Friday June 21st 2019 - Florence Mine and Ravenglass

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.