Hello

A point has been raised in another thread on this forum about haveing more options when adding a new site to the database these include adding more options to the identify as drop down menu. one of these options was to be able to call the site a trial this has caused the problem of what is a trial. i would personaly calla trial a small attempt by a company to prospect for minerals eg a level 25m long with no mineral evident on the tips or in the level. does any body else have an opinion on the subject

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yes, a trial is just a prospect for a rock/mineral as you said, though it doesnt have to be a level - it could just be a hole in the ground/cutting that someones tried to get rock/minerals from. But yes, perhaps there should be an option of showing whether the working is a trial or not. Also - does anyone have any opion on tramways and smelting buildings etc that arent at the mine but are related to it

As for my experience of trials - Id call a trial for slate a cutting or level which has reached the slate vein but the rock isnt good enough quality to exploit into a chamber or quarry.

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I think it would be good to atleast have an albam for these places because i find them interesting and they might not be part of a mine but they are a direct part of the industry

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I think it would be good to atleast have an albam for these places because i find them interesting and they might not be part of a mine but they are a direct part of the industry

I agree, I have some good pics of an iron furnace I was taken to somewhere near Newby Bridge, which is amazing still having all the old gear etc.. in situation, including what I think is a lancashire boiler?
Also would this apply to places such as Porth Felinheli/Port Velinheli and Port Penrhyn etc in wales.

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If they served the mines in some way eg the slates from such a such area where dispatched from these port why not have them in the database it may attract more people to the site and help us gain more infomation about areas from people that are interested in say smelt mills but not mine but have come across a folder of infomation about an area of mine workings while investagating what they are interested in

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Some good point raised there gents, but i fear it would get very confusing with non-mine specific photo's.
Consider the Tal-Y-Llyn railway, built and used exclusivly for Bryneglwys quarry so placing photo's would not be a problem. On the other hand, the F(f)estiniog railway was used by several quarries....
I would suggest (and its only an idea) that a seperate section that links with the mining industry with pages titled 'furnaces' 'tramways' 'trials' and anything else you can think of. I say trials because these are often dug by a small group of men in search of minerals, not a company, so they would not always be linked to a particular mine. :confused:
Of course, the other consideration is would these items fit in with the paramiters of what this site has set out to do?

I think the danger of doing all this though is that it will lead to the site being too cumbersome, and difficult to more find things as was agreed with the various mineral subsections. I agree, the occasional surface feature that doesn't directly connect with a single mine as was originally suggested on the other thread might be ok, but splitting things up everywhere will just make it too difficult! To say nothing of the extra work for SimonRL.

Oh, LAP, Y Felinheli has just 3 alternatives namely Port Dinorwic Y Felinheli, and (rarely) Velinheli, NEVER Porth Dinorwic(g).

Consider the Tal-Y-Llyn railway, built and used exclusivly for Bryneglwys quarry so placing photo's would not be a problem.

I'd have to argue with this point Barney! The Talyllyn Railway was a common carrier from the start and always ran a passenger service alongside its Goods services.

As for places like Port Dinorwic and Port Penrhyn - couldn't these be treated by a albums within the appropriate Quarry's page - for example albums in Dinorwic for Port Penrhyn and maybe even for the Workshops at Gilfach Ddu and the Quarry Hospital.

As you say though, things like the railways would be trickier but to be honest they've been well covered elsewhere.

Consider the Tal-Y-Llyn railway, built and used exclusivly for Bryneglwys quarry so placing photo's would not be a problem.

As for places like Port Dinorwic and Port Penrhyn - couldn't these be treated by a albums within the appropriate Quarry's page - for example albums in Dinorwic for Port Penrhyn and maybe even for the Workshops at Gilfach Ddu and the Quarry Hospital.

As you say though, things like the railways would be trickier but to be honest they've been well covered elsewhere.

That raises another interesting point. What about, for instance, Vivian Slate Quarry? I have already noticed people posting photos of that in the Dinorwic albums! So even the current system can cause problems. I think this is going to get worse if minor "splits" are encouraged. I think, for instance, Gilfach Ddu is an integral part of the Dinorwic Quarry, and cannot really be seperated from it, to do so would just lead to more confusion.

The same applies to places like Clogau, do you split "Old Clogau" from Llechfraith and Tyn y Cornel (sp?) or keep them as one? To say nothing of the processing works!

if we're going to be pedantic, perhaps it's only a mine if it is for minerals, anything else is a quarry (building/construction materials), a colliery (coal) or underground structure (bomb shelters etc.) I look forward to counter-arguments on this!

More seriously, the whole topic of mine names and sites is a difficult one. 'Mines' were operated at different times under different names by different companies. (Sometimes different companies with the same name even!) The main material extracted sometimes changed over the life of the mine, or the purpose changed (e.g. quarries became ammunition stores). Mines were sometimes informally referred to by local names. Spellings of mine names varied, particularly when Welsh names were phonetically transliterated in English (e.g. Ffestiniog/Festiniog, Diffwys/Diphwys). Workings covered considerable areas so different grid references get used for the same enterprise. Individual workings were amalgamated or abandoned. The whole topic is a bit of a historian's nightmare.

The only way I've found to cope with these problems on the database on my own website is to (a) have entries organised by name and (b) provide extensive cross-references (as web links so they can be followed easily). This means that as long as the user knows at least one name associated with an enterprise they should be able to follow the cross references to the information associated with the other names.

I'm not sure if this answers the question though.

Dave

My previous post got me thinking a bit more about Vivian Slate Quarry. Is it right to even list that as a separate quarry even? Was it ever a separately run quarry, or was it, like Braich, Garret, Matilda, etc, etc, simply a quarry department? In which case, it to be consistent with the rest of the site (I think) it should be amalgamated with the Dinorwic album pages.

