Hello John,
Your example of "float and shoad ores" are not strictly alluvial
deposits - being lumps of ore in the sub-soil which have been
weathered from the vein. They were, therefore, likely to be important
in the early stages of hushing - both as a means of prospecting and
getting ore.
As Martin Roe says, examples of working ore from becks are
common. Likewise, slags were recovered downstream of smelt mills.
I've never come across anything in the Yorkshire Dales to suggest that
deposits of alluvial lead were worked like those of tin on Dartmoor
etc. I have always supposed that this was because the hills are high
and the valley bottoms very steep - thus any lead ore tended to be
washed away.
Mark Macklin and Karen Edward Hudson (et al) - based at the
School of Geography, University of Leeds - have been working on
sediment-borne heavy metal storage in the Yorkshire Ouse Basin.
They have found lead in that area which presumably came from
Swaledale, Wensleydale and Nidderdale.
Regards
Mike Gill
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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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