Interested in Helping?
The Museum is run by a group of volunteers who would welcome new colleagues as the Museum expands. If you live in the Lake District, have spare time and think you could help to run the Shop, take Underground Tours or help in any way on site, we'd love to hear from you. You'll find it a very friendly place with lovely views and it would be entirely up to you how much time you give. If you think you might be interested, please call Ian Hartland in the evening on 01768779202
UPDATE! Click here to read about Sir Tom, our new addition to the Threlkeld Museum Railway.
THE HISTORY OF Threlkeld Quarry & Mining Museum
In the reorganisation and modernisation which took place after the second world war, the railway was dismantled and rock was loaded at the quarry face by Ruston Bucyrus excavators into large tipper trucks which carried it up a ramp to the new crushing plant situated within the original quarry, whose output reached 500 tons per day in the 1950’s. Some of the output of granite chippings passed to the tarmacadam plant, where it was heated and dried in rotating ovens and then coated with hot tar. The tar plant was alongside the original crushing plant at the northern end of the engine shed, overlooking the most recent lorry weighbridge house alongside the entrance road to the Museum.
The quarry, then owned by ARC Ltd, finally closed in 1982 and demolition contractors removed everything saleable, leaving devastation all around. In 1992, Lakeland Mines and Quarries Trust finally negotiated a lease with the intention of developing a museum on the site, but in the meantime the ravages of weather and vandals had caused serious deterioration of the buildings.
Members of the Trust put in valiant work repairing buildings, removing or covering old plant foundations and landscaping, using vintage machinery. In 1995 the Trust was wound up, handing over the Museum’s future to the Museum Company (the trading arm of the Trust) which is now running the site. The Caldbeck Mining Museum joined the project in 1995, so that both quarrying and mining aspects of the local industrial past could be displayed.The final phase of quarry activity is represented by Ian Hartland’s unique working collection of Ruston Bucyrus excavators.The Museum is now also the home of the recently-formed Vintage Excavator Trust.
In September, 2004, the Caldbeck Collection was taken away, leaving space for a new development. Opened at Easter 2005, a completely new Interpretive Mining Section includes a new lighting, drilling and explosives room.
