Carol Davies, Curator Natural History, describes the man behind the Bill Shaw mineral collection at Kendal Museum.

Bill Shaw was a mining engineer in Cumbria during the 20th Century He collected minerals of exceptional quality from working mine sites in Cumbria.

The collection includes important copper minerals from Coniston Copper Mine and rare minerals from Fleetwith Mine, near Buttermere, that include Azurite and Hornblende.

There are also good specimens from Force Crag Lead/Barite Mine, near Braithwaite.

Bill Shaw was perhaps the last real mining entrepreneur in the Lake District.

He had mining in his blood and was descended from five generations of miners.

He worked first, as a boy, in his father's quarry at Hall Garth.

Later, when a young man, he worked in the coppermines at Coniston, alongside the Hellens family and it was here that he learned his craft at the face.

In about 1925 he studied at the Glasgow Mining Office for four years and then went to Greenside Mine as an apprentice, leaving as a qualified mining engineer.

He then went to Halkyn in North Wales and on to Levant in Cornwall.

Prior to the war he worked at Hartsop Hall Lead Mine. In about 1940 he worked with his father again at Caudale Quarries.

He then applied to rework the Newlands Mine at Longwork in 1942.

This venture failed on planning grounds after which, in about 1946, he took an interest in the Barlocco Baryte Mine in Dumfriesshire and then, during 1951, he started to develop the nearby Auchencairn Baryte Mine.

In 1954 Bill returned to Coniston Copper Mines, where he drove the Shaw's Crosscut.

From here he went back to work in North Wales at the Halkyn mines.

Returning to the Lakes in 1958, he became mining superintendent with McKechnies of Widnes, where he managed Sandbeds and Potts Gill Baryte Mines on the Caldbeck Fells.

After this he went to Force Crag and when McKechnies left there, Bill took up the lease and carried on.

This was his last mining venture.

He lived at Chestnut Hill in Keswick and it was here, in his retirement, that he wrote the bible of Lake District mining, ‘Mining in the Lake Counties’.