Last updated 19:40, Thursday, 29 May 2008

MARK Weir likes to be unique; he is the owner of the last operating slate mine in England, flies to and from work in a helicopter and has plans to build an underground theatre, he is not far from it.

“I like to do things that people have never done before. I am always changing and looking at how I can make things better,” he says

“I don’t like doing the same things as everyone. I want to be original,” adds the 42-year-old owner of one of Cumbria’s most popular tourist attractions.

It was 12 years ago that Mark, who lives near Loweswater, bought Honister Slate Mine, high up on the bleak fells between the Borrowdale and Buttermere valleys.

Even before Mark set his sights on Honister, he was a successful businessman.

Leaving Lairthwaite Secondary Modern School in Keswick at 16, he was a gravedigger and agricultural contractor.

His working life had started three years previously, as a grave digger.

He says: “When I was 13, 14, I worked weekends digging graves. When I was 14, 15 I used to get up early in the morning and dig a grave before school, if there was one to dig of course.”

After that, he built retirement homes in Keswick and Cockermouth, Keswick Spa, built and ran Herdwick Inn near Penrith, Cockermouth’s Slatefell Stores and Windmill Fisheries and Park Fisheries in Workington.

He also ran a helicopter company in Leeds, which did aerial coverage of the TT racing in the Isle of Man and ran celebrities, including Ian Botham and David Jason, around.

But Mark’s rollercoaster journey at Honister started in 1996 when he was flying his grandfather in his helicopter over the places he had worked.

His grandfather had worked at Honister as a slate river until he was 77.

Mark says: “When we got over Honister, he asked why it was closed, which was quite interesting because I had flown over here countless times.

“At that moment in my life I was ready for settling down and doing something of some purpose.”

Mark was running the Herdwick Inn, managing Slatefell Stores and Park Fisheries and going two days a week to Leeds for the helicopter company.

He says: “I asked my PA to find out who owned the mine and she found out and basically wrote out three pages of its history.

“At the bottom of this file was a phone number, so one day I decided to ring it when I had five spare minutes. It was just matter of fact, one of a few things to get done.”

Mark rang the managing director and over coffee in a hotel foyer, Mark did a deal and bought the mine.

He knew little about mining, but with 60,000 people visiting it a year at a growing rate of 16 per cent a year, he has made it a remarkable success.

He says: “I had the big task of understanding how slate worked. Twelve years on and I am still learning.

“It has been one of the hardest things that I have ever taken on, I would never do it again and I would never recommend anybody to do it but now that I have arrived, it is the best thing I have ever done.

“It is a complete flip, but it has been an incredible journey.

“Just to get a functioning factory on the top of a hill was a mammoth task and has only been achieved this year.”

This self-made man, who has won Cumbria’s Director of the Year award, takes huge pride is seeing his projects come together, with people visiting Honister with a smile on their face.

However, Mark says there have been too many low points for him to count while he has been at the mine.

“They are so bad and so low, you learn to box them inside your head and you don’t want to enter the box,” he says.

But Mark will be sharing some of the low points in a blog that will be launched on Honister’s website in the next couple of weeks.

Some of Mark’s successes have included the daily mine tours, the Sky Hi cafe and a shopping area at the mine.

Last May, Honister unveiled its Via Ferrata experience on Fleetwith Pike - the only one of its kind in England - which allows walkers to retrace an original Victorian miners’ route which zigzags diagonally up the craggy cliff face to its 2,126ft summit.

Number two Via Ferrata, which Mark says gives more ‘exposure’, is due to open at the end of the month.

Mark, who has three children, Prentice, 11, Piers, nine and Georgina-Blue, seven, has no plans to stop his new ideas.

“No way am I finished, my ideas are just flowing,” he says. “To be honest, I am more excited now than when I first started.”

His next major project is an underground theatre.

The idea was born from the miners who used to do cockfighting there.

Mark’s friend, musician Snake Davis, was experimenting with his saxophone in a cavern inside the mountain and said that it was by far the best place he had ever played.

So off went Mark, trying to put his dream into reality and he is looking for sponsors to get the ball rolling.

He says: “It is unique, It would be interesting for artists as well, I don’t know what instruments work down there yet, but the saxophone, choirs and vocalists are brilliant.

“It is an awful lot of work for me and this is where we need some sponsorship, so watch this space.”

Mark believes that the theatre will bring more celebrities to the mine, to add to a long list who’ve already visited.

Stars from Coronation Street, the Paul O’Grady show, Trinny and Susannah, the Hairy Bikers, Sir Bobby Charlton, Paul McCartney, Geri Halliwell, Griff Rhys Jones and Kim Wilde have all been to Honister.

Mark says: “To be fair, they are coming into a tin shed on the top of the mountain. I am sure in their heads they are saying ‘What are we doing here?’

“I think with the theatre it will only bring more of that celebrity status.”

Another one-of-a-kind idea that Mark has introduced, is giving people the opportunity to fly to work with him over the fells in his helicopter, when they stay in his holiday cottages.

It is his driving ambition that has earned Mark many plaudits - the Institutes of Directors’ Business of the Year, award for British Small Companies for the North West and regional winner for the National Business awards.

But he says that his partner, Jan, who he has been with for 22 years, should get recognised for the part she plays.

“Jan never gets recognised for doing my washing, and she keeps me fed. Jan is my revitaliser, she is my rock,” he says.