I have no intention of starting a quarry/mine debate but I've just plonked the above quarry in the DB. The Wolframite mine of the same name is entered as a quarry. Tony Brooks in his book calls it a mine. Good enough for me but I bow to popular opinion. Comment?

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I would say it was a mine, on the basis that it is/was underground, and worked on a pattern of stoping for ore rather than bulk extraction of product.

by the same definition an open-cast ironmine ( say ) is a mine not a quarry, but an underground slate quarry is a quarry rather than a mine.

that said, open-cast coal mines are never called quarries; but coal is product, not an ore... so I wouldn't be dogmatic about it.

however I would reckon that an underground operation working a lode by stoping was definitely a mine

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It's most certainly a mine. Look at the section of the place. It is bloody deep! It most certainly isn't a bowl shaped, open aired excavation.

I figure people are confusing an-dinas quarry with CAD Tungsten lode. The only thing odd about CAD mine was that the high temp lode was cut off by the granite and was N-S rather than the usual E-W

It's most certainly a mine. Look at the section of the place. It is bloody deep! It most certainly isn't a bowl shaped, open aired excavation.

I figure people are confusing an-dinas quarry with CAD Tungsten lode. The only thing odd about CAD mine was that the high temp lode was cut off by the granite and was N-S rather than the usual E-W

yes, and no. Conventions differ. The Welsh operations were and are, sometimes referred to as 'quarries' although they are deep underground, at least in some part.

open-cast coal mines are always called 'mines' ( partly for legal reasons ) whereas open excavations for limestone, which produce shattered, blasted rock rather than shaped blocks, or sand and gravel extraction sites, are called 'quarries'.

open-cut narrow vein operations such as the Derbyshire 'rakes' are usually called 'mines'

I usually reckon that any operation producing shaped and dressed sections, is a 'quarry'; any operation producing ore requiring further treatment ( not necessarily from narrow veins ) is a 'mine'; any operation defined in legal terms is a 'mine' or 'quarry' as the law defines; and anything else is whatever it is called at the time by its operators, or local custom.

it's related to that issue of local languages and names. The Festiniog Railway uses 'single-f' and 'double-ff' spellings as occasion demands, on the basis that some locals have always used one or the other, one is the legal name of the specific entity known colloquially by that name, and one is a generally accepted transliteration into Welsh. All are correct in context.

by the same logic, you could quite legitimately say that Geevor tin mine was correctly called Geevor; that it might be called Wheal Geevor because that was a local name used by some; that it is in some respects, a successor to a historic former entity known at the time as Huel an Gever. However to apply the 'H an G' name to the 19th and 20th century operation is incorrect.


there's a recent thread rlating to the purchase of an-dinas quarry which makes a clear distinction between the respective entities.

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I thought opencast was a quarry unless what was extracted was ore but underground was a mine unless what was extracted was freestone or dimension stone.

I may have made this up myself though :confused:

I thought opencast was a quarry unless what was extracted was ore but underground was a mine unless what was extracted was freestone or dimension stone.

I may have made this up myself though :confused:

basically, yes

but open-cast coal is a mine not a quarry, although coal isn't an ore, for MASHAM reasons. The rules differ and HMIM has no discretion.

Combe Down is a mine legally, and always has been known as such, although its products were always freestone or dimension blocks. Other stone mines in the Bath area were also so called.

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It had a well formed lode, which had been stoped in the usual manner, to a depth well below the water table, which was pumped by a pump in a shaft. There were several shafts, 2 of which had headgears and winders on. There are open gunnisses at points, but these have clearly defined walls and are more akin to stopes than "quarries". I imagine the men went to work via ladder roads rather than walking down a slope.

If it is a quarry, we'd better label all the other mines, quarries. We then better think of another way of distinguishing these different types of quarries.

Would I be right in thinking that the person behind this pontificating is an academic.....or an idiot?

If you mean me I may be an idiot but I certainly don't mean to pontificate. I merely entered the granite quarry in the DB and noticed that the the wolframite entry of the same name is also entered as a quarry. Having just read Tony Brooks book on the latter I feel it should be entered as a mine.

I will bow out and leave it to the south west admins.

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Would I be right in thinking that the person behind this pontificating is an academic.....or an idiot?

Bit harsh perhaps, it's an interesting enough discussion (although the whole mine/quarry thing does seem to come up fairly regularly).

Besides idiots and even academics should be tolerated to a certain extent. 🙂

there are two separate entities - the granite quarry and the wolframite mine.

They are different operations in different places, and that's all there is to it.

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As someone else has said, it depends on time and circumstances. The Blaenau slate mines are referred to both as mines and quarries. It depends on your point of view and there is no right answer. One approach taken by the legal eagles and HMG was that as they were approached by underground levels, they were mines, on the other hand they were very definitely open quarries.... I don't think it's really worth argueing about, and certainly as far as slate is concerned although referring to the "Penrhyn Slate Mine" when it is Penrhyn Quarry that is meant is a little confusing at first, one gets used to it.

🙂

Grahami

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What's wolframite used for? Am I right in thinking it has/had something to do with submarines?

Wolframite is one of the main tungsten ores, it's an iron/manganese/tungsten oxide.

