KESWICK'S historic place at the heart of global pencil-making began in Borrowdale in the 1500s, when a Cumbrian shepherd discovered clumps of a soft, black substance in the roots of an upturned tree. He began using it to mark his sheep and the practice caught on. With characteristic lack of pomposity, the Lakeland farmers called this handy stuff 'wad'. Sixteenth-century scientists concluded that wad was some form of lead and dubbed it plumbago (Latin for lead ore).
It wasn't until nearly 200 years later that a German geologist, Abraham Gottlob Werner, determined that wad had nothing whatsoever to do with lead and gave it the modern name of graphite (from the Ancient Greek graphein, meaning to write, draw or record).
By that time, the first Cumbrian graphite mine had been operating near the hamlet of Seathwaite for some 150 years. At first, nobody was quite sure what to do with graphite, beyond daubing sheep and rust-proofing cast-iron stoves. Quack doctors tried to help by mixing wad with wine and claiming it cured colic and gallstones (it didn't-in fact, if ingested, graphite can cause severe gastrointestinal irritation, which is why your teacher told you not to lick the tip of your pencil).
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة May 08, 2024 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة May 08, 2024 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
A tapestry of pinks
THE garden is now entering its season of vigour and exuberance.
Bringing the past to life
An event hosted by COUNTRY LIFE at WOW!house is one of the highlights of a programme that features some of the biggest names in interior design
This isle is full of wonder
GEOLOGY? A bit like economics, the famously boring science? I confess I suffered the prejudice—agriculture and history being my thing, both of them vital in every sense— but Robert Muir-Wood’s voyage through the past 66 million years of the making of the British landscape has biblical-level drama on almost every other page. Flood, fire, ice… or, perhaps, the formation in rock, sand, mud and lava of these isles is best conceived of as fierce poetry.
Empire protest
Without meaning to issue a clarion call for independence, E. M. Forster perfectly captured the rising tensions of the British Raj. One hundred years later, Matthew Dennison revisits the masterpiece A Passage to India
Hops and dreams
A relative of marijuana, hops were a Teutonic introduction to British brewing culture and gave rise to the original working holiday
Life and sol
The sanctuary of the Balearic Islands has enchanted a multitude of creative minds, from Robert Graves to David Bowie
'Nature is nowhere as great as in its smallest creatures'
Giving himself neck ache from constantly looking upwards, John Lewis-Stempel makes the most of a sunny May day harvesting ‘tree hay’ and marvelling at the myriad wildlife including flies and earwigs–that reside on bark
'Plans are worthless, but planning is everything'
Country houses great and small were indispensable to D-Day preparations, with electricity and sanitation, well-stocked wine cellars, countesses to run the canteens and antique furniture to feed the stoves
The darling buds of May
May Morris shared her father’s passion for flowers, embroidery and Iceland, but was much more than William’s daughter. Influential both as a designer and as a teacher, she championed the rights of workers, particularly women, as Huon Mallalieu reveals
Achilles healed
Once used to comfort the lovelorn or soothe the wounds of Greek heroes, yarrow may now have a new starring role in sustainable agriculture