Malkera

Malkera is a census town in Baghmara CD block in Dhanbad Sadar subdivision of Dhanbad district in the Indian state of Jharkhand.
Geography.
Location.
Malkera is located at . It has an average elevation of 183 metres (600 feet).
Malkera is constituted of places like Choutidih, Lal bungalow, New Colony, Trigunait basti, Green basti. The nearest market place is Katras which is at 15 minutes drive and nearly 3.5 km in distance. It has well maintained green patched area managed by Tata Steel. Malkera is at a distance of 20 km from Dhanbad town and 40 km from Bokaro.
Overview.
The region shown in the map is a part of the undulating uplands bustling with coalmines. The Damodar River, the most important river of the Chota Nagpur Plateau, flows along the southern border. The area beyond the Damodar was once a part of Dhanbad district but was transferred to Bokaro district in 2001. Bulk of the area shown in the map is part of Baghmara (community development block). In Baghmara CD block 67% of the population lives in rural areas and 33% in urban areas. The block has 18 census towns, all marked in the map, except Rajganj, which is shown in the map for the northern portion of the district. A portion of Dhanbad Municipal Corporation extends into the region till around Katras. The places in the DMC area are marked as neighbourhoods. Most of the DMC area is shown in the maps for the central and southern portions of the district. Four operational areas of BCCL operate fully within the region – Katras Area, Govindpur Area, Barora Area and Block II Area. The Mahuda sector of Western Jharia Area also operates in the region.
Demographics.
As per the 2011 Census of India, Malkera had a total population of 8,232 of which 4,345 (53%) were males and 3,887 (47%) were females. Population below 6 years was 973. The total number of literates in Malkera was 5,904 (81.33% of the population over 6 years).
 India census, Malkera had a population of 9,804. Males constituted 54% of the population and females 46%. Malkera had an average literacy rate of 64%, higher than the national average of 59.5%: male literacy was 75%, and female literacy was 52%. In Malkera, 14% of the population was under 6 years of age.
Economy.
Tata Steel has coal mines at Malkera. It also developed labor township here.
Infrastructure.
Malkera has an area of 2.56 km2. It is 25 km from the district headquarters Dhanbad. There is a railway station at Malkera. Buses are available in the town. It has 8 km roads and both closed and open drains. The two major sources of protected water supply are tap water from treated sources and hand pumps. There are 1,438 domestic electric connections and 12 road light points. Amongst the educational facilities, it has 4 primary schools, 4 middle schools and 1 secondary school. Senior secondary school and general degree college is available at Katras 4 km away. Amongst the recreational and cultural facilities, it has a stadium and an auditorium/ community hall.
Transport.
There is a station at Malkera on the Gomoh-Adra line.
Education.
Since there is no English medium school situated here, children have to go either to D.A.V, Sijua or DE'NOBLI which are at a distance of 5 km to 6 km from here. The only high school situated here is Bhubneswar Trigunait Memorial high school(Hindi medium).
Other places.
The Parasnath forest region is just 25 km from the town of Malkera


Edgar Rickard

Edgar Rickard (January 17, 1874 – January 21, 1951) was a mining engineer and lifelong confidant of U.S. President Herbert Hoover.
Biography.
Family.
He was the son of mining engineer Reuben Rickard, and the brother of Thomas Rickard, a mining engineer and one-time mayor of Berkeley, California.
He was born on January 17, 1874 in Pontgibaud, France.
Carrier.
For many years around the turn of the century, he was the editor of a mining journal in London.
Diary.
Rickard maintained a diary. Due to his close connection with President Herbert Hoover, Rickard's diary has become an important source of information about Hoover.
Death.
Rickard died on January 21, 1951 in San Francisco, California.


