Coniston Railway

The Romans were mining copper ore in the Coniston area 2000 years ago, and there is evidence that copper was being extracted from the area as long ago as the Bronze Age. Green slate has also been quarried in the area for at least 500 years and there has been a tourist industry for some 200 years. By the middle of the 19th century the copper mines and the slate quarries at Coniston were flourishing, the mines employing 400 men and the quarries were producing an average of 2,000 tons of slate a month. Around this time the Coniston mines were the largest copper mines in the north of England.

Before the railway was built, materials had to be transported in horse-drawn carts to Coniston Water, by barge on the lake, and then again by cart to Broughton-in-Furness. The public had to travel on a horse-drawn omnibus. In 1848, hoping for an increase in tourism, J. G. Marshall demolished his inn at the head of the lake and replaced it with a "handsome hotel". The Furness Railway had opened their line from Barrow-in-Furness to Kirkby-in-Furness in June 1846 and its extension to Broughton in February 1848. The Whitehaven and Furness Junction Railway opened its line from Whitehaven in 1849 and this reached Broughton in October 1850. Also in 1849 the Furness Railway paid £550 (equivalent to £50,000 in 2025), to improve the road from Ambleside to Broughton (now the A593).