Dear Michael,
I wonder what quantity of these chips were reused in road metalling too?
Much of the Welsh portion of the M4 is sitting on a bed of copper slag and
other waste and unusable material from the smelting industry.
When you say that you have never come across these chips, do you mean in the
actual sense or references to them elsewhere?
I guess these chips may also have been the what was ground up for
fabricating local concrete blocks, particularly that using mundic from the
turn of the 20th c. and causing problems in some constructions in Cornwall
and west Devon today.
Tehmina
On 21 October 2011 11:47, Michael Messenger <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Great Onlsow Consols is on the west side of Bodmin Moor, north of the
> village of St Breward. It opened about 1851 intending to be a copper mine
> but its major output was mundic (pyrite). It despatched over the Bodmin &
> Wadebridge Railway and that railway's records contain a good deal of
> information on shipments. From 1856 they were sending quantities of 'tin
> chips' and occasionally 'iron chips'. Shipments of tin chips, iron chips and
> mundic occurred at times on the same days so the descriptions are not
> alternatives for the same thing. Five or ten tons a day were being sent. I
> have never come across these 'chips' and wonder if anyone on the list has
> any ideas.
>
> Michael Messenger
>
--
Dr Tehmina Goskar, MA AMA
[log in to unmask]
http://tehmina.goskar.com/
Research Associate
History & Classics
Prifysgol Abertawe / Swansea University
|