Honister Slate Mine

Nestling between the peaks at the head of the Honister Pass in the Lake District, the Buttermere and Westmorland Green Slate Company Limited is England´s only Slate Mine.

Unlike slate taken from quarries, our Westmorland Green Slate is wholly extracted from beneath the hills - from eleven miles of mine tunnels - and is entirely environmentally friendly.

Its beauty graces both the roofs of humble cottages and magnificent buildings, such as those in Regent Street, London, the Ritz Hotel and St James Palace, R.A.F. Cranwell and the Deutsche Bundesbank. Some of them are illustrated in our reprint of Concerning English Green Slates.

For centuries, our slate has been appreciated and has now been in further production since the re-opening of the mine in the mid 1990´s. You are welcome to visit the mine and experience the atmosphere.

Take a trip with us and see how we prepare the slate, our visitor centre where you can enjoy our hospitality and the history of the mine. Then learn more about the benefits of slate as a building material. It´s a fascinating story, told at our multi-award winning attraction.