuels Ltd who owned and operated the Sellafield nuclear plant just down the coast they kept the mine going. BNFL pumped the water out of the mine to use in their own cooling systems and the miners continued to provide pigment to the paint, dye and cosmetics industries, also operating a heritage centre and conducting tours of the pit and underground workings.
After just over 90 years in existence Florence Mine finally closed its shafts when Sellafield no longer needed water to be pumped from its workings. This led to flooding and collapse of the tunnels and in 2007 the last miner left; at the time of its final closure Florence was the last working iron ore mine in Europe. Today the disused mine is scattered with reminders of its past including abandoned machinery, rusting minecarts and the towering pithead, but it also provides a backdrop for a thriving arts centre with an art gallery, workshop space, and a venue for live music, theatre and comedy. Tradition lives on too in the form of the Florence Paintmakers who still use the surface ore to create handmade watercolours, oil paints and pastels; their products can be bought on site or from many artists' shops locally and nationally - the unique colour is called Egremont Red.
The arts centre is housed in a long single storey building but I didn't go in, preferring instead to spend some time wandering around the old mine itself. I would have loved to go inside some of the old buildings but they were obviously inaccessible so I had to be content with photos taken on the outside. Driving back into Egremont I found a place to park in the shade of an overhanging tree in the grounds of a church and nipped to the nearest shop for a cold can and a snack which I demolished in the van before setting out for Ravenglass.
Now there was only one reason why I was going to Ravenglass - to prove to myself that there's nothing there! Back in 2011 I'd gone there as part of an Easter weekend's camping in Eskdale; I'd never been before so didn't know what to expect but I really thought there would be more than there was. Although it was in a nice location and was an attractive little village it was also a very boring little place and once I'd walked round and seen it I had no reason to ever go back again. However, eight years on I decided I would go back just to see if anything had changed - and the answer was no, it hadn't, there's still nothing there.
Knowing that I wouldn't be there for long I was reluctant to pay a stupid fee for the car park so I managed to find a space along the sea front where I could park for free and off we went. Along the 'main street', a quick foray onto the beach at the end, a quick look round by the station and a walk across the footbridge to the far side of the estuary and that was it - I'd seen the place in less than an hour.
With just one small shop-cum-post office, which was closed, a pub, a hotel, a café at the station and a couple of B&Bs the village had very little to offer in the way of amenities but I have to admit the location right on the estuary of the Rivers Esk and Mite is the best thing about it. There may be nothing there but I'm glad I went as the views are stunning and certainly make for some good photos.
Another lovely morning arrived and with it the thought that before I could go anywhere I would have to sort the van out. The brake lights had finally gone out during the night and the battery was, as I suspected it would be, flat, dead, defunct, non-operational. I would have to call out the AA but before I could do that I needed to know the postcode of the site so I went up to the farm to ask someone what it was and spoke to a lovely young man called Jonathan who asked me what the problem was. When I explained about the brake lights he told me to give him half an hour to finish what he was doing then he would come down and have a look at the van for me - and true to his word he did. With a set of jump leads he started the van with his 4x4 then identified the brake light problem - a stuck-on switch - so with his head half under the dashboard and a fair amount of 'on-off-on-off' shouting from me at the back of the van he sorted out the problem in just a few minutes. His help was very unexpected but also very welcome and it certainly saved me the hassle of calling out the AA and being stuck on site until they arrived.
With the van sorted I was free to go out for the day; my quest this time was to get to St. Bees lighthouse by road, something I hadn't known I could do when I was there at Easter, but first was a return visit to the Priory Church. Since Easter I'd found some information about various aspects of the church so wanted to check these things out. First was the Sleeping Child Garden, a tranquil place where those who had lost a young life could find peace and comfort; designed by internationally renowned sculptor Josefina de Vasconcellos the development of it began in 2006 shortly before her death. A path made up of old broken gravestones led me through the main cemetery but there was no sign of the Sleeping Child Garden so I gave up momentarily and went into the church.
The organ in the Priory is justifiably famous as a masterpiece of Victorian organ building. Completed in 1899 it was the last major organ to be built under the personal supervision of master organ builder 'Father' Henry Willis who had rebuilt more than half the cathedral organs in England, and although it isn't noticeable just by looking at the front it apparently has nearly 2,000 pipes.
On a raised wooden 'deck' in a corner of the church were three stone effigies discovered during archaeological excavations of a ruined part of the church site in 1981. The effigy on the left is thought to be that of Anthony de Lucy, otherwise known as 'St. Bees Man' whose well-preserved body was discovered during the excavations; the centre effigy is dated to about 1320 and is thought to be the wife of Robert of Harrington, Agnes, who died in 1293, while the effigy on the right may be that of Robert of Harrington himself, known to have been buried at St. Bees in 1298. Although the middle effigy was obviously that of a woman the other two didn't really look much like anything other than lumps of stone and to be honest I felt rather underwhelmed by them. At least I managed to photograph some stained glass windows which I hadn't noticed on my previous visit.
Back outside I had another search for the Sleeping Child Garden and eventually found it round the opposite side of the building to the main cemetery but again I was rather underwhelmed. I'd imagined it to be a very pretty garden, open and full of bright flowers but it was surrounded by shrubbery, much of it overgrown, and of the three sculptures gifted by Josefina de Vasconcellos I could only find one of them; the small figurine I saw under the bushes must have been left by someone local.
From the church I followed my own previously plotted directions along and round various country lanes until I came to a small parking area at the side of a farm building; that was as far as I could go as the rest of the lane was private. It was about a quarter of a mile walk from there to the lighthouse and when I got there I suffered another disappointment; the single storey building next to it was obviously a private house and there was a high stone wall round the whole lot, meaning I couldn't get an uninterrupted view of the lighthouse itself. I was glad I'd driven there as I would have been seriously miffed if I'd walked the three miles from the village along the cliff top only to find I couldn't get a proper view of it!
A short way down the path was the lookout tower built right on the edge of the cliff and with a couple of shots of that, and some cows in the nearby field, I gave up and made my way back to the van. The sun had disappeared while I'd been in the church and some really dark clouds had arrived over the sea so I was just hoping I would get there before the heavens decided to open.
I'd originally planned to go back into St. Bees and have a wander round the village but with the sky looking decidedly dodgy there was no point going anywhere else so I cut my losses and headed back to the camp site. It was almost as cloudy when I got back there so the rest of the afternoon and evening were spent reading and watching one of the dvds I'd brought with me and hoping that the sunny weather would return the following day.
