The Full Story
In the mid-1500s, at Seathwaite in Borrowdale, Cumbria, an exceptionally pure deposit of solid graphite was found. Tradition dates the discovery to 1565 and tells of a storm uprooting a tree to reveal it; the date and the tree are tradition rather than documented fact. No comparably pure large deposit has been found since.
Shepherds used it first to mark their sheep. Then the state moved in. The workings were guarded, miners were searched at the end of their shifts, and in 1752, after armed raids, Parliament made stealing graphite a felony, punishable by whipping and a year's hard labour, or 7 years' transportation. The reason was military as much as commercial: graphite lined the moulds for casting cannonballs and shot. England had a graphite monopoly, and every artist, cartographer and engineer in Europe wanted English graphite.
A cottage industry grew up in nearby Keswick. Families cut graphite into sticks, wrapped them in string, then sheepskin, then wood. The pencil was born. In a Cumbrian valley. The business that became the Cumberland Pencil Company was founded in Keswick in 1832. Pencil making continues in Cumbria today, at Workington since 2008, and the Derwent Pencil Museum in Keswick tells the history of a single valley's contribution to modern writing.
Why This Matters
Every engineering drawing of the modern world was first made in pencil. Every sketch by Leonardo would have been, had he lived a few decades later. The pencil is not a minor tool. It is the device through which ideas are rehearsed before they are built. The Borrowdale deposit is unique. No comparable graphite has ever been found anywhere else on earth. For a long time, the British pencil was the finest in the world, and for a long time, this obscure Cumbrian valley was the only place it could come from.
Key Facts
- ⚠Correction: the video says graphite theft was punishable by transportation to Australia and that the pencil factory is still in Keswick on its original site. The 1752 Act predates transportation to Australia (the penalty was whipping and a year's hard labour, or 7 years' transportation), and Derwent pencil production moved to Workington in 2008; the Pencil Museum remains in Keswick. The 1565 storm-and-tree discovery story is tradition, not documented fact.