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Buried within this, is a reference to underground mine heritage - with a medium priority. Quite what EH think they can do, and what skills they have to progress this, I shudder to think.. however, here is the link - its about 10 pages and the mining bit is in the middle somewhere..
I will happily respond through my IHBC connections if anyone has any sensible suggestions to make about it - EH are requesting formal comment and response to their proposals. It worries me that undergound heritage is being included without any consulation with people who know what they are doing, and why.. Could we put forward an AN response?
Our mining heritage is of great significance and this is reflected in the protection of many surface remains and complexes; below ground is a different matter and we need to provide exemplars of how to assess the significance and develop appropriate protection.
Without actually knowing English Heritages 'remit' I would say they were out of there depth here.
We all know that the quality of rock varies wildly from mine to mine, where it is bad I suppose they would not consider preservation. On the other hand where it is better, they would have public liability considerations for access if that where the general direction of their plans! Who knows what they are thinking? Maybe it is better to hear a little more form their side before a response from AN.
Peter Claughton, the NAMHO Conservation Officer, is already aware of this document. It is likely that NAMHO will make a response to this.
Peter's contact details can be found on the NAMHO website [web link] on the 'Research' page.
There is a set of notes from English Heritage to accompany the consultation document at [web link].
EH aren't suggesting by this that they'll be going out and doing underground conservation work. What they are suggesting is that a better knowledge base and understanding of underground remains is needed, from which can come criteria for identifying important sites and features where some form of protection would be desirable. EH are well aware they need local knowledge to achieve this and AFAIK are already engaged with NAMHO and its member societies towards this end.
Down here in Cornwall, there have been many attempts to get sites not plugged with meters of concrete but fitted with Bat Castles.
Human access is totally out of the question and if fitted with man access, the cages are often welded shut or the grilles been permanently held in place with permanent anchor bolts.
I think even the most professional historians with reams of integrity, experience and safety qualifications would be exceedingly hard pressed to swing any sort of access whatsoever.
I am personally working with a member of the council to try and insure that a very interesting mine does not get plugged. However, bat access will be the factor that swings it and if anyone goes entering a bat habitat (or anything fitted with a bat grille) will get knobbled for vandalism/eco-vandalism, I imagine.
I personally consider those who inhibit human access to an interesting, unique and essential part of local history to be the vandals.
But seeing the sorts of hillbilly who do make the decisions, you probably shouldn't expect too much sense from their tiny minds.
This is THE central issue in Cornwall IMO.
Isn't there a risk here or am I being over cautious that as soon as we get involved with EH and the like .. they will use NAMHO and its affiliated groups to find out the important underground stuff then it will get "protected" such that only the privelaged few or nobody at all gets to see it.... All this protection (not just in mining but in IA) seems to often result in site access being restricted on the grounds of protection whilst they get around to doing something which never happens such that the stuff ends up nearly falling down or where it gets conserved it never gets maintained and just ends up run down again... For instance are EH going to hand over management of underground stuff to NAMHO where it was decided that stuff should be "protected" in future and would NAMHO fight the explorers corner if if push came to shove re restricted access to so called protected sites?
I think you're being over-cautious, ICLOK. None of the protection that EH can put on a site has legal power to prevent access to it as far as I was aware, any access restriction would be down to the owner's wishes. EH only control underground access where they own the site, so I fail to see how NAMHO helping EH to produce a list of important underground sites and compile criteria for what requires protection is going to result in loss of access to a site other than a landowner getting stroppy over a site being listed/scheduled after this work has been done. There are mines I can think of where the existing ancient monument scheduling covers the underground remains (which include some very fragile features) but access restriction consists of having to call in at a farm to pick up the gate key.
One could argue that the existence of a list of important sites would encourage visits to them and hence the potential for damage to the site or an accident underground, but something along those lines has been in the public domain for five years now (the Lead Legacy report). Nothing untoward has happened to any of the sites listed that could be attributed to the information being freely available has occurred to the best of my knowledge.
I'm afraid my experiences of EH at the Brunel Thames Tunnel soured me on them rather. They held the job up for months, cost various third parties very large sums of ( tax-payers and commuters ) money in the process, and the real results achieved were highly dubious.
as for the bat issue, bats and badgers have more legal rights and protection than a disabled lesbian single parent in a Labour marginal ( actually these last seem to be less in favour since NuLab discovered that votes, like so many other things, can be printed cheaply and in bulk in Pakistan and India ).
Yep, another one for the Quango cutter.
Also chuck in some river navigation authorities and the Environment Agency for good neasure!
I am running a test case for mine preservation in the Weardale, at a mine we've leased, documenting archaeology, industrial heritage, modern exploration and preservation, mineralogy, geology, social history etc., and its getting great local support.
NAMHO have been involved with EH in developing "The Research Framework for the Archaeology of the Extractive Industries in England (Mining and Quarrying) "
One hopes that our interests will be given due prominence in the framework.
my experience of EH is that they are often interested to an unhealthy degree, in empire building and excluding third parties they don't control.
They are essentially beaurocrats, with a strong dose of risk averse HSE into the bargain.
they are also staffed to an unhealty extent with the sort of people who see no problem in imposing costs on third parties in pursuit of their own agenda, and often see no logical limitation on the extent to which those agenda apply.
I've already said this but I'll say it again - this document is EH setting out the areas they admit they don't know enough about to make judgements on the merits of a site or feature. The NAMHO project is already up and running and will go a long way towards providing that framework by pooling the knowledge bases of its member societies. At the moment that knowledge is fragmented and often regionalised but if the project goes as intended we'll end up with regional and temporal differences in mining remains and former practices properly documented, and the ability to make informed judgements on what's nationally and regionally important.
Now to play Devil's advocate for all of you putting the boot into EH, let's consier the scenario of abolishing them completely. Who now oversees the protection of important sites and buildings - those bastions of effiency and impartiality, local authorities? How many of the industrial sites and buildings we might feel are important will disappear either through oversight or de-listing/scheduling in this brave new world?
This forum has its fair share of keyboard warriors, and it's not unique in that respect. It's all so easy to put a body like EH down, not so easy to pull your finger out and find a way to use powerful bodies to our advantage.
not so easy to pull your finger out and find a way to use powerful bodies to our advantage.
which I am confident is what the NAMHO working group will do.
I don't wish top appear to be completely negative about them, but my honest opinion of EH is that they would be best employed doing what they do best, which is designing and commissioning high-profile tourist attractions at sites like Whitby Abbey.