Many thanks to Peter Claughton for pointing out another site which
gives an email address for one of the authors of the site on Swaledale
Smelt Mills. The following is a copy of what I sent to him.
Dear Mr Ayres,
My recent review (copy included) of your lead smelting web site on
the Mining History e-mail Discussion List stimulated quite a bit of
interest. One major concern was that you had used a very large
quantity of text which had been lifted directly from Arthur Raistrick’s
book on the subject. Moreover, there is no acknowledgement that
you have done this. Whilst I am sure that this is an oversight and that
you did not intend being guilty of plagiarism, you must be aware that
such material retains copyright for 70 years after the author’s death,
which was in 1991. You may also be interested to know that
Landmark Publishing Ltd (as successor to Moorland Publishing) still
has the rights to republish those books.
There was also a feeling that a site, like yours, for the non-specialist
interest has a valuable function. Perhaps you could restructure it and
take advantage of much more recent work which has shown some of
Arthur Raistrick’s conclusions to be wide of the mark. I give a few
examples below, but my paper:-
Gill, M.C. “Yorkshire Smelting Mills: Part 1 - The Northern Dales”
British Mining No.45 (1992), pp.111-150.
shows why the layout of mills on Old Gang Beck was not as stated.
Since 1992, we have found references to another mill, at West
Witton, and Les Tyson has shown that the middle building of the
group of three at Clints was not a smelt mill.
Other papers which you will find useful are:-
[Here follows a list nine papers on mining and smelting in the
Swaledale area]
I realise that changing your site will involve you in quite a bit of work,
but it would be worth doing as visitors to it deserve an up-to-date
version.
Yours sincerely,
--------------------------------
Mike Gill
President and Recorder of the NORTHERN MINE RESEARCH SOCIETY
Britain's foremost mining history society at:-
http://www.exeter.ac.uk/~RBurt/MinHistNet/NMRS.html
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