Recent publications by mining-history list members
1999 60 pp 8 colour 9 B&W photos, maps, SB.
Published by North Pennines Heritage Trust £3.50
Review
I had always thought Auden to be the cavers’ poet, because of his In Praise of Limestone but, it appears that Auden is also the mining historian’s poet. Auden spent his childhood in Birmingham. This gave him a fascination for what today we would call, `industrial archaeology’. He gushes enthusiastically over gasworks and industrial landscapes and writes
Tramlines and slagheaps, pieces of machinery, that was, and still is, my ideal scenery.
In another poem he fantasises with himself as a mining engineer. Family holidays took him to mining areas and his love of the underworld repeatedly appears in his works, for instance when he refers to putting carpets on his bed to give the impression of being underground. This is further emphasised by his predilection for travelling on the Underground. When Auden offered to show his friend photos of his former loves, Alan Ansen was surprised to see pictures of pumping engines, water turbines, winding engines and roller-crushers. Throughout his life Auden hankered after "high wind and driving rain, autumnal weather". He was not to be disappointed. The northern Pennines provided the landscape and the inspiration for his works which constantly refers to mines and mining.
This book will appeal not only to the northern Penniner, who will revel in his glorifying of the northern landscape, but all those with a love of literature allied with industrial archaeology.
Tony Oldham, Specialist Caving and Mining Bookseller
A5 format, 240 pages with 40 maps/illustrations.
The first 75 pages are devoted to a detailed history of lead-mining in the parishes of Halkyn and Rhosesmor on Halkyn Mountain, particularly from the early seventeenth century to recent times. There is then a chapter on quarrying. The remainder of the book concentrates on the communities that grew as a result of this mining activity, together with institutions such as schools, churches, societies and so on.
The book is available from the address given below and costs £7 (UK pounds). It will be posted for an additional £1.25p to UK addresses. Cheques should be made payable to 'Bryn Ellis', and books will be posted immediately on receipt. It will be posted overseas for £2 surface or £4 airmail, but all payments must be in UK pounds.
Bryn Ellis 1 Old Hall Cottages, Halkyn, Holywell, Flintshire. CH8 8BT Bryn@helygain.freeserve.co.uk
Review
Halkyn Mountain is an extensive tract of common land, now comprising some 2,000 acres, extending from Pantasaph to Rhosesmor. This book is devoted to the mountain as it is today (for once it was much larger), lying in Halkyn, and also partly in Northop (Caerfallwch) and Holywell.
Mr Ellis moved to Halkyn in 1978, and began, as many do, to research the history of his house, which had once belonged to the Grosvenor estate, and had been a lodging house for lead miners. This led him on to study the history of mining in the area, and the involvement in it of the local community. He has made extensive use of manuscript sources in the Flintshire Record Office, National Library of Wales, Public Record Office and elsewhere, and has relied particularly on the archives of the Grosvenor estate, many of which are in the record office at Hawarden. He has also made good use of oral tradition and fieldwork, and he clearly has an excellent knowledge of the topography of his adopted parish. The result is a remarkable piece of work—undoubtedly the best history of any place in Flintshire to be published in our time.
The early chapters are devoted to the lead-mining industry, appropriately in view of its importance in the local economy. The London Lead Company began work at Halkyn in 1694, and in 1715 an enormously rich deposit of lead ore was found in a field belonging to Sir George Wynne of Leeswood. The great wealth he gained from it caused a 'lead fever' which encouraged others to adventure in the mines. Skilled men were brought in, many of them from Derbyshire, and as a result Derbyshire names are often found in Halkyn today. Mr Ellis has made good use of the royalty accounts of the Grosvenor estate to date the periods at which the various mines flourished. He gives details of the Windy Gap mines, which were very active at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and about which very little was previously known, as well as the deep drainage levels driven into the mines from 1818 onwards. Another important industry, quarrying for limestone and chert, which is still active today, is also well covered.
Later chapters discuss the history of the communities on and around the mountain, religion and education. A section on law and order makes good use of the records of Great Sessions and Quarter Sessions, often neglected by historians, and also the reports of crimes in local newspapers. There is a long and particularly useful section on land ownership. Mr Ellis has used the tithe maps of c1840, the Inland Revenue valuation maps of c1910, and the poor-rate assessments in the parish records to provide histories of the various estates—not only the larger ones, but down to individual farms and cottages. He also gives a good history of the roads over the mountain.
My only criticism of this otherwise excellent piece of work is in the lack of illustrations. A few more half-tone illustrations, such as old photographs of the locality, would have added interest, and an index to the enormous number of names and places mentioned in the text would also have been useful. The title itself is really a misnomer, for the book deals with an area larger than Halkyn Mountain alone. The fine church at Halkyn by John Douglas, illustrated on the front cover, is not on the mountain at all!
C J WILLIAMS
(orginally published in the Journal of the Flintshire Historical Society)
This book is the result of over ten years research and study and will, hopefully, stand up as the definitive work on this topic. The book published in November, 1998, ISBN 0 9533643 0 5. A5 300gms laminated softback, 320pp on 110gms stitched art paper, over 30 b&w photos, 50 maps, diagrams, index, and bibliography. Publication price of £15 including postage in UK, overseas add £3 postage, Payment in non-sterling add £5 to cover conversion charges.
