To chase what up?

I have quickly totted up the sites in the AditNow database for the "mineless" south east, for all sites that I believe are underground and not surface workings ....

Middlesex 5
London 1 (some entries for Kent should possibly be entered under London)
Surrey 24 (excluding iron minepits)
East Sussex 18 (excluding iron minepits)
Hampshire 1
Buckinghamshire 10
Essex 3
Hertfordshire 13
Bedfordshire 5
Berkshire 21
Kent – can’t be bothered to count!
West Sussex – 6 (excluding iron minepits)

Thank you, Peter - this is really helpful.

Try

www.kurg.org.uk

www.chelseaspelaeo.org.uk

www.subbrit.org.uk

and www.wcms.org.uk 😠

Apologies - I was using the publications in my library - and I obviously don't have anything by WCMS.

Online versions and PDFs of most of our newsletters, and also research journal "Cave and Quarry" are available here:

http://www.wcms.org.uk/cgi-bin/wcmsnewsletter.pl 

There are PDFs of "Cave and Quarry" but not for download.

Again, thanks for all this useful information which I should have looked at much earlier.

The whole thing began a few days ago when I was involved in a discussion about 'promoting mining heritage' which I felt was based on the notion that 'mining' was some sort of quaint activity from the past carried out by loveable characters with lights on their heads, a bit like underground morris dancers.

My own opinion - for what it is worth - is that mining is an integral part of our past that has at least 5,000 years of history behind it and has had a huge impact on the history of the whole of the UK and of other countries. 'Heritage tourism' does not put this across.

To Peter

Thanks very much for the link. I am (amongst my various hats) the Recorder for PDMHS, and I have also gradually been scanning old journals and newsletters and then putting these on the Web. I have so many part runs of journals and newsletters in the PDMHS library, and there is so much information that has part submerged from view, that it is difficult to keep track of what there is, and where it is. There is now a British Caving Library, run by the BCA and the BCRA, and there possibly ought to be a national mining history library. Unfortunately, these things take money and time.

Incidently, opening the latest 'News of the Weald' 80, I notice a report of a trip down Titan - I was one of Moose's team sinking the shaft.

To Bill

This is opening another can of worms - it is difficult to convey to even interested people the extent to which the mining industry in the past shaped the landscape and the history of industrial Britain. Even in Derbyshire we still suffer from the perception that mining was a 'jolly' occupation, surrounded by quaint customs, rather than a desperately marginal occupation in a desperately marginal environment.

I sent you a private message Dave.

If you discount the underground activities of the Nazis which were hardly extractive... what about the Channel Islands?

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Again, thanks for all this useful information which I should have looked at much earlier.

The whole thing began a few days ago when I was involved in a discussion about 'promoting mining heritage' which I felt was based on the notion that 'mining' was some sort of quaint activity from the past carried out by loveable characters with lights on their heads, a bit like underground morris dancers.

My own opinion - for what it is worth - is that mining is an integral part of our past that has at least 5,000 years of history behind it and has had a huge impact on the history of the whole of the UK and of other countries. 'Heritage tourism' does not put this across.

A very good point Bill.

I occasionally meet environmentally minded people who are anti-mining. I have tried asking them where the materials come from to make the glass they are drinking their beer out of, or the components of the musical instrument they are playing. They invariably possess mobile phones and computers as well.

Also had a discussion with someone who was trying to re-erect a collapsed Quoit, telling me this was our real culture, not the mining that only ruined the landscape. Got particular satisfaction from asking her where the stones came from to build the quoit.

If you discount the underground activities of the Nazis which were hardly extractive... what about the Channel Islands?

Sark does I think.

If you take one of those counties not normally associated with mining - West Sussex - the current landscape is very much a legacy of the exploitation of iron reserves. Managed forests and coppicing provided the fuel for the furnaces and forges, and the many "furnace ponds" would not be there were it not for mining. Those ponds are a valuable haven for wildlife as are the woods and forests. I suspect that diversity of wildlife may have diminished now that the woodlands are less managed than they were when they were being harvested for fuel, and as ponds have been drained or silted up, they too probably provided a better resource to wildlife when they were actively being maintained than they do now.

Likewise, there are sites in the Peak like Bonsall Lees that are a SSSI now for their fantastic range of wild flowers, but the reason these places haven't been ploughed up and reseeded with silage grasses is that they've been heavily mined and the soil's well and truly contaminated! Without the mining having taken place, the pretty orchids wouldn't be there now.....

Channel Islands - yes, I think there was a silver mine on Sark, article on it in an old PDMHS bulletin if I remember rightly.

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The area I normally quote when a discussion about "natural landscapes" takes place is the Norfolk Broads. Without man's intervention they would not exist.

If you discount the underground activities of the Nazis which were hardly extractive... what about the Channel Islands?

Sark does I think.

http://www.detecting.org.uk/html/Silver_Mining_Channel_Islands_Sark_Herm.html 

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