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My Bonsall spar mining friend (now retired) who worked opencast sites in the Peak District of Derbyshire for most of his working life (approximately 55 years) to extract the remaining minerals (such as barytes - also known as caulk - fluorspar, zinc blende, calcite etc.,) left behind by "t'owd man" in the vein, or in the spoil heaps left on the surface of many old disused lead mines - which because of the laws of the Barmote Courts could not be sold by the lead miners, these minerals either belonged to the land owner or the mineral rights owner, and had to be left behind, either below ground in the mine (often stacked away as "deads") or left on the surface in the form of spoil heaps - always referred to his work as "opencasting", never quarrying or mining.

At the end of his working life he was working on the Rakes just south of Castleton and the Eldon Hole area, especially on Moss Rake, where at the insistence of the Peak Park Planning Board he drove a level underground along the floor of the Rake to extract the vein, he then said he was "mining", this was sometime in the late 1980's and I have a photograph of this level, now long since destroyed, which I must put up on AN. After this trial level, the Peak Park Planning Board allowed him to continue opencasting on the vein in the Rake without having to mine underground again. Other areas he opencasted at were Lowe Mine, Bonsall; Jugholes; Tearsall; Matlock Bath; Bonsall Moor (where you can still see the remains of an opencast working to the east of Lees Lane which he and his partners worked), etc. He and his fellow spar miners always referred to their work as "opencasting" or "sparring", never mining or quarrying. At one time he worked extracting fluorspar and other minerals in Hanging Flats mine, Stoney Middleton and he then described his work as "mining".

Arthur H. Stokes, F.G.S who was H.M. Inspector of Mines for the Midland District from 1887 to 1909, and one of the first members of the Midland Counties Institution of Engineers, wrote "Lead and Lead Mining in Derbyshire" being a very detailed account of the Derbyshire lead mining industry, it consists of a collection of papers that Mr. Stokes wrote and presented to the Institution between 1880 and 1883. It has been published by Peak District Mines Historical Society in 1963, republished by PDMHS in 1973 and again in 1996. It is a source of great information and details in depth the lead mining laws, it's courts (the Barmotes), methods of workings, etc. etc. I quote below part of Mr. Stokes description of a Lead Rake (please take into account the date this information was written):-

"RAKE VEINS - Rake veins are those fissures and crevices that are generally vertical, or highly inclined, and run through a series of rocks, or beds of limestone. The depth to which these fissures contain ore, is altogether uncertain. Not unfrequently, the width of the rake vein is increased by parallel fissures, filled with mineral, and separated by only thin partitions of rock. The sides of the clefts, or chasms, forming the rake vein, are commonly lined with calcareous spar, fluorspar, or barytes, termed by the miners vein stuff; and between, or against this mineral lies the ore filling up the spaces, and called by the miners ribs of ore. The direction of these rake veins is not quite straight, and they are very irregular in width. At points they are intersected by strings of ore branching off at an angle, and called by the miners, scrins. The junction of a scrin to the rake vein, is often a profitable work for the miner, and even the scrins are followed up as long as they are found lucrative. A scrin may be called a small rake, and contains all the essential features of a rake vein except that it is often very small and contains very little ore".

Nellie Kirkham told me that mostly lead rakes lie in an east/west direction. For further reading I would suggest "The Lead Legacy - The Prospects for the Peak District's Lead Mining Heritage" by John Barnett and Rebecca Penny published 2004 by the Peak District National Park Authority.

Whilst I was working a "temp" wages clerk for Coal Contractors in the mid/late 1980's, they held an Open Day at their enormous opencast coal site at Staveley, N. Derbyshire. A friend and I went as we were curious, and were driven to the bottom of this very large hole in a Land Rover, it was very interesting and revealing, but this was neither a quarry or a mine, but an opencast.

Let's just call it a pit and be done with it.

Wolframite is one of the main tungsten ores, it's an iron/manganese/tungsten oxide.

Thats it, I think the submarine connection was something I'd read about nickel based "super alloys" with high corrosion and creep resistance, I don't know much about that but the context was that Wolframite mines were re-opened in the war to provide material, I think as well for munitions.

Sorry to be so vague, it just rang a bell that's all 🙂

Let's just call it a pit and be done with it.

Isn't that a coal mining term 😉

Wolframite is one of the main tungsten ores, it's an iron/manganese/tungsten oxide.

Thats it, I think the submarine connection was something I'd read about nickel based "super alloys" with high corrosion and creep resistance, I don't know much about that but the context was that Wolframite mines were re-opened in the war to provide material, I think as well for munitions.

Sorry to be so vague, it just rang a bell that's all 🙂

Yes, the Boriana Mine in Arizona was an important supplier during the war. I'll enter it in the DB when I get five minutes. Now whether to call it a mine or quarry.......... 🙂

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All the sand and fullers earth excavations near Redhill were always called pits by us. Now they always seem to be referred to as quarries. It's very confusing when you google for Merstham quarry to be presented with stuff about the old sand pits. Pit is a good word - while its being dug it's spelt pit, when it's being filled up again you just reverse the spelling to describe its new function.

coal and miscellaneous mining have their own vocabularies and there was little contact between them in the UK.

the NCB was a closed shop in every sense, CSM graduates of the time who had the temerity to apply were soon disabused of any possibility that they could possibly know anything of the least value.

you either joined the NCB as a school leaver or never went there at all.

this wasn't the case overseas.

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