Slates laid at college are keeping history alive
The first slates from Collyweston’s newly re-opened slate mine have been laid at King’s College, Cambridge.
The Collyweston slate mine, run by Claude N Smith Ltd, opened in January 2017 and is the first mine in operation in the village for 50 years.
Phase one of a roofing project was started before Christmas at Bodley’s Court, a 19th century Grade I listed building on the banks of the River Cam, providing accommodation for undergraduate students.
Claude N Smith Ltd director Nigel Smith said: “The slates are beautiful — we are working with another company Art Of Slating, and their slaters have said how impressed they are with the quality of the new slates.”
Nigel said the slates were the buff colour of limestone with hints of blue.
The Collyweston mining industry dates back to Roman times, but died out in the 1960s as reclaimed Collyweston slates from derelict farm buildings undercut the price of new slates.
Nigel added: “It’s expensive to get out, that’s the stumbling block.”
He said King’s College, Cambridge, was instrumental in reviving the mining industry, as they supported the reopening of the mine on the Slate Drift industrial estate in Collyweston.
Another stumbling block was the process of splitting slates from a type of limestone that local slaters call the “log”, buried 10m below the surface in parts of Collyweston.
From antiquity, slaters would heave chunks of log out in the middle of winter, pour water over them, and hope that freezing temperatures cracked the log into usable slates for roofing.
Warming winters however led Claude N Smith Ltd to develop a system using industrial freezers from an old Tesco delivery lorry to enable splitting of slates at any time of the year.
He said: “With health and safety, you just couldn’t mine today the way they used to.
“Slaters dug a hole and propped it up with stone and wood, and then would wedge themselves beneath the log to dig the sand out from underneath.”
The 1,500sqm roof at Bodley’s Court is due for completion in November this year, and will be completed in three phases.
Nigel said the new mine and roofing contracts have enabled his team to expand from six to 18 full-time employees.
Slating apprentice Conor Depellette, 26, is one of three apprentices at the firm, and was taken on board three years ago.
Conor said his father was a local slater, and as a youngster he learnt from his father by going up the scaffold and mixing muck, passing slates and parting them into different sizes.
He said: “The new mine has helped our team no end, and it’s keeping history
alive.”
