In light of suggestions for a new way of geographically/geologically grouping mines can we throw this open for debate in order to build up a list:

Northern England

The Northeast Coalfield
The North Pennines (maybe split into Alston block and Askrigg block when more mines are added)
Vale of Eden
Lake District/Caldbeck Fells (again maybe split if needed)
West Cumbria

Copy paste and post...

Once we've got a good list I'll add the necessary code to the site, and the new value against each mine. Then see if any people want to take over as regional editors.

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The Northeast Coalfield
The North Pennines (maybe split into Alston block and Askrigg block when more mines are added)
Vale of Eden
Lake District/Caldbeck Fells (again maybe split if needed)
North Lakes & South Lakes would suffice for this

West Cumbria
Yorkshire
Dumfries & Galloway
Scottish Highlands

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Slightly off the subject. How about a section for Eire?
Is it possible to put Irish Grid refs on. There's a lot of intersting stuff over there.

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Good idea Wyn - I'll add the necessary once I've got the major mining regions section finished (working on it at the moment).

Once I've got the Major Mining Regions working - I'll throw it open for some debate as to a good intial list of regions (we can add to it on an ongoing basis of course).

What do people think I ought to do about breaking down the list into logical blocks?

One long list would be confusing to people - i.e. if all the regions were lumped together.

What I thought might work would be to use the same NE / NW / SE / SW etc to zone the major mining regions* and then order by the main mineral / product within that region.

* Although of course this opens up the problem of areas that for example span the NE and NW again.

Are there any better ways of grouping / ordering these major mining regions?

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The Major Mining Regions section has now gone live - although it's sort of in testing pending feedback to decide whether or not it's of any use.

In summary, you can now find a mine in the database in 6 ways:

1) List by Major Mining Region (left hand menu)

2) By Mineral Type (left hand menu then select mineral)

3) By OS Landranger (left hand menu then select sheet)

4) By UK region (left hand menu - the original broad geographic breakdown of the UK)

5) Show all Mines (left hand menu and then the option to only show mines with content)

6) Mine name search (left hand menu and a quick search box is repeated further down the left hand menu on all pages)

This new Major Mining Region works as follows:

- Initially lists all the major mining regions currently defined with the main mineral in brackets

- Click the region name to go a summary page containing some more text about the region and a list of mines tagged to that mining region

- Members of security level 4 and above will see a facility to add new mining regions

- On the edit mine details page (accessed by clicking 'edit' against a mine name as before) members of security level 4 and above will see a new drop-down menu (as per the new tag to forum option) allowing a major mining region to be selected. If no region is applicable, just leave this as 'Not specified'.

What I'm not sure of is:

1) For the mining regions to be ordered in any logical way (rather than lumped in together) they really need to be tagged to a broader geographic zone. So again the North East England, North West England, Midlands etc etc have reappeared. This may complicate things where a major mining region is on a border or spans an area - is it ok as it is, or does this breakdown need re-thinking?

2) What happens where more than one main mineral/product is required? Do we need to be able to indicate more than one main mineral per region or is this best addressed by creating two regions even if the geographic area overlaps? For example I wouldn't lump the slate and metal mines of Corris into one region - I'd create one for Corris Metal Mines and another for Corris Slate Mines.

Anyway, if feedback is that it's useless I can refine or scrap it 🙂

I've created one region so far - Bleanau (slate, no surprise there) and tagged Cwmorthin to it so the system can at least be seen working.

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With regards to North (and mid) Wales area groupings, how about grouping them roughly in accordance with Alun John Richards' book "Slate Regions of N & Mid Wales"?

However I would suggest some of his groups were further grouped together.He has 17 "regions". I would suggest combining as follows- (sorry for those who don't possess the book).

1 & 2,
3, 4
6, 7, 8, 9, 10
11, 12, 13, 14,
15 & 16,
17.

I realise this may not be perfect, any one else got ideas on that?

Hopefully Metal mines could be incorporated in smae areas?