Ingleton Coalfield

The Ingleton Coalfield is in North Yorkshire, close to its border with Lancashire in north-west England. Isolated from other coal-producing areas, it is one of the smallest coalfields in Great Britain.
Mining is known to have taken place here since the early 17th century though it was the middle of the 19th century before the coalfield was further developed.
Geography and geology.
The Ingleton Coalfield is about six miles long by four miles wide lying mostly in the parish of Ingleton extending into the neighbouring parishes of Burton in Lonsdale and Thornton-in-Lonsdale. The coalfield terminates at the South Craven fault. The coal measures are shallow and represent the lowest layers in the Pennine coal measures sequence. The earliest coal mining occurred along the River Greta where Four Foot and Six Foot seams outcrop. Most deep mining was at New Ingleton Pit sunk in 1913. Its sinking led to the discovery of the Ten Foot seam (house and steam coal) at 127 yards, and the Nine Foot seam (steam and house coal) at 134 yards. Beneath them are the Four Foot seam (house, gas and coking coal) at 233 yards, the Three Foot or Yard seam (house and gas coal) at 236 yards and the Six Foot seam (steam and house coal) at 260 yards. Commercially viable deposits of fireclay lay under the Three Foot seam and pottery clay beneath the Six Foot seam used to make Ingleton Bricks.
History.
The first mention of coal extraction is in the will of Richard Lowther, Lord of the manor of Ingleton in 1645. The Lowthers who had interests in coal elsewhere took over the manor in 1605. In 1680 the colliery was leased to their relatives the Walkers. The lease was questioned by Henry Bouch who was lord of the manor in 1678, when pits were sunk at Bull Ing. There were other pits at Raygill and Faccon. In 1701, Dr Thomas Moore of Lancaster, married into the Walker family and became sole owner of Ingleton Colliery in 1711. It was managed by Cuthbert Kidd until 1730. The Foxcrofts took over the lease of the Burton and Ingleton Collieries.
Ownership passed to the Sergeantsons for four generations. George John Sergeantson found the collieries had been neglected in 1826 and employed Joseph Hunter as colliery manager. To improve the colliery he demolished the water-wheel at Parkfoot, installed the first steam engine at Ingleton and built a house at New Winning where he sank a new shaft for a pit that was worked from 1834 to 1857.
A new colliery was started at Wilson Wood to mine the Four Foot, Yard, and Six Foot seams. Its shaft was 180 feet deep, and the coal seams were inclined at 16 degrees. A steam engine pumped 560 gallons of water a minute from the shaft and 20,000 cubic feet of air circulated through the workings. On a 400-yard tramway, trains of seven tubs were pulled by ponies. There was a 100-yard inclined plane rising at an angle of 1 in 3. In October 1866 water from Wilson Brook flooded the mine which was abandoned. Workers moved to find work in Burnley and Barnsley and some were killed in the Oaks explosion of 12 December 1866.
In 1872 four experienced miners sank two new shafts at Newfield and the colliery was bought by William Bracewell, a Lancashire mill-owner to supply his mills in Barnoldswick and Colne. He began draining the flooded Wilsons Wood pit and started brick production. He employed 120 men and coal was transported by horse and cart to the Midland Railway sidings from where half the coal went to his mills and the rest was used locally. After Bracewell's death the colliery suffered difficulties and was offered for sale by the trustees who had turned off the pumps at Wilsons Wood.
James Barker began working the pits on a small scale to supply the local market but was beset by litigation. Before his death from a heart attack on Ingleton Station in 1913, he had sold his interests in Ingleton Colliery to a syndicate, the New Ingleton Colliery Company. Two new shafts were sunk and the Ten Foot and Nine Foot seams were found. In 1926 the colliery employed 350 men. The New Village was constructed. Coal mining caused subsidence and the company was unable to meet the cost of compensation and the colliery closed in 1930.
List of workings.
Raygill SD678715
Raygill was first documented in 1736 although it may have been worked as early as the 15th century. Coal outcropped on Aspland Beck and the seams were worked from shallow pits. Coal from the working was pulled by donkeys over metal plates laid over the fields. Thomas Tatham bought the mining rights in 1835 and opened Low Raygill Colliery taking coal from the abandoned pillars. He dug a pit opposite the Wilson Wood Colliery to exploit the Six Foot seam in 1842 shortly before he was made bankrupt. The mining rights were bought by the Sergeantsons. Raygill was the original Ingleton Colliery.
Faccon SD666715
Faccon was a very early colliery in Bentham. Coal outcropped by the River Greta and could be worked in shallow pits on Ingleton and Bentham Moors. The pits were worked by turntrees. The workings were levelled and landscaped in 1836.
Bull Ing SD681716
Two shafts were sunk at Bull Ing in 1674 into outcrops of the Four Foot and Six Foot seams, they were hand pits. Bull Ing was known as Dr Moore's coalfield.
Gin Pit SD675720
The pit was located at Gin Meadow in Parkfoot. Name evidence and the first ordnance survey map suggests that the coal was raised using horse gins. For many years there was a large water wheel that drove pumps in a drainage shaft, and it was here that Joseph Hunter built the first steam engine for Sergeantson.
New Winning Pit SD691718
Stable End Pit was sunk in 1831 and hit the Four Foot seam at a depth of 80 yards. A 40 hp steam engine drove the pumps, and a 4 hp engine raised the coal. A second shaft was sunk next to new Winning House in 1834. It reached the Six Foot seam at a depth of 120 yards. The shaft was subsequently used as the upcast shaft by Wilson Wood Colliery. Haulage roads were driven from west to east along the strike of the coal which was worked up-dip by pillar and stall. In 1844 a drift was cut into the Four Foot seam. New Winning Pit was prone to flooding but firedamp was not a problem. New Winning employed about 100 men and boys. By 1853 it was decided to sink new shafts in Wilsons Wood.
Moorgarth Collieries SD699718
The coal at Moorgath was shallow, heavily faulted and troubled by water. It was close to the railway. It worked Yard Coal and the Four Foot seam from 1828 until 1880. Some reports of a Nine Foot seam suggest that the heavy faulting had breached into the seam or there was localised thickening of the Six Foot seam. The 1870 Newfield shafts attempted to mine the Four Foot seam and Bottom Coal (the Six Foot seam) but were not profitable.
Wilson Wood Colliery SD682721
The first shafts were sunk in 1854 just as the railway came to Ingleton. The shafts passed through the Four Foot seam and below it the Six Foot seam at 130 yards. The seam dipped to the north at a slope of 1 in 4. A 135m cross-measure drift was dug horizontally to connect with the Four Foot seam in 1858. Both seams were worked. Wilsons Wood was troubled by water ingress. A serious flood in December 1865 was followed by closure in October 1866. The only other employment in Ingleton was at the cotton mill which had burnt down two years earlier and reopened after the Cotton Famine in 1867. Men from Wilsons Wood sought work in Barnsley. After a change of ownership, extra steam engines were bought. One from Coates Old Mill in Barnoldswick. Pumping out took seven months and 58 million gallons of water was removed while 480 gallon per second continued to flow in. The mine was reopened.
Barkers Pits at Dolands SD693714
Two shafts were sunk at Dolands in 1854, and two further pits in 1867. After 1888 the coal lease was granted to Edward Danson and James Barker who were a partnership trading as "Ingleton Collieries", their first shaft was sunk 58 ft to the Four Foot seam, and coal was raised in July 1888. Two other shafts were dug- thought to be the "Nellie Pit" and the "Richard Pit". "Nellie Pit" was 6 ft in diameter and 22 yds deep, "Richard Pit" was 5 ft in diameter and 22 yards deep. These worked Cannel Coal and the Six Foot seam. The partnership dissolved in 1890, and Barker worked the colliery alone and union free until 1895 when he formed the partnership with William Haigh. This was only ever a small pit and it is speculated that he was exploiting collapsed pillars from worked out regions. He bought the clay concession from the Lord of the Manor and opened the brickworks at adjacent Great Milner, and a tramway connecting his interests to the LMS rail line at Moorgarth. After further litigation in 1903 he sold the coal lease. At various court appearances the history was retold with subtle difference in the dates and the facts.
Old Pit Working
The coal lease of the Old Pit was bought in 1903 by "Ingleton Collieries Ltd" and the manager continued to be James Barker. Nellie Pit and Richard Pit were mined as the company changed its name to Inglenook and made test borings and acquired further coal rights. The rights passed to the New Ingleton Collieries Company which mined it as Old Pit. They sunk a new 22 yard deep 6 feet diameter shaft at Dolands to the Six Foot seam. In 1911 the company worked the Six Foot seam westward to a north–south fault. A cross-measures drift was dug northwards to intersect the Three Foot and Four Foot coals and between 1911 and 1914, 45 acres was worked. A Schiele fan for ventilation on Nellie Pit injected 5000 cubic feet of air a minute. In 1911 illumination was provided by naked lights. Old Pit closed in October 1914.
New Ingleton Colliery SD695723
A new pit was started in December 1909. The No 2 pit was sunk alongside the A65 road starting in summer 1912. Its 14 feet diameter shaft was 247 yards deep. Water was struck at 33 yards. Pumps working at 32,000 gallons an hour were needed to drain it, and the shaft walls were lined with segmented iron castings known as tubbing to prevent water ingress. At 124 yards and 131 yards the Ten Foot and the Nine Foot seams were discovered, the first time these seams has been found on the heavily faulted coalfield.
Sinking continued and the predicted Four Foot and Yard seams were not found. The Six Foot seam was found at 247 yards and limited working started 26 September 1914. Sinking No 1 pit (the upcast shaft) started in July 1913 and terminated on reaching 156 yards at the Ten Foot seam in November 1914. It allowed coal to be recovered from the Ten Foot but left the Six Foot seam without a second point of egress which was a legal requirement. Miners wages at up to 16s  0d a day were above the industry minimum of 9s  9d. Miners were attracted to Ingleton from other coalfields and the New Village housing estate was built. Screens were built alongside the company's sidings. The Ten Foot seam was excellent steam and house coal but was small in area. It was worked by driving two headings east and west from the shaft along the strike. It dipped 1 in 5 towards the north. Barren ground was reached 100 yards to the east and 225 yards to the east: gates to the north went barren within 100 yards, and gates to the south within 250 yards. The rest of the seam had been washed out before the red rock measures were deposited. The coal was worked out in 1918. Cross measure drifts were cut to the Nine Foot seam but this was lower quality coal and difficult to work and it too was abandoned in 1918.
No 1 Pit was deepened to the Four Foot and the Yard seams at 233 and 236 yards. On reaching the Six Foot seam production recommenced producing 2200 tons a week. The northern boundary was limited by the Hollintree fault and altogether 45 acres of coal was recovered. The seam was worked until September 1921 when the colliery closed. It reopened in 1924 with new finance and working commenced on the Four Foot seam which was by far the largest, stretching from the Hollintreee fault to an unnamed fault in the south. Coal was taken from 140 acres before it was depleted in 1934. Some success was had on the Yard Coal but the face collapsed in October 1935 and the colliery closed for good in 1936. Some men worked until 1940, salvaging equipment. The colliery was abandoned 16 August 1940.
References.
Notes
Bibliography


Pabst Mine disaster

The Pabst Mine disaster was an incident that occurred on September 24, 1926 at the Pabst Iron Mine in Ironwood, Michigan, United States, when a mine shaft containing 46 iron ore miners unexpectedly collapsed. Three miners were killed in the initial collapse, while 43 survivors were left trapped for 129 hours. The subsequent rescue of the trapped miners, with the last miner removed from the rubble at 11.22p.m. on the fifth day, made national headlines in the United States.
Background.
The Pabst mine was named after the Milwaukee brewer Frederick Pabst, who owned the mining lease briefly in the late 19th century. It passed through a number of corporate owners before being purchased by the Oliver Iron Mining Company, which became a subsidiary of the United States Steel Corporation in 1901. Three years later, the company added another shaft to the mine, named "G" shaft, which would become one of their most productive. This new shaft was dug on a sixty-four degree incline towards the north, and was by 18 feet 8 inches. It descended nearly through quartz slate and, for safety, its walls were lined with concrete and wood planks held in place with steel. The mine elevator that was installed on rails along one of its walls could travel as fast as per minute.
The area around Ironwood, Michigan had received significant rainfall throughout September 1926. A source claims that as much as 11 inches of rain fell prior to the mine disaster on September 24. The rains were so intense that the county fair closed early, a local river flooded, high school football games were canceled, and work came to a halt on local building projects. Some of this rain would likely have run down the mine shaft and seeped into cracks along its length.
After the accident, mine employees claimed that there had been a series of problems with the shaft before the collapse. On a number of occasions the shaft walls bowed out due to settling in the rock, bending the rails upon which the mine elevator rode. When this happened, the elevator would derail, damaging the steel sets that held the concrete and wood planks lining the walls. Repairs would quickly be done, and the shaft would again enter operation.
Collapse.
On September 24, 1926, 43 men were inside the mine, and three electricians began traveling down the shaft in the elevator. Sources disagree whether it was a failure of the elevator or the result of falling rock, but in either case the elevator fell down the shaft, killing its three occupants. A rock fall then sealed the shaft above the eighth level of the mine, trapping 40 miners there, two on the 13th and another on the 18th.
The miners, now trapped and unsure when and if help would arrive, attempted to ration the remaining food from their lunches. However, the food ran out before the second day, and the only nourishment they had left was tea they made from birch bark scraped from the wooden planks lining the mine walls and heated with the miners' carbide lamps.
Rescue.
Soon after the collapse, a miner named Alfred Maki descended the shaft and heard signals from the men trapped inside. Over the next five days, rescuers began digging from the neighboring "H" shaft to try to reach the trapped miners. They descended first to nearly the bottom of "H" shaft, where a tunnel connected the two shafts, and then began working their way up the ladderway of "G" shaft. On the fifth day, they were able to reach the trapped miners. According to news reports, the first rescuer to reach them asked what they wanted most, and when they replied that they wanted tobacco, he supplied them with a cigar.
When news reached Ironwood that the miners had been found, much of the population rushed to the mine, including families of the trapped miners. As many as 5,000 people were waiting at the top of the shaft when the miners came in small groups up the elevator in "H" shaft. The miners, who had been trapped in the mine for 129 hours, were transported to a local hospital before being released. The story of the rescue made newspaper headlines across the country.
Commemoration.
Residents of the area have established an organization to advocate for the establishment of a Miners Memorial Heritage Park. This organization continues to honor the memory of the mine disaster.


