HUDDLING inside the ruin of a quarrymen’s shelter high on Kentmere Pike as mist creeps in from the north-west bringing that prickly mizzle that soaks everything – it’s not a good day. I glance at the slate slabs in the wall in a vaguely-interested sort of way and suddenly think: someone’s son built that.
Someone’s father blasted the slate from the quarry; someone’s brother knocked it into manageable lumps with a tully and wedges; someone’s uncle split the lumps into slates with a riving hammer; someone’s nephew dressed them ready to be nailed on a roof; and at the end of the day, after they’d sent their produce down the fell on a packhorse, they gathered the waste and built this shelter. That would be about 150 years ago. It might have been further into the past; it might have been more recently. But they built it. And for the rest of their working lives they sat inside it to take their bait or shelter from the winter blizzards . . . Continue reading
