PLANS to dig deep into the Lake District's heritage and produce a mine of information for visitors have struck gold.

The Heritage Lottery Fund has granted £ 31,650 to The National Trust for educational material and work on the water-powered Greenburn Copper Mine, in Little Langdale.

National Trust assistant marketing manager Shona Owen said the mine was an important site, with much of it in good quality.

Many features, such as mining levels and shafts, were still visible.

The site also boasts evidence of medieval workings and 19th and 20th century copper-mining features above ground, while much of the mine's dam and copper-processing structures are still intact.

The funds will be used for archaeological surveying and the strengthening of structures, with work planned to start this year.

"The award is very good news - we would have struggled to do the work without it," Ms Owen told the Gazette.

On the educational side, she explained, the trust planned to compile informative leaflets about the mine to help visitors understand its workings and its links with the area's history.

"This sort of project tends to fall by the wayside if you don't have much money," she said, adding: "An awful lot of things used to go on in Little Langdale, including farming and mining, in the 19th and 20th century.

There must have been an amazing variety of work going on there, resulting in many different jobs, and we want to bring these early days to life."