Torre de Moncorvo mines

The iron mines of Torre de Moncorvo are located in the municipality of Torre de Moncorvo, Portugal.
History.
The mines were the subject of primitive exploitation from the Iron Age. to the end of the 18th century.
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The first experience of proto-industrial exploration took place in the 1790s and, from the 1870s on, interest in mining concessions in Moncorvo was renewed, with 35 concessions. In 1897 most of the concessions were acquired by the Syndicat Franco-Iberique Company, which began "methodical and systematic prospecting work with 1396 chemical analyses".
Between 1930 and 1934, galleries were opened in Mua, and 15,279 tons of ore were extracted, according to the Minas Bulletin. The exploration and exploration work of the Companhia Mineira de Moncorvo continued until 1942. After World War II the concessions of this German company were made by the Portuguese Government and, from 1957, that Company was managed by Exploration & Bergba of the Thyssen group, assuming the designation of Minacorvo, Lda.
That year the pilot wash was built and, in 1976, Minacorvo was dissolved and its concessions were integrated into Ferrominas SARL, then Ferrominas EP, ending with the creation of EDM EP, from 1986.
Between 1951 and 1976 1,796,535 tonnes of iron ore from Moncorvo were exported.
Torre de Moncorvo iron mines were the largest employer in the region in the 1950s, employing 1,500 miners.
Ore exploration was suspended in 1983, with the bankruptcy of Ferrominas, EP.
It is considered to be one of the largest iron ore deposits in Europe.
Reactivation.
The torre de Moncorvo iron mines had no activity for 37 after the bankruptcy of Ferrominas, EP.
A new concession was handed over to Aethel Mining (formerly MTI, Moncorvo Iron) in 2016
Exploration activities began on 19 June 2020 and Aethel Mining estimates that it will extract around 300 000 tonnes of iron ore by the end of 2020.


Brynrefail, Gwynedd

Brynrefail () is a small village in Gwynedd, Wales which straddles the A4244 road roughly between Deiniolen and Llanberis.
The village is in the Arfon (UK Parliament constituency) and the Gwynedd Council Ward of Penisarwaun.
Brynrefail stands a short walk from the northern shore of Llyn Padarn lake. Afon Rhythallt leaves the lake at this point becoming Afon Seiont downstream at Pont Rhythallt, Llanrug before meandering its historic way to the sea.
The main street (now quiet after the by-pass was built in the 1960s) is mainly traditional terraced housing, the village Post Office, and the village's sole chapel which is still in use.
The village is policed from Llanberis and has a dedicated Community Beat Manager.
History.
The roots of the village are in the 19th-century slate industry and was apparently built to house workers for the nearby Dinorwig slate quarry.
As far as can be established the village developed around the village smithy (yr efail in Welsh). The building housing the smithy still exists and has been converted from a tumbledown building into a cottage called The Nook which was built in 1776.
The village's development may well have been also influenced by the quarry railway that ran between Dinorwic Quarry and Y Felinheli (or the unofficial English name of Portdinorwic) and skirted around the village and along the shore of the lake.
It has been noted that on the 1933½ inch Ordnance Survey map of the area (Sheet 11) that the village is referred to as Bryn-yr-Efail and is still shown as so on the 1948 Revision of the same map.
At one time the village was home to the Ysgol Brynrefail before the campus was moved to the nearby village of Llanrug in the 1960s. The school still retains the original name.
The school's site was cleared in the 1990s. In 2002 work began on a multiuse centre called Caban. Opened in 2004, Caban is home to a cafe, a meeting room which doubles as the village's chapel and 13 business units. The cafe is mentioned in the Which? 2008 Good Food Guide.
Until 1960 the village's main street was the main road between Caernarfon and Llanberis until it was by-passed by the existing road to allow machinery to be conveyed to what was then the major construction site for the Dinorwig Power Station. This split the village, leaving the small Local Authority housing estate of Trem Eilian effectively stranded on the other side of what has become a very busy main road.