From: Hudson History, Procter House, Kirkgate, Settle, N.Yorks.
http://www.users.daelnet.co.uk/hudson-history/index.html
Review
Where is Lunesdale you may well ask? Answer, a part of North Yorkshire through which the River Lune and it’s tributaries flow. Often referred to as Lonsdale, the Lune Valley is fine walking country but I never appreciated its coal mining potential during my perambulations.
The author begins by describing in some detail the geology of the area. The coal measures appear in seams which vary from 1 inch to 10 feet in width with seams as small as 18 inches being mined extensively, with great difficulty.
The chapter on the History of Mining suggests that coal mining dates back to the Romans. The earliest reference to coal mining at Lunesdale is at Wegber, circa AD 1520 in the parish of Halton. The bulk of this book concerns coal mining in the 16th to 19th centuries. The literature on this topic is sparse but the author has located a gem: The George Smith Diaries, dating from 1815. Smith was the Hornby Castle Estates manager and his jottings have proved to be an invaluable record of the estate’s coal mining activities and without it much of the detail of the day to day running of the estate and coal mining activities of others in the vicinity during this period would never have seen the light of day.
The main body of the book is a detailed account of the mines in the area: Caton, Littledale, North Quernmore, Lancaster, South Quernmore, Wennington, Bentham, Mewith, Greystone Gill, Ingleton and Burton etc. Here we benefit from the author’s ten years of research. A combination of perusing old ordnance survey maps, examining local and national archives and field work has produce a welter of information on the mines of the area. Even though many of the mines were shallow, problems with ground water meant that the miners frequently had to resort to soughs or drainage levels.
The final chapter on the Families Involved in the Lunedale Coal Mining raises some fascinating questions. Is the Edward Cookson (or Collison) who rented the Coyle mines in 1565 related to the Collinson family, still living in the area and who worked the mines at Megges well into the 19th century? A search of parish registers turned up an un-named miner buried in 1663 and a collier, Christopher Johnson married in 1769. In fact, the surname Johnson occurs quite often in connection with coal mining in this area, with the last being recorded at Wray Wood Mine in the 1870s. If they are the same family line, this shows an involvement of over 200 years in coal.
In view of the wealth of information contained in this book and in the absence of any standard academic work on this topic it will surely be the definitive work on this area for many years to come.
Tony Oldham
Cultural Resource Management, Volume 21, Issue No. 7 (1998)
Published by the US Department of the Interior, National Park Service.
Although this themed issue of Cultural Resource Management covers the vestiges of mining across the northern half of the American continent, from Mexico to Canada and the Alaskan north, it addresses many problems which will be familiar to mining historians on this side of the Atlantic.
In his introductory paper Robert Spude emphasises the diverse nature of American mining heritage, and that is evident in the content of this issue, but points out that there is more to mining history than the physical presence of mines and mills. He highlights the need to examine 'the great cultural diversity, and the resulting social and political fabric' of mining. Mining history, he says, needs new direction - 'There is a need for new points of view and historical methodologies.'
This man is speaking a language that I can understand!
The papers presented in this issue are a catalogue of successes in conserving, protecting and managing mining hertitage over the last ten years. I am particularly impressed by the work done in preserving the Mayflower Mill at Silverton, Colorado. Perhaps a project of this scale - retaining a complete mid 20th century flotation mill, whilst fulfilling the statutory requirements for contaminated land reclamation - are something we in the UK can only dream of but it shows that, even in the most litigious of countries, the determined efforts of local groups can challenge the perceived role of public protection agencies.
Whilst the vast areas and public control of National Parks in the US might suggest to us an ideal opportunity for the preservation of mining landscapes they do bring problems of their own. Free public access to wilderness areas presents a threat of litigation over accidents involving open mine entrances, the remedy for which is generally total closure, something which, thank goodness, has not yet become standard practiceUse of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at E:\listplex\SYSTEM\SCRIPTS\filearea.cgi line 455,
Other problems encountered are more familar to the European mining historian. We can appreciate the work of Brick, Thorson and Poirer in mapping the un-documented Jinny Hill Mines in Connecticut; and the identification and proper handling of mine resident bat populations is a familiar, sometimes sensitive, subject; as is the interpretation of museum sites like Newgate Prison and Copper Mine, Connecticut.
The closing paper by Homer Milford, on the threats to American mining heritage, raises the point that the accelerating loss of mining sites is 'not because of the gradual effects of wind, weather and vandals. but primarily due to well-intended government programs, professional mining-orientated artifact collectors, and new open pit mines.' Whilst we might regard the collectors as vandals, and in the Irish Republic they would probably be regarded as criminals, it is the similarity between government programmes in the US and those which are gathering momentum here which catches my attention. Milford, as a co-ordinator for one of the US programmes, is well placed to put this common problem in perspective.
America's Mining Heritage is useful reading for those keen to compare progress in mining history management on the other side of the Atlantic with experience at home. The electronic version is accessible on the web at URL http://www.cr.nps.gov/crm Go to the Index of Past Issues - Vol. 21, No. 7 - for the contents list, but you will need Adobe Acrobat to read the text.
Peter Claughton
Peter Claughton / Dept. of History, University of Exeter
P.F.Claughton@exeter.ac.uk
Last modified 12 December 2000