Thank for the input John, I like the idea of condensing the AJR list a bit, if we used such detailed areas for the whole of the UK then the list would run to hundreds of areas. Perhaps (I think Nimrod mentioned this) when (if) there are more mines in the database then it can be fragmented further.

What we need to make the Major Mining Regions system work is a countrywide list, by broad geographic region (I guess), of mining regions, then we can set to assigning mines to those regions and hopefully make the mine search and location system really intuitive for people.

I'm still not sure though of the majority feeling on:

1) Whether to use the same broad geographic areas as the forum - or if this introduces the same problem of a region spanning say both the NE and NW

2) Whether to indicate just the main mineral or all minerals; or main and secondary minerals (like lumping the metal mines of the Gwydir forest (Parc, Pandora etc) in with slate mines - it would seem to me to make more sense not to do that

Once there's a good list - I'm wondering if there's scope for certain members to become regional editors with the ability to edit the lists. Would anybody like to do that for their own region?

I've still got a bit of code to write to allow that but should get that done this week.

One problem of that is that we've got areas of the UK at the moment where nobody on here is from so big bits of the UK (like the SW and Cornish tin mines) missing 😞

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I shall kick the process off tomorrow - compile a list of major slate regions (as per John's suggestion) assign some mines to those regions and see if the system of cataloguing proves useful...

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I must admit I had problems condensing the AJR list. I fund that his list seems to be based on "which railway served the quarries". Whilst in some respects this is usefull, in others, it is not! As I started to combine the areas I found that my first attempt threw up some real annomolies, for instance, Croesor kind of linked to the WHR ares by AJR, but in terms of slate would be better linked to Blaenau and Llan Ffestiniog.

When I sent the original message, I suggested that metal mines could be similarly grouped. However, I am sure that will also lead to problems, especially when, for instance, a group of metal mines spreads across a couple of slate regions!

Oh dear, what problems!

I know! It's going to be tricky. But ultimately if it can spread UK wide (??) then it would be a good way of locating mines and photos of those mines quickly.

Fingers crossed it works and gets used 🙂

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Carry on like that Simon and you'll be answering peoples messages before they have even been posted! :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :lol:

What do you consider to be the Midlands??? Would you agree that this list is comprehensive?

Warwickshire
Leicestershire
Staffordshire
West Midlsnds
Oxfordshire
Northamptonshire
Derbyshire
Nottinghamshire
Hereford and Worcester
Shropshire.

Its probably me being thick again, but i cannot see an 'edit' tag against mines that are not tagged to a region. For example, Birch's level, that has recently been added to the database but does not appear on the Derbyshire region.
The only edit tags i see are the mines i have added myself.
Should it be the person adding the mine being responsible for adding it to the relevant major region? :confused:

You should see the Edit tag now Barney. My mistake I needed to up you a security level 😉

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AHH!
Cheers Simon, you know what im like with compooters 😞

Birch's Level is in Staffordshire.
Only forum I linked it to was Midlands

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Hi LeeW

The Major Mining Regions http://www.aditnow.co.uk/uk-mining-regions/  is a bit different to the direct forum links.

We've got a fixed number of forums, which are linked from the mines, albums and photos. So Midlands covers Stafforshire.

But the Major Mining Regions are under the control of the regional editors and there will eventually be lots and lots of regions. For example there are numerous N Wales slate regions (I'm compiling at the moment) as well as metal mining regions, and they'll all eventually appear and have mines assigned to them. But they all come under the North Wales forum area.

If every Major Mining region had a forum then the forum structure would just be too complicated for words!

Hope that explains it a bit better.

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Birch's Level is in Staffordshire.

Whoops! thanks for pointing that out Lee, consider it rectified!

Thanks simonrl for clearing that up, I was wandering how a site got fixed to a specific county

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No worries, if you (or anybody else) wants a rundown of how the data is structured and the links all work then just shout.

In fact I might cobble something up as a guide...

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