Lancashire Coalfield

The Lancashire Coalfield in North West England was an important British coalfield. Its coal seams were formed from the vegetation of tropical swampy forests in the Carboniferous period over 300 million years ago.
The Romans may have been the first to use coal in Lancashire and its shallow seams and outcrops were exploited on a small scale from the Middle Ages and extensively after the start of the Industrial Revolution. The coalfield was at the forefront of innovation in coal mining, prompting the country's first canals, use of steam engines and creating conditions favourable for rapid industrialisation.
The pits on the coalfield were at their most productive in 1907 when more than 26 million tons of coal were produced. By 1967 just 21 collieries remained. Parkside Colliery in Newton-le-Willows, St. Helens area, the last deep mine to be sunk on the coalfield, was closed in 1993.
Geology.
The geology of the coalfield consists of the coal seams of the Upper, Middle and Lower Coal Measures, layers of sandstones, shales and coal of varying thickness, which were laid down in the Carboniferous period over 300 million years ago. The coal seams were formed from the vegetation of tropical swampy forests. The coal in Lancashire is bituminous, with 30–40% volatile matter varying in hardness from seam to seam.
The coal measures were subsequently subjected to folding; this accounts for the dip towards the south and west; faulting occurred at that time. The Coal Measures are over 1200 metres (4000 ft)) thick, and coal accounts for about 4% of their thickness. The coalfield is crossed by several major faults, which generally run in a north and south direction. The most significant easterly fault described by Edward Hull throws the strata down to the east. It was worked from Fairbottom in Ashton-under-Lyne across the River Medlock to Oldham and onwards to the west of Rochdale. The Red Rock Fault skirts the north-west extremity of the North Staffordshire coalfield towards Macclesfield and Poynton Colliery in Cheshire. The Irwell Valley or Pendleton Fault passes Clifton and Kearsley, where it throws the coal measures down to the north-east. It has a throw of 3000 feet (900 metres) and the area is still geologically active and subject to earth tremors. A fault with a large horizontal but small vertical throw is found at Tyldesley. In the deep mines at the southern edge of the coalfield, the Plodder mine in Leigh and the Arley mine in Tyldesley were hot: the miners worked in temperatures of over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 °C).
Five substantial faults affect the Wigan Coalfield; they run nearly parallel to and equidistant from each other. The Great Haigh Fault begins near Bickershaw Colliery and passes northward through Hindley, Kirkless Hall, Haigh, and Arley to the west of Adlington Park. The Great Standish or St Catherine's Fault has a downthrow to the east and passes under St Catherine's Church at Ince. The Giant's Hall Fault passes by Abram, west of Ince Hall Colliery, west of Gidlow and under Giant's Hall Farm to Standish Church. The Great Shevington Fault passes by Hawkley Hall and east of Kirkless Hall. The Great Pemberton Fault is a downthrow and passes Pemberton, Orrell and to the west of Shevington. Further west are the Great Upholland Fault, the Lathom Fault the Great Boundary Fault stretching from Bickerstaffe to about two miles (3.2 km) east of Ormskirk.
Geography.
The coalfield on the western side of the Pennines is divided into two parts separated by the Rossendale anticline. To the north-east is the Burnley Coalfield and to the south is the much larger South Lancashire Coalfield which comprises, from west to east, the St Helens, Wigan, Manchester, and Oldham Coalfields. The Oldham Coalfield extends to the south and becomes the Cheshire Coalfield. The coalfield covers around extending from Stalybridge in the southeast to Ormskirk in the northwest and from Rainhill in the southwest to beyond Burnley in the northeast. The south eastern part extends well into neighbouring Cheshire where significant mining took place around Poynton and Dukinfield. The area of the coalfield became heavily industrialised as new industries developed, attracted by the availability of fuel. A small area around Todmorden in West Yorkshire is geologically part of the coalfield. The redrawing of administrative county boundaries in 1974 resulted in almost all the South Lancashire Coalfield lying outside the modern-day boundaries of Lancashire. A quite separate and much smaller coalfield is situated in the Wenning valley in the northeast of the county but is referred to as a part of the Ingleton Coalfield, the main part of which is in North Yorkshire.
History.
It is possible that the Romans were the first to use coal in Lancashire, but the earliest written record of "minera" was made in 1246 when Adam de Radcliffe stole coal belonging to Adam son of Alexander. Small amounts of coal were dug during the Middle Ages, but wood was plentiful and turf was preferred to coal which was inferior in quality. It was however used for lime burning and by smiths. Coal was got in Shakerley in 1429 when a dispute over the stealing of "seacoals" was recorded, and in 1521 there is a record of coal mines in Whiston. Most pits were very small and shallow, and Wigan and its neighbourhood were noted for having numerous cannel pits which families could access from under their property. John Leland visited Haigh in 1538 and observed that "Mr Bradshaw ... hath founde moche Canel like Se coal in his grounde very profitable to him." Mining was not a full-time occupation: frequently the work was seasonal and combined with other occupations such as farming or weaving.
During the Elizabethan era there were pits throughout the coalfield, and mines were recorded at Haslingden, Padiham, Ightenhill and Trawden. Over 50 small collieries operated around Rochdale where coal was got from small pits from the 1580s at Falinge, Cronkeyshaw and near Littleborough. Landowners entered into disputes with their tenants and neighbours, some of which were violent. Shallow pits at Bradford, a little over a mile from Manchester town centre, produced enough coal for the town in the early 1600s.
Different areas of the coalfield expanded and contracted at different times. The Wigan area, with coal relatively close to the surface, was important by the 18th century, fuelling the brass and pewter industries; and after the onset of the Industrial Revolution, cotton and heavy engineering. The coalfield around St Helens developed from the mid-18th century supplying the copper, glass and chemical industries that developed close to the Sankey Canal.
In the 1770s records show that there were pits in Wigan, Bolton, Oldham, Ashton-under-Lyne and Dukinfield. From the 16th and 17th centuries some landowners began to develop the industry, and several dynasties of coalowners emerged. These included the Bradshaws and subsequently the Earls of Crawford and Balcarres of Haigh Hall, the Hultons of Hulton Park, the Fletchers, the Knowles and the Duke of Bridgewater and his successors the Bridgewater Trustees. More companies emerged during the 19th century and included Richard Evans and Company of Haydock, which originated in 1830. Pearson and Knowles Coal and Iron Company was formed in 1874 in Ince. Colonel John Hargreaves began a company with pits in Burnley, and George Hargreaves owned pits in Accrington and Rossendale Valley. James Lees' Chamber Colliery Company owned pits in Oldham.
Drainage.
In 1600 the collieries were drifts where coal outcropped, and shallow bell or ladder pits where roof falls were common and poor drainage led to them being abandoned. As a solution to water in his coal pits, Roger Bradshaw dug the Great Haigh Sough between 1653 and 1670. It was a long tunnel under his Haigh Hall estate which drained the pits into a nearby stream and was still in use until 1929. Other soughs were dug, including one in 1729 to drain the Worsley mines and another from Standish Colliery to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at Crooke. A waterwheel was used from 1720 to lift water from the workings of the Plumbe Street Mine in Burnley using an endless chain of buckets, and James Brindley installed one at the Wet Earth Colliery in the Irwell Valley.
The invention of steam engines, first in 1698 by Thomas Savery and then in 1711 by Thomas Newcomen, provided an alternative method of draining wet mines and winding men and coal from deeper mines. A Newcomen atmospheric engine was installed at Bardsley Colliery in Ashton-under-Lyne in about 1760. It was known as "Fairbottom Bobs" and is preserved in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
Transport.
Transport of coal was difficult; roads were poor and carting heavy loads made them worse. In 1720 the River Douglas near Wigan and the rivers Irwell and Mersey were made navigable, providing a more efficient and cheaper method of transporting coal. The Sankey Canal was built in 1755 and by 1760 Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater was constructing the Bridgewater Canal, providing a direct link from his mines, the Worsley Navigable Levels, into Manchester. This encouraged the development of more canals, including the Leeds and Liverpool and Manchester Bolton & Bury Canals.
William Hulton was a supporter of the Bolton and Leigh Railway, Lancashire's first public railway, opened in 1828 to carry coal and cotton. The railway passed to the west of his Hulton estate and gave his pits at Chequerbent access to the new means of transport. In the following 20 years the main lines of the railway system were constructed, linking the increasingly industrial towns in Lancashire with the rest of the country. Access to transport, the steam engine, the development of the textile industry with raw cotton imported through the Port of Liverpool and associated industries as the Industrial Revolution gathered pace. This led to increased demand for coal and larger, deeper mines.
Ventilation.
Providing fresh air and removing firedamp from pits with a single shaft was a problem as explosive gases accumulated. An early solution was to send a collier or fireman, swathed in wet rags and armed with a long pole with a lighted candle, into the workings to explode any accumulated gases before work began; this did not always work. At Haigh in 1688 it was recorded that "the fiery damp went off twice, but did little hurt". A system of coursed air circulation in the workings was introduced in the 1760s using walls and doors, leading to the employment of "trappers", children as young as six or seven, working in darkness, who opened and closed the doors.
The air flow was improved by braziers or fire baskets suspended in the shaft, and by the late 1700s underground furnaces, in combination with stoppings and doors. These methods were not without danger from fires or explosions.
Conditions.
At the turn of the 19th century demand for coal increased rapidly for domestic and industrial consumption: steam was used to power factories and steamships. Miners worked in intolerable conditions. Coal was got by hand, hewers using picks and shovels in mines lit by candles. Children as young as five sat in complete darkness opening ventilation doors for "hurriers", women and boys who hauled tubs of coal to the shaft bottom. Some coalowners used bonds, paying signing-on fees to the colliers who worked in their coal pits for a year or had to pay a considerable forfeit if the contract was broken. The coalowners used the bond system as a tool for enforcing discipline and fending off the ability of workers to join together to fight for better pay and conditions. The Combination Acts of 1799 made unions illegal. Some coal owners, including William Hulton, paid their workers with tokens or vouchers that could only be redeemed in their company shops, a practice outlawed by the Truck Act 1831. Wages were poor and coal owners introduced a system of fines to enforce discipline. The Duke of Bridgewater paid eight shillings (40p) for a six-day working week with shifts of 12 to 15 hours and fined those who were late half a crown. The wages amounted to a few pence more than given in Poor Law relief and miners worked to keep out of the workhouse. William Hulton reputedly paid the poorest wages in Lancashire and was hostile to permitting his workforce the right to free assembly.
The Mines Act of 1842 prohibited the employment of women and girls and boys under the age of ten to work underground in coal mines. Many women were employed underground in Lancashire and after the passing of the Act some continued for a time, as there were few inspectors of mines and employers turned a blind eye. After 1842 many women continued to work at the pits but on the surface, sorting coal from dirt on the coal screens, as pit brow lasses. More women were employed in this capacity in Lancashire than on any other coalfield.
20th century.
In 1907 there were 358 collieries and coal was produced largely by hand and pit ponies used for haulage in some pits. The highest annual tonnage was produced in 1907 at over 26 million tons. During the first quarter of the 20th century an average of nearly 20 million tons of coal was produced annually by a workforce of 100,000 men. Conditions became increasingly difficult as the best, most easily won coal was worked out in mines that were deep and hot. It became more difficult for Lancashire to compete with the more easily worked mines in Yorkshire and Derbyshire. In the Burnley area output from the thin seams towards the north of the coalfield was small. Despite its higher price Lancashire coal remained important. The consumption of the coalfield was largely for a local market but some was shipped abroad. Manchester was the centre of a vast industrial district and there was a great demand for coal from the cotton industry and other textile manufacturers, engineering, iron and chemical works, and a variety of other industries. There was demand for coke in the foundries and coke-ovens were built next to some larger collieries, steam coal was required for the cotton mills, chemical works, engineering works, and for locomotive fuel, house coal had a large market in a heavily populated area.
After the First World War, demand for coal declined: Britain had lost export markets and productivity had fallen. In 1925 coal owners attempted to reduce wages and impose longer working hours to try to maintain profits. A wages subsidy by the Conservative government postponed industrial action, but, after a Royal Commission reported in 1926, the subsidy was withdrawn and mine owners issued new pay and conditions lengthening the working day and cutting wages. By refusing to accept the terms miners were locked out of the pits. The strike lasted from May to September and miners gained nothing, and some were not re-employed.
In 1927 there were 222 working collieries in Lancashire belonging to 125 owners. The 18 pits in Cheshire had 15 owners. Most companies were small: over 100 pits had fewer than 200 workers while 60 pits employed more than 200, 14 employed between 1,000 and 2,000, and 18 more than 2,000 workers.
The Mining Industries Act of 1925 attempted to stem the post-war decline and encouraged independent companies to merge in order to modernise and better survive the economic conditions of the day. Robert Burrows of the Atherton company, Fletcher Burrows proposed a merger of several companies operating to the west of Manchester and merger was agreed and took place in March 1929 forming Manchester Collieries, the largest such company on the coalfield.
Nationalisation.
On the vesting date, 1 January 1947, the remaining coal mines were nationalised, taken into public ownership, and the service contracts of the employees transferred to the National Coal Board (NCB). In total 86 collieries were nationalised and the coalfield divided into four areas, Manchester with 20 pits, Wigan had 26, St Helens 22 and 18 in Burnley and the number of collieries continued to decline as reserves became exhausted.
In order to maximise coal output, short-life drift mines including Fence Drift and Wood End Drift were opened near Burnley and Seneley Hall Drift at Standish and Dairy Pit at Haigh in the early 1950s. At the same time, the NCB embarked on an extensive programmes of boring to prove the reserves of coal, and modernised existing collieries. In the late 1950s some smaller collieries were closed in the Wigan and Burnley areas as was Deane Colliery in Bolton.
Production at the reopened Agecroft Colliery resumed in 1960, and by 1962 major investment was made to turn Mosley Common Colliery into a "superpit" at a cost of £7.5 million. The last completely new coal mine to be sunk on the coalfield was Parkside Colliery in Newton-le-Willows. Sinking to the Crombouke and Lower Florida seams at a depth of 886 yards started in 1957 and production began in 1964. The colliery employed 1,400 men.
End of deep mining.
In the 1960s the NCB began closing collieries, some with workable coal reserves, by setting impossible production targets and by 1967 just 21 pits remained. The Mosley Common superpit closed in 1968 and Astley Green closed in 1970, both had huge reserves of coal. The remaining collieries closed after the 1984 miners' strike, Bold Colliery in St Helens closed in 1985, Agecroft in 1991 and the Bickershaw, Golborne, Parsonage complex a year later. Parkside Colliery, the last deep mine on the coalfield, closed in 1993 without exhausting its coal reserves.
Mining disasters.
The "gassy" coal seams, poor ventilation and the use of candles meant the coalfield was prone to explosions and, between 1851 and 1853, had the highest mortality rate of any British coalfield. In 1850, 16 men and boys died at Bent Grange Colliery in Oldham, 36 died at Coppull Colliery in 1852 and in two disasters within a year at Ince Hall Colliery, 58 died in 1853 and 89 men died in 1854. In 1883 some 68 men and boys were killed and 53 were injured at Moorfield colliery near Accrington.
Mining was dangerous: flooding, gases, roof falls and explosions of firedamp contributed to the deaths of thousands of workers in Lancashire's pits. In the first half of the 19th century there were many disasters, many caused by firedamp and inadequate ventilation. In the year 1859 there were 68 fatal accidents in Manchester district and 57 in Wigan and St Helens. The third worst mining disaster in the country was at Hulton Colliery Company's Pretoria Pit in 1910 when a faulty lamp caused an explosion killing 344 miners.
In 1962 16 men died and 21 were injured at Hapton Valley colliery near Burnley. The last disaster on the coalfield was at Golborne Colliery in March 1979, when three men died instantly in an explosion of methane caused by an electrical spark and seven men later died of their injuries.
Boothstown Mines Rescue Station was opened by the Lancashire and Cheshire Coalowners in 1933 close to the East Lancashire Road. It replaced four smaller stations and was permanently staffed by two rescue teams who attended emergencies across the entire coalfield.
Unions.
The colliery owners fended off the formation of unions until well into the 19th century and trade unionism was slow to take a hold on the coalfield. The employers arbitrarily fined men for minor reasons, disallowed wages on false pretexts and victimised perceived radicals. Bonds were used to enforce discipline. Miners protested about poor wages in 1757 when bread prices rose and some marched from Kersall towards Manchester in protest but were turned back. When trouble flared, the Home Secretary ordered troops to be ready to quell the unrest. Long strikes were unsustainable as the miners had no organisation or finances to back them up. The first miners' association was the "Brotherly Union Society" formed in Pemberton in 1794. It was described as a friendly society to avoid prosecution under the Combination Acts and in the early 19th century there were 21 such societies in central Lancashire.
The Lancashire and Cheshire Miners' Federation (LCMF) was founded in 1881 and after the formation of the National Union of Mineworkers in 1945, the LCMF became its Lancashire area. Though not considered militant, the union was involved in several strikes including the national strikes of 1926, 1972, 1974 and 1984.
Invention and innovation.
Lancashire was at the forefront of innovation in coal mining from James Brindley's 1756 water wheel at Wet Earth Colliery to the Duke of Bridgewaters's underground canals. Edward Ormerod patented a "Butterfly" safety link to improve cage safety in 1867 that is used globally. Lancashire had the first pithead baths in the country at Gibfield Colliery in Atherton and the first mines rescue station to cover an entire coalfield at Howe Bridge in 1908. The Anderton Shearer Loader invented by James Anderton and first commissioned at Ravenhead Colliery, Sutton, St Helens, produced more than half the total output of British coal in the 1960s.
Legacy.
There can be no doubt that coal mining substantially changed the landscape. The Victoria County History has several disparaging descriptions of the Wigan area in the early 20th century.
Coal mining has left areas of derelict land and spoil heaps or "rucks" across the coalfield. Some reclamation has taken place often after opencasting. Subsidence had resulted in "flashes" or shallow lakes some of which have been landscaped for recreational use such as the Three Sisters at Ashton in Makerfield and Pennington Flash Country Parks in Leigh. The Astley Green Colliery Museum and Gin Pit Miners Welfare in Astley are two of the last tangible reminders of the once thriving industry.


