Going back to the 'railway' discussion for a minute.  This list has a broad
remit - all aspects of mining, including transport systems - and these can
be important elements in the mining landscape.

The was brief discussion a while back on the protection of mining features
in the Keweenaw Peninsula, Michigan USA, which appeared to focus on the
preservation of certain sites and structures rather than looking at the
overall landscape.  It happens in the UK when we preserve a particular
structure or site, usually with sound reasoning on its historical merit,
whilst allowing related features around it to be destroyed.

There are however certain areas within the UK where mining was of prime
importance in the formation of the landscape we see today - and I talk here
in relation to non-ferrous metal mining in the uplands of England and Wales
with which I'm most familiar - in which all the features are interrelated.
Some of the smaller areas, like Grassington Moor in the Yorkshire Dales
National Park, are afforded some protection but others are degraded
piecemeal. That is happening in the Cambrian Mountain area of mid Wales
despite its being recognised and designated as a Landscape of Outstanding
Historic Interest. Such a designation may in the longer term provide some
degree of protection for a unique pattern of scattered mines and mining
related settlements but it is a level of protection with no statutory
obligations, and is apparently unique to Wales. In England it is necessary
to rely on inclusion within a National Park or designation as an Area of
Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and the latter can be something of a misnomer.

Such a designated AONB is the Tamar Valley on the Devon / Cornwall border.
It is an area which provides probably the best example of a historic mining
landscape in the UK, spanning at least seven hundred years of mining
activity, making the Tamar what it is today an area of outstanding but not
necessarily natural beauty. In it can be found the physical evidence for the
beginnings of large scale, capital intensive mining in the late medieval
period through to the final attempts at diversification and the working of
polymetallic deposits in the first half of this century. Virtually all the
features in the landscape are man made and mining related.  From the
woodland - managed as a fuel supply for lead/silver smelting - through the
settlement pattern, to the transport infrastructure - water, including
canal, based until the arrival of the railways in the early 20th century -
it was influenced by mining.  The structures of mining are in some cases
preserved and still dominate the skyline but the evidence for ore
preparation in particular has already been targetted for elimination in the
reclamation of 'derelict' land.

The designation of an area like the Tamar Valley as an AONB suggests that it
is a natural landscape and provides an excuse for the elimination of
manmade, mining features.  What is required, in my opinion, is a form of
designation which recognises and gives precedence to the manmade elements in
a historic, in this case a historic mining, landscape.

Your ideas, opinions and experiences please.

Peter

______________________________________________

Peter Claughton, Blaenpant Morfil, Rosebush, Clynderwen, 
Pembrokeshire, Wales  SA66 7RE.    
Tel. 01437 532578; Fax. 01437 532921; Mobile 0831 427599

University of Exeter - Department of History
School of Historical, Political and Sociological Studies
E-mail:  [log in to unmask]

Co-owner - mining-history e-mail discussion list.  
See http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/mining-history/  for details.

Mining History Pages - http://www.exeter.ac.uk/~pfclaugh/mhinf/

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