Musical Stones of Skiddaw

[1] The first documented lithophone from Keswick was built in 1785 by Peter Crosthwaite, an eccentric inventor who became interested in the musical properties of the local stone.

However, this kind of instrument became widely known only decades later, when in 1840 Joseph Richardson, a local stonemason and self-taught musician, built a larger, eight-octave lithophone with which he and his sons toured the UK and Europe giving numerous concerts, including one in London for Queen Victoria.

It was later enhanced with steel bars, Swiss bells and various other percussions, and survives to this day, being on display at the Keswick Museum and Art Gallery.

The matter of exactly where Joseph Richardson sourced the stones for his xylophone has been given some considerable attention in recent years, thanks to the efforts of Dr. Alan Smith and Professor Bruce Yardley from the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds.

A geologist named James Clifton Ward, who, before he became curate of St. John’s, Keswick, in 1880, had carried out excellent work surveying the northern part of the Lake District as part of the first Geological Survey of the district, whilst not actually pinpointing the exact location, refers to an area that he describes as being “the junction with the granite of Sinen Gill”,[3] more or less midway between Skiddaw and Blencathra, and this is reasonable cause for belief that this may very likely have been where Joseph sourced his stones.

Smith and Yardley, in a research paper published for the Cumberland Geological Society in 2008, wrote: “The upper part of the Sinen Gill valley looks like a very likely source of material that could have been shaped into musical stones.

The material has a very strong bedded fabric and importantly is seen to break relatively easily into flat slabs close to the optimum thickness of 2.5-3cm seen in the musical stones.

Reports exist of the Richardson family taking outings to the fells with a horse and cart in the search for possible stones, with potential pieces being conveyed back to Applethwaite in readiness for Joseph to spend long hours shaping and tuning the slabs to the required size and note.