Located at the foot of The Old Man of Coniston, a well known mountain in the Western Lake District, Coniston Stonecraft manufacture handmade ornaments and utensils for home and business using the famous local green slate. And unlike claims made by some of the more commercial outlets in the area, they actually do source all of their slate from the local quarries. The paths around the site are laid with it, the buildings are built with it and the beck running down past the workshop shimmers emerald green with the stuff. It is everywhere.

The masons at Coniston Stonecraft purchase cuts of slate form the quarry which the more commercially minded outlets reject due to the irregularities in the grain. These cuts would usually be for the scrap heap, deemed aesthetically inferior by those in pursuit of uniformity and consistency, and essentially laid to waste. But it is exactly these cuts of slate that Coniston Stonecraft are looking for, and besides how beautiful these pieces of slate are, using these cuts is environmentally friendly and results in less overall waste form the quarry.

Seams of iron compounds, quartz and contrasting sedimentary layers formed over millions of years, give the slate cut at Coniston Stonecraft unique and dramatically different grain patterns, the stone carefully picked by the eyes of 30 plus years of artisan skill and experience, meaning each product made at Coniston Stonecarft has its own one-off beauty.

The workshop plugs into electricity supplied from the church beck hydro plant just 50 yards down the road, and with 4 members of staff, runs entirely on renewable energy. Water form the mountain is used for polishing the slate instead of the traditional mineral oil (which one would assume to be something of a pollutant and in the past would have probably ended up in the beck). Although presently still using bubble wrap for parcelling up certain goods, the aim is to be completely plastic and fossil-fuel free some time very soon - it doesn’t come greener and more sustainable than this.

If you like it hand made, locally sourced, environmentally sustainable and stunning in quality, you have come to the right place.

Go pay them a visit…