Today's 'Northern Echo' carries an article which says that, because of coastal erosion, Archaeologists are in a race against time to discover the secrets of one of Britain's earliest chemical industries before it falls into the North sea.
Experts are using ropes and harnesses to survey the crumbling early-19th Century alum quarry at Loftus, near Whitby, North Yorkshire. The archaeologists have taken extensive aerial photographs of the site and are using GPS equipment for survey work which is expected to take up to eight weeks to complete.
Alum shale, which occurs in abundance around the Whitby area, was discovered in the Middle Ages to be a rich source of aluminium sulphate, and, so far, 20 alum sites have been found on the North Yorkshire coast, some dating back almost 400 years.
Alan Vickers.
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