DeLamar Mine

The DeLamar Mine was an open-pit silver and gold mine in Owyhee County in southwest Idaho, which operated from 1977 to 1998. John Guilbert and Charles Park, Jr. have described the DeLamar mine as "the first modern open-pit silver mine." It is located about one mile from the ghost town of De Lamar, Idaho, which had been a mining center in the late 19th and early 20th century. The mine was under construction from 1975 to 1977 and began operations in 1977; the first extracted silver was poured in April 1977. The mine employed 125 workers when it opened, with the bulk of its workforce living in Jordan Valley, Oregon, around 18 miles away. At the time of its closure in 1998, the mine had five major pits and was owned by Kinross Gold Corporation.
The mine involved extracting ore from the Silver City rhyolite, a mineral formation generated by Miocene-epoch volcanic activity. The silver was primarily in the form of naumannite. Federal inspectors reporting on the mine described the silver as occurring in "an unusual form of disseminated silver locked in tiny particles within soft clay and hard, siliceous volcanic rock."
In 2017, Integra Resources Corporation acquired the DeLamar Gold and Silver Project in the hopes of finding and extracting additional precious metals on site.


Peter Annan

Alexander Peter Annan is an engineer whose research focuses on near-surface geophysics. He has made significant contributions to the development of ground-penetrating radar (GPR) technology. Annan is the CEO of Sensors & Software, a company he founded to commercialize GPR technology. He has been working on the development of GPR since the 1970s and was one of the lead researchers on the surface electrical properties experiment conducted on the Moon during the Apollo 17 mission.
Early life and education.
Annan graduated from University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Applied Science degree in engineering science in 1968 and a Master of Science degree in geophysics in 1970. In 1972, Annan was one of the researchers on the surface electrical properties (SEP) experiment on the Apollo 17 mission to the Moon. SEP was the subject of Annan’s graduate school research and used radio waves to scan as far as a few kilometres below the surface of the Moon.
In 1974, he earned his PhD in engineering science from Memorial University of Newfoundland. In his thesis, "The Equivalent Source Method for Electromagnetic Scattering Analysis and Its Geophysical Application", Annan developed the PLATE program used in transient electromagnetics to mathematically model the electromagnetic response of finite thin conducting plates.
Career.
After earning his PhD, Annan began working as a research scientist at the Geological Survey of Canada. He then served as chief geophysicist at Barringer Research and senior engineering geophysicist at Golder Associates. During this time, he developed methods for the use of radio frequency to measure soil water content. In 1981, Annan founded A-Cubed to develop ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and airborne electromagnetic systems.
When the Waterloo Centre for Groundwater Research was founded at the University of Waterloo in 1987, Annan joined the centre as a part-time researcher and adjunct professor. Annan commercialized GPR systems by later forming Sensors & Software, a supplier of equipment for underground or subsurface surveying. He serves as CEO of Sensors & Software based in Mississauga, Ontario.
Annan has been a member of Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) since 1969 and has received the SEG’s Cecil Green Enterprise Award. At SEG, he served as chair of the Mining Committee, president of the Near-Surface Geophysics Section (NSGS), which he founded, and as editor of NSGS’s newsletter Near Surface Views. In 1996, SEG awarded him the Hal Mooney Award for “scientific and technical excellence and innovation" in near-surface geophysics. He also served as second vice-president, and director-at-large for SEG. Annan is also a member of the Canadian Exploration Geophysical Society and lectured about near-surface geophysics in the society’s KEGS Special Lecture program in 2015.


