Geology and Mining
The summit area shows outcropping of the Kirkstile Formation. These Ordovician rocks, typical of the Skiddaw massif, are composed of laminated mudstone and siltstone. Low Bank lies across the Causey Pike Fault and is part of the Buttermere Formation, an olistostrome of disrupted sheared and folded mudstone, siltstone and sandstone. There are also two minor intrusions of basalt running across the ridgeline.
There is a trial level in the northern crags, above Hause Point on the Crummock Water road. The opening is about 5 ft square but the level extends only a little way into the fell-side. The object appears to have been lead-bearing galena of which some traces remain.
Read more about this topic: Rannerdale Knotts
Famous quotes containing the word mining:
“For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish or a German girl scrubbing floors in that home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making “ladies” dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase.”
—Stephanie Coontz (20th century)