Skiddaw Slate (as opposed to Honister slate which has a green hue) and is used for building, in the Lake District. The traditional buildings of Keswick and other settlements are almost entirely of Skiddaw slate. The slate is also used for making souvenirs, monuments, ornaments etc. Smaller fragments are used for gravels or for ornamental pathways. Skiddaw Slate Skiddaw slate is an early Ordovician metamorphosed sedimentary rock, as first identified on the slopes of Skiddaw in the English Lake District. The base of this series is unknown. The thickness could, therefore, amount to several thousand feet of sediment. These sediments were formed
Slate industry the chamber: the chamber would then be worked downwards. Slate was freed from the rockface by blasting in shot holes hammered (and later drilled) into the rock. Slate would be recovered from the chamber in the form of a large slab, which would be taken by truck to the mill where it would be split and cut into standard-sized roofing slates. Slate mines were usually worked in chambers which followed the slate vein, connected via a series of horizontal "Floors" (or "Levels"). The chambers varied in size between mines and were divided by "pillars" or walls which supported the roof.