Aha!

This discussion rears its head everywhere from time to time... I've alwatys throught that a mine involved underground working and a quarry was generally an open pit working

The problem arises when sites either contain both types of workings or when they started as an open working and ended up as an underground working: this is (I suspect) why many of the big north Wales 'mines' are called quarries.

If you then introduce 'trial' into the equation, the picture gets more muddled as I suspect there are a few trial workings which are bigger than some sites which were actually worked: thus, we're going to spend a lot of time arguing about the finer points if we're not careful.

Basically, I see no problem in calling a 'Trial' a 'Mine' even if it never produced anything - and I think we've probably already got a fair few 'Trials' in the database listed as 'Mines'.

Going back to the issue we started with, that of Surface Remains, I'd suggest that if there are substantial surface remains, then it would usually be attached to some form of working. The easiest way of dealing with this would be to have an album attached to a mine specifically for Surface Remains - that requires no modifications to the site!

That, of course, leaves the issue of remains that weren't mines, eg Y Felinheli (where I'm sat at the moment). Well... for now I'd be tempted to suggest that any pics get uploaded to a Personal Album and that was can be discussed/displayed in a post. If we get a lot of such photos, then it may be worthwhile collating them, but I suspect it might involve quite a lot of work!

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I'd have to argue with this point Barney! The Talyllyn Railway was a common carrier from the start and always ran a passenger service alongside its Goods services.

Hey, you know far more than i do!

How about we just carry on as we are, with a bit of thought most things will slot in with something already on the site. If someone is not sure about where to post something then lets discuss that particular one on the forum

That, of course, leaves the issue of remains that weren't mines, eg Y Felinheli (where I'm sat at the moment). Well... for now I'd be tempted to suggest that any pics get uploaded to a Personal Album and that was can be discussed/displayed in a post. If we get a lot of such photos, then it may be worthwhile collating them, but I suspect it might involve quite a lot of work!

The problem with doing that is a) not many people look in the personal albums (although the image keyword search does include them) and b) at the point where it's decided there are enough in personal albums to move them to dedicated albums there will be a nightmare of a job assigning them to those dedicated albums which leads on to c) the fact that I need to sleep every now and again :lol: :lol:

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How about this for a possible solution?

It takes into account (hopefully!) the various points made; that surface remains and other locations often do justify having their own album, but that they may 'belong' to more than one mine (or quarry) but that at the same time people often like to see photos grouped together in the same album. Too many albums arguably fragments the site - which is why the 'show all photos for this mine' option is on each mine home page.

1) Where a surface location or feature justifies it's own dedicated album then an admin can easily create an album for that feature / location - and a full description can be entered into the album description.

2) The mine>album multi-link feature be extended, albums can be tagged to more than one mine already, for example you'll find that most of the Croesor / Rhosydd Through Trip albums are tagged to both Croesor and Rhosydd. But this is currently manual; I could add the facility on the 'thank you' page when a new album is created so that when a new album has been created for a given mine/quarry that it offers all the other mines/quarries with 2km (for example) so the new album can be tagged to them as well.

This gives us a situation where a port, or railway (for example) could have an album created and tagged to all mines/quarries it relates to.

3) The image upload facility could have a new drop-down added to it to indicate whether the photo was underground / above ground / etc (we'd need to compile a list). A new filter would then be added to the album page which would allow the display to be refined to only show one type (or all) in much the same way that it can be refined to show by members or just a specific member.

4) The image upload facility could have the same modification at the 'thank you' stage to tag the same photo to any other album in the same mine.

Would that cover it?

I think the idea of a new album for each mine for just 'surface remains' should be avoided since it could fragment the photos too much, and wouldn't really cover the issue of surface remains that applied to more than one mine, being just another album for the mine in question.

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I had a similar discussion to this sometime ago on the OU website. It started because I stated that mining was an important part of the Cornish economy. Pointing out that china clay is Britains second most important mineral export, after petroleum. And then the ball started rolling.

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Or - playing Devil's Advocate...

Tag everything so far created in the database as a mine/quarry. Modify the database to include new types of 'thing' including, say, Mills, Factories, Ports and Railways (though the good lord himself only knows how you give a railway a grid reference!).

It might also be handy to be able to link these features to a mine/quarry, eg linking a port with the quarries it served.

That way, we can merrily create new sites and upload pics. There is, probably, a very justifiable reason to record such remains, including the likes of abandoned mills and railways - for example, despite living on top of the port at Felinheli, I've never followed the route of the Padarn railway.

This does somewhat conflict with what I've posted earlier, but it would improve the value of AN as a historic resource, albeit probably at the cost of some (more) of Simon's sanity... 😉 :flowers:

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Or - playing Devil's Advocate...

Tag everything so far created in the database as a mine/quarry. Modify the database to include new types of 'thing' including, say, Mills, Factories, Ports and Railways (though the good lord himself only knows how you give a railway a grid reference!).

Possible but complicated because large areas of the would potentially need re-visiting; admin, searching, search results, listings. You'd not click 'Find a Mine A-Z' and expect to find factories and ports in the results (at least I don't think you would).

It might also be handy to be able to link these features to a mine/quarry, eg linking a port with the quarries it served.

Covered in the possible solution I detailed above.

Is it fair to say every factory, mill, shaft, railway, port, and anything else which we might want to see on here, belongs to at least one mine or quarry?

albeit probably at the cost of some (more) of Simon's sanity... 😉 :flowers:

There is very little of that left as it is 😉

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:oops: :offtopic:
But reminds me of an idea, there should be a europien mine database, i.e not just britain! Not saying that Simon should expand the website to cover the world or anything :lol:

cheers

linden

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What about Scotland too? I have some books on Scottish mining but there is little information on remains worth seeing.