The North Pennines and Cumbrian Mining Heritage

 The North Pennines is one of Britain's most important industrial landscapes, recognised by UNESCO as a Global Geopark for its geological and mining heritage. For centuries, the ore veins running through the Pennine dales — rich in lead, silver, zinc, copper, and iron — supported a mining industry that shaped both the physical landscape and the broader history of English material culture. Less well known is the direct connection between North Pennines mining and the production of artists' colours.

The critical link between North Pennines mining and pigment production runs through the chemistry of silver extraction. Many of the lead ores mined in the Pennine dales, particularly in Teesdale and Weardale, contained significant quantities of silver — argentiferous galena, in mineralogical terms. Extracting this silver required smelting and refining processes that generated copper-rich waste solutions, particularly where copper ores were present in the same ore bodies.

When these copper-rich acidic solutions were treated with chalk or limestone — both abundantly available in the Pennine geology — they precipitated basic copper carbonate: verditer. The connection between the silver-refining industry of north-east England and the production of English verditer is documented in historical sources from the 17th century. Sheffield, with its established silver-working trade, was one of the centres for this process, with the copper-rich liquors from its refining operations being treated to yield the characteristic blue-green pigment that distinguished the English verditer tradition from Continental alternatives.

To the west, the Lake District and the Eden Valley offer a different geological inheritance. The red and yellow ochres found in this landscape are products of iron mineralisation: the oxidation and hydration of iron minerals within the local sandstones and shales produces goethite (yellow ochre) and hematite (red ochre), which are among the most stable and permanent colourants known.

The red sandstone soils of the Eden Valley, which surrounds Appleby-in-Westmorland, contain ochre-bearing clays that have been used by local craftspeople for centuries. These are the same soils that give Appleby's historic buildings their distinctive warm colour. At The Colour Makers House, ochres gathered from these local sources are processed using traditional methods — washing, settling, and calcining — to produce pigments that carry the specific quality of this landscape.

Copper mineralisation in the Lake District, concentrated particularly around Coniston and Keswick, produced the malachite and azurite deposits that were themselves used as pigments throughout the medieval period. Malachite, the green copper carbonate, was ground and used directly as a green pigment by medieval painters; azurite, the blue copper carbonate, was the dominant blue in European panel painting from the 12th to the 17th centuries before being displaced by ultramarine and, later, Prussian blue.

The copper mines at Coniston were worked from at least the 16th century, and the mineral-stained streams flowing from these workings display the characteristic blue-green of dissolved copper compounds. These visible traces of the ore-body represent the same chemistry that, in a workshop setting, can be transformed into vivid pigments. This direct connection between the visible landscape and the working palette is central to The Colour Makers House's educational philosophy.

Appleby-in-Westmorland, the ancient county town of Westmorland and now part of Cumbria, sits at the confluence of these geological and historical threads. The town's position between the North Pennines to the east and the Lake District to the west means that within a short driving radius lie Roman mines, medieval lead workings, copper-stained valleys, iron-rich sandstone quarries, and the remains of industries that once supplied artists across Britain and beyond.

The Colour Makers House, established in a Grade II-listed 17th-century building in the centre of Appleby, provides a working base for exploring this heritage. Workshops and retreats combine hands-on pigment-making with visits to the actual geological and industrial sites — Roman iron workings at Vindolanda, Victorian lead mines in Weardale, the copper valleys of Lakeland — creating a learning experience grounded in physical landscape rather than textbook abstraction.