The death of businessman Mark Weir, on the evening of Tuesday 8 March, brought to a premature end the career of one of the most imaginative and colourful characters in the Lake District.
Weir’s body was found the following morning in the wreckage of his private helicopter, which had crashed in poor weather close to the Honister Slate Mine – a business which he had owned and developed for over a decade. Aged 45, he leaves a partner and three children.
A statement published on the mine’s website said: “Mark’s family and staff at Honister Slate Mine are ‘totally devastated,’ and bereft by their loss.”
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Honister stands in the heart of the Cumbrian fell country, on the 350-metre road pass connecting Borrowdale with Buttermere. The quarry itself occupies steep ground on the north slope of Fleetwith Pike, and was worked fairly continuously from the 18th century until closure in the late 1980s. Writing in 1966, Alfred Wainwright described it as “a labyrinth of tunnels, cuttings, tramways, cables and paths … There is no beauty in despoliation and devastation but there can be dramatic effect and interest, and so it is here.” Weir acquired the site in 1997 and endeavoured to turn it into a viable business once more. Some quarrying continued, but Weir’s more high-profile and controversial ventures focused on developing the site’s tourist potential. His efforts were in part a tribute to his grandfather, who had worked at Honister. “Mr Weir had flown his grandfather over the derelict mine,” reported the Westmorland Gazette, “and noticed how upset he had been by its closure and the loss of jobs across the rural valley of Borrowdale. The businessman’s promise to visitors was: ‘Every penny you spend at Honister remains in the local community and helps support a future for our young people’.” This he did by developing mine tours and – from 2007 – the UK’s first commercial via ferrata across the face of the old workings. Some in the climbing community were sniffy about this, but it proved popular and added a new dimension to the area’s tourist provision. There were also plans – as yet unfulfilled and now possibly destined to remain so – for a kilometre-long aerial zip-wire down into the valley from a point near the upper edge of the escarpment. This was undoubtedly contentious – the nearest equivalent in Scotland might be if someone proposed installing a rapid-descent mechanism from the Aonach Eagach to Glen Coe. Objections to the Honister zip-wire, from such as the Friends of the Lake District, came on the grounds of noise and intrusion into a quiet upland area. Not that anyone could genuinely claim that the Lake District was an unspoilt wilderness, however, and many saw the zip-wire, like the via ferrata, as a means of boosting a local economy badly hit by foot and mouth, two instances of severe flooding and the general economic downturn. It prompted a classic development-versus-conservation spat across online bulletin-boards, newspaper letters pages and the like – but such debates are hardly new. Indeed, it is still possible to find people in the Lakes who chunter with some feeling about William Wordsworth, on the grounds that his lobbying to exclude railways from the central part of the district over 150 years ago – to maintain the romantic mood of the place – has been a major factor in the modern-day traffic-clogging of Grasmere, Ambleside and the like. Weir would, one assumes, have been on the opposite side of most fences to Wordsworth: he was a moderniser, a progressive, some would say a visionary. He was also fond of the media soundbite – not just making himself available for Julia Bradbury and Griff Rhys Jones to interview in their glossy TV series, but also when it came to news-based stories. The most notorious instance of this came in October 2008, when the first of the two recent Lakeland floods coincided with the two-day Original Mountain Marathon being held in the Borrowdale and Buttermere fells. The “rescue” of 2,000 runners – most of them experienced, well-equipped and quite possibly relishing the utterly foul weather – became the lead story on the rolling news channels for a couple of days. This was in no small part due to Weir, who provided two of the juiciest quotes any reporter could have wished for: “We have come within inches of turning the Lake District mountains into a morgue”, and “The organisers should be shot”. This enraged many in the hill-running and mountain-marathon community, who saw Weir as meddlesome and attention-seeking – although the staging of such a large event in one of the busiest UK hill areas, and the decision to press on despite significant existing flooding and a poor forecast, was itself questionable. It is impossible to know whether those quotes were simply an aspect of Weir’s character, or a clever realisation that controversy would give rise to media coverage which in turn would raise the profile of the business and so boost trade – but he undoubtedly succeeded in the latter respect. He will certainly be missed. A spokesman for the company described him as “a charismatic Lake District legend with a lust for life and a giant personality. He was passionate about everything he did from fatherhood to flying and business. He loved questioning authority but won many doubters over through sheer force of his personality. He was that rare mix of shrewd businessman and creative entrepreneur.” There have also been numerous tributes in the letters pages of newspapers and the comment slots of outdoors websites. In the Westmorland Gazette, Weir was described as “a lovely man who lived his life in his way, with a can do positive attitude”, while another reader noted that “Tourism in the Lake District has lost one if its greatest assets but his legacy will go on”. On grough.co.uk, comments included: “Very sad news, a great man and a great business mind” and “A keen businessman who was not frightened to have a go”, while on UKClimbing.com, home of much debate over the merits of his various projects, Weir was described as “a friendly lad with a big personality and never changed over the years” and “Sad loss – he wasn’t afraid to give things a go. Maybe some folk didn’t like some of his ideas – however he was a down to earth local chap prepared to make a difference and his mark on the community and the area.” One final thought. Over the past 15 years, the number of people – often notable business people – to have died in private-helicopter crashes feels greater than might be expected. Any such death is tragic, of course, and the reasons each time will differ, but the roll-call of victims is starting to become lengthy. It includes Matthew Harding of Chelsea FC in 1996, the noted Derbyshire businessman Alan Godkin the same year (having survived an earlier crash in 1989), Colin McRae in 2007, and fatal accidents in Cambridgeshire in 2007, Yorkshire and Gloucestershire in 2008 and County Down in 2010. Most of these incidents also involved other deaths. Has death-by-helicopter become a substantial risk in the business-entrepreneurial trade? It shouldn’t be, but there is increasing evidence that it is. If so, what does it say about the safety or otherwise of these undoubtedly useful machines?Donate to us: support independent, intelligent, in-depth Scottish journalism from just 3p a day
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