“We visited the pencil museum in Keswick. I really enjoyed my visit and learned a lot about pencils and their history. A settlement called Borrowdale was one of the first villages to mine graphite.  The earliest pencils were pieces of graphite used by shepherds to mark their sheep. The other uses were discovered in later times. We learned that the phrase “black market” came from smuggling graphite which was when the smuggler's hands were left black.  

At the museum we saw the world's largest pencil. The museum even had a portable wooden display unit for advertising the different makes of pencils they had produced over the years.”