D. W. Mooney

D. W. "James" Mooney (died 1882) was a miner and an early explorer of the Grand Canyon. He fell to his death at Mooney Falls, a waterfall on the Havasupai Reservation in the Grand Canyon.


Kiewit Mining Group Inc.


Tanjung Enim Coal Mine

The Tanjung Enim Coal Mine is a coal mine located in Muara Enim Regency, South Sumatra Province, Indonesia. The mine has coal reserves amounting to 6.36 billion tonnes of coking coal, one of the largest coal reserves in Asia and the world. The mine has an annual production capacity of 20 million tonnes of coal.


Polar Star Diamond

The Polar Star diamond is a 41.28 carat brilliant cushion-cut diamond, from the Golconda region in India. Its lower pavilion is arranged as an eight-pointed star, hence its name, from Polaris, the Northern Star. It is claimed that "the symmetry of the cut is so precise that it can be balanced on its culet" It is a rare type IIa diamond, meaning that it contains no nitrogen or boron. It is likely D or E color ("colourless"), with a trace of pink, and has blue fluorescence.
History.
The first record of the diamond's existence is around 1806 when it was owned by Joseph Bonaparte (eldest brother of Napoleon), who is reported to have purchased it from Morton for 52,500 francs. It is likely that he disposed of the diamond after abdicating and around the time of his settlement in the United States. It was bought in the 1820s by the Yusupov family (probably by Princess Tatiana Yusupov, wife of Prince Nikolai Borisovich Yusupov), whereby it passed to Prince Felix Yusupov, participant in the assassination of Rasputin. After the Russian Revolution, Yusupov and his family fled, taking the Polar Star, along with other gems such as La Pelegrina, the Sultan of Morocco and the Ram's head. To help sustain his family in exile, he sold the diamond to Cartier in 1924, who in turn sold the diamond in 1928 to Lady Deterring, the wife of the oil magnate Sir Henry Deterring, founder of Royal Dutch Shell. Following instructions from her will, Christie's auctioned the 'Polar Star' in Geneva on the 20 November 1980. It was bought by a Sri Lankan diamond merchant for 8 million Swiss Francs ($4.6 million) for the gem, which at the time was a record.


Gwennap

Gwennap (, meaning "the Parish of [Saint] Wenappa") is a village and civil parish in Cornwall, England. It is about five miles (8 km) southeast of Redruth. Hamlets of Burncoose, Comford, Coombe, Crofthandy, Cusgarne, Fernsplatt, Frogpool, Goon Gumpas Hick's Mill, Tresamble and United Downs lie in the parish, as does Little Beside country house.
In the 18th and early 19th centuries Gwennap parish was the richest copper mining district in Cornwall, and was called the "richest square mile in the Old World". It is near the course of the Great County Adit which was constructed to drain mines in the area including several of the local once-famous mines such as Consolidated Mines, Poldice mine and Wheal Busy. Today it forms part of area A6i (the Gwennap Mining District) of the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage Site.
It lends its name to Gwennap Pit, where John Wesley preached 18 times between 1762 and 1789, although Gwennap Pit is about to the northwest, at the hamlet of Busveal near St Day. The pit was caused by mining subsidence in the mid-18th century. After Wesley's death the local people turned the pit into a regular circular shape with turf seats.
Church history.
Gwennap church is dedicated to St Wenappa; in 1225 it was given to the chapter of Exeter by Lord William Briwere. The parish church is an old foundation, but was rebuilt in the 15th century because of population growth caused by mining and then thoroughly restored in the 19th century. The tower is detached. In 1882, following the removal of the centre gallery, which was said to be an eyesore, "The Cornishman" newspaper described the church as one of the prettiest in Cornwall. It was later described by Charles Henderson, as "few Cornish churches are less interesting than Gwennap".
There is a Cornish cross in the churchyard which was moved to the vicarage garden in the 1840s from Chapel Moor. It has a crude crucifixus figure and a small Latin cross on the front and a large Latin cross on the back and is probably a fragment of a larger cross. There is also an ornamented cross shaft which was found in the church wall about 1860 and by mistake used again in the vestry foundations.
Copper and tin mining.
Mining in Gwennap is an industry stretching back to prehistoric times when tin streaming in the Carnon Valley is believed to have occurred. In surrounding valleys stones of cassiterite (SnO2) were washed downstream from outcropping lodes and trapped in the alluvial mud where they could be easily extracted. Later these outcropping tin lodes were worked by 'bounders' and the open workings (coffins) of these early miners are still partially visible at Penstruthal.
Early evidence of the antiquity of mining in Gwennap is recorded in the Stannary Roll of 1305–06 which notes that Johannes Margh of Trevarth sent thirty shipments of tin to Truro. In 1512 two local men were overheard quarrelling in Cornish about the theft of "tynne at Poldyth in Wennap". Tin raised in Gwennap was dressed and smelted locally. Early modern 'crazing mills' powered by water, such as that which existed at Penventon, were built to grind, and later stamp the tin ore. This released cassiterite which was then smelted in local 'burning houses'. Demand for charcoal in the smelting process rapidly depleted Gwennap's ancient woodland, leaving a wild, moorland, landscape.
Deep exploitation of the tin lodes was not possible with the limited technology of the early modern period as Cornish mines were wet due to the high rainfall of the area. De-watering workings at depth with 'rag and chain pumps', leather bags or 'kibbles' (metal buckets) were all ineffective. Deep lode mining was only made possible by two innovations, the first of which occurred in 1748, when John Williams of Scorrier House initiated the construction of the Great County Adit, a phenomenal feat of engineering, which drained mine workings through a system of adits. Over the next century this was extended from Poldice to include many other mines consisting of 63 miles (101 km) of tunnels in all.
The other remarkable invention was that of the steam engine, allowing mines to be de-watered to greater depths. As one of Britain's earliest industrial regions, Gwennap had by the early 19th century become synonymous with steam technology, attracting Britain's top engineers including Boulton & Watt and William Murdoch. Together with Cornish engineers such as Loam, Sims, Woolf, Hornblower and Richard Trevithick, these men enabled the pumping engine to perform beyond the expectations of the time.
A great many of these pumps and engines were installed by Richard Michell (1748–1836) of Gwennap and his descendants. In November 1806 he and four others, namely Captain John Martin, Captain John Dennis, Captain W. Davey and Captain T. Trestrail, met at Busveal and agreed to repair Gwennap Pit, or rather reconstruct the amphitheatre in respect to and in memory of John Wesley. It opened and had preaching in it on 18 June 1807. His eldest son, Francis (1780–1860) followed in his fathers footsteps expanding the practice to include steam engine drives for corn mills and a small workshop and foundry in Redruth. He also patented a boiler gauge. His only son, Francis William Michell (1828–1901), was responsible for the installation of over one hundred of these pumps and engines at numerous mines. With his cousin Richard Henry Michell (1817–1894), he went into partnership building a dredge and entering into a contract to dredge a dock at Cardiff. The family continued to be involved in the mining industry well into the 20th century.
Such innovations coincided with an increased national demand for copper, needed in the brass parts for the machinery of the Industrial Revolution. By 1779 copper was ousting tin as the main mineral extracted, but it was the period from 1815 to 1840 which was the heyday of mining in Gwennap. This era saw the rise of huge mining enterprises including the Consolidated, United, and Tresavean Mines. Consolidated yielded almost 300,000 tons of copper between 1819 and 1840 which sold for over £2 million. Gwennap the "Copper Kingdom" was then the richest known mineralised area in the world.
Mining rapidly transformed the landscape. Consolidated Mines alone had nineteen engine houses for pumping, winding and crushing: the red waste rock from deep underground lay strewn about the moors and the valleys constantly echoed to the roar of the 'stamps'. Another visible sign of industrialisation was the construction of mineral tramways which transported copper ore and Welsh coal to and from coastal ports more efficiently than packs of mules. In 1809 a horse-drawn tramway was constructed between Portreath and Scorrier which was later extended to Poldice and Crofthandy. This was followed by the building of the Redruth-Chasewater Railway in 1824 running from Pedn-an-Drea and Wheal Buller, Redruth to Devoran.
Mining reached its technical apogee in Gwennap in the 1840s with the installation of the first ever man engine in Britain at Tresavean Mine; but the nature of the area's geology, which had bestowed such wealth, eventually proved its downfall. In the nearby Camborne-Redruth district, rich deposits of tin were found below the copper. In Gwennap no such deposits were found and when low prices caused the collapse of the copper market in the 1860s, many mines were forced to close or amalgamate. Consolidated and United were incorporated into Clifford Amalgamated mine. Many of the mines that continued or went over to tin production could not survive the rising cost of coal and the fluctuations of mineral prices, causing a second wave of closures in the mid-1870s.
Few mines survived the troubled times of the late 19th century, but Tresavean was one success story. Brought back to life as a tin mine in 1908 it was the second deepest mine in Cornwall at when it closed in 1928. Other mines that were resurrected in the 20th century include Wheal Gorland, worked for tungsten before the World War I, Wheal Busy, Mount Wellington, Whiteworks, Poldice, Parc an Chy, and Wheal Jane. The last mine to work commercially was South Crofty Mine at Pool near Redruth which ceased operation in March 1998 bringing to a close over 2,000 years of mining in the Gwennap area.
Notable people.
Gwennap was the birthplace of John Verran, Premier of South Australia, and of John Lawn, a New Zealand gold miner.


