The two David's messages crossed my last posting.

David Kitching's photo looks very similar to the sandstone crushing wheel
arrangement on Ilkley Moor.

David Williams is right about the folly of simple models - life is indeed
somewhat more complicated. I hope that what I had written has not been
interpreted as suggesting otherwise - nothing was further from my mind.
Such simplistic ideas surely went out of vogue over 20 years ago.

Derbyshire is different (at last people there seem to be realising it) -
David makes an interesting comment about Ashford North Side c1780 that "By
then more ore was being produced by hillocking than by deep mining". I am
fascinated by the apparant profligacy of Derbyshire miners - what were they
doing? Similar work was going on elsewhere, but have we underestimated the
scale of it? Somehow I doubt it.

David Kiernan wrote of the smiddum revolution in the late C16th when cavers
were able to produce prodigious amounts of ore from old dumps using the
newly introduced sieve. Others have written that Derbyshire smelters could
not smelt fines. I am sure that Kiernan is right, sure that the belief on
smelting fines is wrong (or at least a misinterpretation of what was going
on), but why have these broad trends not been identified elsewhere? Were
the Derbyshire mines just so rich that it was easier not to bother
recovering smaller pieces of ore?

Peter Claughton wrote that in the late 19th century there were many mines,
with good reserves, where increased mechanisation was the answer to falling
prices. There were many more for which closure was the answer. The others
had left it rather late. Prudent mines had been mechanising from the early
19th century, got the profits and were worked out by the late 19th century.

The belief that "other mines, e.g. Frongoch, or Devon Great Consols, turned
to alternative products, zinc and arsenic respectively, as their saviour"
cannot pass without comment. God bless rust and the Boll Weevil. Yes, they
kept the mines limping on, but they were only viable because earlier
development work for lead and copper etc had proved significant reserves of
very low value minerals. Such deposits would not have paid the cost of
sinking new shafts and driving crosscuts etc. Presumably the mines which
benefited were also those with reasonably good links to markets, via road,
river or railway.

Mike