Cambusnethan

Cambusnethan is a large village and suburb on the eastern edge of Wishaw, North Lanarkshire in Scotland. It is approximately long, straddling both sides of the A722 on a hill overlooking Wishaw.
Etymology.
The name "Cambusnethan" was historically recorded as "Kamnethan" and in earlier sources, as "Kamysnethyn". The establishment of an early medieval church of the same name suggests that the name is Celtic in origin. The "Cambus" part of the name would come from ""caman"/"camas"/"camn"" a word that could be either Gaelic or Cumbric and means a bend or meander. "Nethan" is harder to pinpoint. It could come from a corruption of Ninian, who travelled through southern Scotland, it could also be said to come from Nechtan, the name of both a Pictish king and a mythological Celtic figure. Or possibly, Neithon of Alt Clut, a king of Strathclyde, the kingdom that held the land for centuries.
Thus the name likely means "bend of Nethan".
History.
Originally, the name "Cambusnethan" or "Camnethan" referred to the whole Wishaw area, and a portion of the Scottish county of Lanarkshire. The "Parish of Cam(bus)nethan", as it was known was established in the 11th century, with the parish church standing on the banks of the River Clyde, in the countryside near the modern neighbourhoods of Netherton and Gowkthrapple. The parish would have remained a rural, lowly populated area until the 1600s at least.
The modern settlement began some time after the Middle Ages (exact time period unknown), but remained a small hamlet. It grew massively alongside its neighbour, Wishaw, during the Industrial Revolution, with industries such as railways, textiles, quarrying and in particular, coal mining. This established Cambusnethan's importance to the Scottish economy. Eventually, both Wishaw and Cambusnethan grew so large that the boundaries between the towns faded and both settlements became one large urban area.
Throughout the 20th century, many housing estates were built in Cambusnethan, further expanding it.
Today, Cambusnethan is much integrated with Wishaw to the point where it is mostly considered to be an area of the town rather than a town in its own right.
Transport.
Cambusnethan is served by First service 267 every 10 minutes from Glasgow's Buchanan bus station. It also has a separate hourly express bus services to Glasgow in the form of the First service X11. An infrequent local bus service to Livingston, West Lothian also serves the area.
There are the remnants of a railway line running through the area. This has been disconnected for almost 80 years with most of the track and bridges now gone, though some elements of the line still exist behind the telephone exchange and the social club. The section between the Miner's Club and the Hot Water pond (Perchy Pond) was used as a dump in the 70s/80s, and is thus mostly filled in now. People to this day still fly tip there despite the excellent new council refuse facility in Netherton.
Local facilities.
Cambusnethan has two Church of Scotland Presbyterian churches: Cambusnethan North Parish Church, at the top of Kirk Road, and Cambusnethan Old and Morningside Parish Church, further down the hill. Cambusnethan Primary School is non-denominational and previously sat between the two churches on the other side of the road. Plans for a new, updated primary school have been confirmed, and in Summer 2006 construction work began at the top of Branchal Road, with the clearing of the local park and some of the woods surrounding the area. The new school was completed in Summer 2007, and the original building has been demolished.
The local sub-post office, which sits at the entrance to the Memorial Park (East Gate) but now is shut down for good. The nearest post offices is located in Newmains or Wishaw which both are beside Cambusnethan.
Following the demise of the New Day there are currently two pubs: The Horse and Anchor and The Auld Hoose. There are two convenience stores in the area, Bobbys and Northmuir licensed grocer's shop. An Indian takeaway, the Tandoori Mahal, has traded in the last few years in the shop adjacent to Bobbys.
Cambusnethan also provides the area code (01698 38xxxx) for most of eastern Wishaw via the large BT telephone exchange.
Another very popular meeting place is the Cambusnethan Miners' Club at the foot of Woodhall Road, also known as the red road.
The site of the old Cambusnethan Primary School has become housing. The new Primary School is situated on Branchal Road
Boys' Brigade.
Cambusnethan has two active BB companies: 1st Cambusnethan, which is affiliated to the Old Parish Church, and 2nd Cambusnethan, affiliated to the North Parish Church.
1st and 2nd Cambusnethan has 3 sections Anchors for 5-7yr olds (Primary School Years 1-3), Juniors for 7-11yr olds (Primary School Years 4-6) and Company/Seniors for 12 to 18 (Primary School Year 7 to Secondary Year 3 for Company Section and Secondary School year 4 to 6 for Seniors).
Boys at the BB's are trying their best to achieve the Queen's Badge.
Local landmarks.
A well-known local landmark is '"The Bing", well known for children to slide down it in a wheely bin or a bread crade, a large loose stone hill formed by extensive mining operations, which were active in the area until the 1960s. Cambusnethan was a major coal mining centre at the start of the 20th century and, when it was all finished, the shafts were closed and the spoil heaps landscaped to create The Bing.
Cambusnethan House or Priory is a few miles west of the area and is a stunning Gothic house by Scottish architect James Gillespie Graham. It was so named because, before Wishaw existed, Cambusnethan was the name of the whole burgh stretching from Newmains to the River Clyde. Today the main town sits between Cambusnethan and the River Clyde.


Newmains

Newmains is a village and former mining community on the eastern edge of Wishaw, North Lanarkshire, Scotland, south-east of Glasgow. Although it is considered by the local authority to have a town centre in its own right.
History.
The story of all the villages in the area surrounding Newmains and Wishaw is essentially the story of one of the most successful ventures into heavy industry in Scotland. Three iron works, the Omoa Ironworks, the Coltness Iron Company and the Shotts Iron Company comprise the earliest and perhaps the most important concentration of iron and steel manufacture in Scotland.
The Coltness Iron Works was established in 1837 by industrialist, Henry Houldsworth who, foreseeing the gradual demise of the once booming cotton industry, decided to diversify into minerals. On a visit to the Shotts Iron Company in 1836, Henry Houldsworth heard a rumour that the nearby Coltness Estate was to be sold. He lost no time in commissioning a survey which showed a large mineral field on the property. The estate was soon purchased from the trustees of Sir James Steuart Denham enabling the fortuitous establishment of an iron works on a proven mineral field. As well as the 'blackband' ironstone, there were considerable coal seams to be explored which would provide the fuel necessary to feed the furnaces.
Transport problems were solved in 1841 with a rail link to Coatbridge and the business prospered, expanding into Ayrshire with the opening of the Dalmellington Iron Works and sinking several new coal-pits in the area. One reason for its success was the self-contained nature of the company operations, providing its own coal and its own limestone from quarries on the estate. The company also entered the brick-making business both to provide bricks for its own needs and also for sale to a wider market. In 1909 they expanded into Portland Cement manufacture.
The Coltness works survived until very recently as a railway sleeper manufacturing facility for Tarmac, but were demolished in 2004.
Shopping.
In October 2007, a new 24-hour Asda superstore opened in the town. This is the first major supermarket chain to open a store in the town, although for many years the area has been served by SPAR which closed down in the summer of 2010 and Scotmid. The main shopping areas, Manse Road and Main Street, has some shops but not as many as nearby Wishaw or Motherwell. It is now home to only a few local merchants.
Services.
Newmains has a public library and Newmains Health Centre with pharmacy, doctors and children's dentistry.
Newmains also seen the opening of a community centre "NCT centre" which is now home to the libaray, meeting rooms, cafe, large function hall and home to groups such as a youth club and a toddler group
Transport.
Public Transport.
Buses are the only form of public transport in Newmains. Services by First Glasgow (266,X11), JMB Travel(56) and Stuart's (365,367), provide bus routes to Wishaw, Motherwell, Hamilton, Glasgow.
Roads.
The town is located on the junction of the A71 and the A73, which provide road links to most parts of Scotland.
The M8 motorway with access to Glasgow and Edinburgh is north of the village. And the M74 motorway with access to Glasgow and Carlisle is west.
Rail.
The Coltness branch from the West Coast Main Line at Garriongill terminates near the village, but is used only for the transport of coal from the nearby open cast mining facility.
Education.
Primary schools.
Newmains is served by three primary schools:
Football.
Newmains has a football club, Newmains Hammers which accommodates various boys club age groups and has two amateur clubs founded in the Summer of 2017 (One Saturday morning team and one Sunday team).
Newmains United Community Football Club play in the Central Division Two of the Scottish Junior Football Association.
Formed in 2006 their home ground is at Victoria Park, Overtown Road, Newmains. It has a capacity of 2,300.
History tells about several teams playing in Newmains, such as: Newmains Thistle, Newmains Shamrock, Newmains Rovers, Newmains, Newmains Victoria, Newmains Juniors. With Newmains Thistle becoming the first ever Junior League champions in 1891–92.
Notable people.
The Scottish bantamweight boxer James Murray has a statue of him in Newmains.
Location grid.
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Valenciana Mine

The Valenciana Mine, known as Mina de La Valenciana in Spanish, is located in , Mexico. Valenciana is about 6 km from the Historic Center, Guanajuato, Guanajuato. La Valenciana Mine, Historic Guanajuato City, and surrounding mines are part of a . It began to exploit silver in the 16th century. Its extraction of was so abundant that its production was equivalent to two-thirds of the total that was obtained from this metal in all of . Currently, it belongs to the Santa Fe Cooperative Society of Metallurgical Mines of Guanajuato and continues to be exploited at a depth of 760 meters.
History.
Although the mother vein of Guanajuato was discovered in 1548, the Valenciana mine reached its highest production levels from 1768 to 1804. The mine produced 60% of the world silver production in the . In 1760, the young Antonio de Obregón y Alcocer obtained a loan from the merchant of the Rayas mine, Pedro Luciano Otero. For several years, they both continued investing in the mine until in 1768 their production increased considerably. For several decades, the La Valenciana mine produced more silver than all the mines in the , being Obregon's partners, Messrs. Otero and Diego Rul. On March 20, 1780, the King - at the request of the Viceroy Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursúa - granted Obregón the titles of Viscount de la Mina and count of La Valenciana, located in Guanajuato, Mexico.
In 1788, his son Antonio Alonso de Obregón and de la Barreda succeeded him. Although he inherited the titles, the property of the mine was divided into twenty-four shares, the descendants of Obregón kept ten shares, the family of Otero twelve shares and the family of Juan Antonio de Santa Ana two actions. On August 8, 1803, visited the mine, according to his "Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain" the mine had "given its owners four hundred to six hundred million pesos, at least, of annual utility." During its good years, more than three thousand workers were employed. In 1803, the mine was exploited to a depth of 185 meters; in 1810, its production was suspended. By 1815, the depth reached for its exploitation was 514 meters.
In 1810, during the beginning of the War of the , most of the miners participated in the Granaditas. Shortly after, they formed the Valencia regiment that was under the orders and mine engineer . In 1817, tried to take the plaza of Guanajuato. When he failed in his objective, he ordered the mine's machinery to be set on fire.
From 1848 to 1865, the administration of La Valenciana was in the hands of Francisca Pérez de Gálvez. Towards the end of this cycle, the family company was undercapitalized with several of its mines flooded. In 1865, her nephew Miguel Rul took over the administration, undertaking a rehabilitation process. By selling his agricultural properties, he injected capital into his mining properties. In 1872, he formed the Restorative Company of Valenciana and in 1877 La Concordia to work the mines of Mellado and Rayas. In addition, he invested in other mines of the Casa Rul in Guanajuato.
By 1878, La Valenciana was able to produce again the largest volume of silver in Guanajuato, achieving a total of 15,000 tons in 1887. But, the average volume of extraction fell to 5,900 tons between 1885 and 1888. By 1889 only 2,400 tons were extracted. In the decade of 1890, the Mining Negotiation of Casa Rul in Guanajuato was in frank crisis. In addition to the low productivity, the metal price decreased by 40%. When Miguel Rul died in 1897, the administration was led by his widow Mariana Olmedo and his brother-in-law José Olmedo. The Olmedos - who also came from a mining family in the State of Hidalgo - operated the mines from 1898 to 1904 through the Mining Negotiation of Casa Rul in Guanajuato. In 1900 the production of La Valenciana was reduced by half and continued to lower its extraction volumes during the following three years. In 1904, the Olmedos sold the company to the American company, Guanajuato Reduction and Mines Company.
During the most of the mining works were suspended, from 1922 the investment of American capital reactivated this sector. However, the situation changed with the and the decrease in production of the mines registered in Mexico. In 1936, a strike of miners in La Valenciana lasted until 1937. Due to these labor problems and the decrease in productivity, finally, the mine passed into the hands of the workers of section 4 of the National Union of Mining, Metallurgical and Similar Workers of the Mexican Republic, who formed the Cooperativa Minera Metalúrgica Santa Fe de Guanajuato.
San Cayetano Temple of the Confessor.
 In the town that grew next to the mine, the church dedicated to San Cayetano was built. Antonio de Obregón y Alcocer commissioned the church in thanks for his good fortune. Its construction began in 1775 and was completed in 1788. The work was directed by the architects Andrés de la Riva and Jorge Archundia, from quarry rose and his style is churrigueresque.
The La Valenciana Mine Museum.
 The mine is spread out underground, below the region North-east of Guanajuato City. The mouth of the mine is known as Bocamina and is located in the town of Valenciana, directly behind the outside wall of the local church, San Cayetano. Local guides will take people around to the old mining facilities and down in the mine by way of a long, steep staircase. The Mexican government has paid for a modern, interactive museum on the site.


Halmahera mine

The Halmahera mine is a large mine in the east of Indonesia in the North Maluku. Halmahera represents one of the largest nickel reserve in Indonesia having estimated reserves of 466 million tonnes of ore grading 1.5% nickel. The 466 million tonnes of ore contains 7 million tonnes of nickel metal.


Metrekskoye mine

The Metrekskoye mine is one of the largest molybdenum mines in Russia. The mine is located near Abakan in south-west Russia in Zabaykalsky Krai. The Metrekskoye mine has reserves amounting to 47.5 million tonnes of molybdenum ore grading 0.1% molybdenum thus resulting 47,500 tonnes of molybdenum.


Hednesford

Hednesford (pronounced ) is a historic market town within Cannock Chase district of Staffordshire, England. Hednesford adjoins The Chase to the north, with the town of Cannock to the south. It is also southwest of Rugeley.
The town comprises three district council electoral wards whose populations in the 2011 census totalled 17,343. It also comprises the civil parish of Hednesford and part of the civil parish of Brindley Heath.
History.
Hednesford was an important coal mining community for over a century. This is commemorated in the town centre, where a Miner's Lamp has been erected, surrounded by a wall with individual bricks giving the names of former miners. The oldest sections of the town surround the hilltop areas of the existing town; however, the lower part of the town became the focal point as the community grew with the mining industry.
Between 1914 and 1918 two huge army training camps were built in the area and over a quarter of a million British and Commonwealth troops passed through destined for the Western Front. In 1938 a Royal Air Force training camp was established to train technicians in maintenance and repair of airframes and engines. No. 6 School of Technical training became better known as RAF Hednesford. The camp was later used for resettlement of Hungarian refugees fleeing from the Russian invasion of Budapest, in 1956. The site is now a part of Cannock Chase Country Park.
The urban area of Hednesford now spreads across a swathe of the northern fringe of Cannock, from Pye Green across to Heath Hayes, and is the southern gateway to Cannock Chase AONB. Economically Hednesford has suffered since the 1980s as more people travel to the larger towns and cities nearby and due to the absence of redevelopment it retains a traditional street scene with many sole traders operating speciality shops. However, the area around Anglesey Square has been landscaped to provide a pleasant public space with a public clock as a central feature. A£50 million regeneration of the town centre has taken place, with an 80,000sq ft Tesco store being the centre piece. Also, a new drill hall for the local Army Cadet Force Detachment, shops and bingo hall were constructed in 2012. The Tesco site is known as Victoria Shopping Park and the Bingo/Aldi site as Chase Gateway.
Currently, a £2.2 million grant, from Heritage Lottery Fund Grant, is being used to fund a massive refurbishment of Hednesford Park.
Demography.
Town.
In the decade to 2011 the number of dwellings in the town rose by 7.8% to 7,482.
Of the town's 7,277 households in the 2011 census, 25.9% were one-person households including 10.7% where that person was 65 or over. 69.3% were one family with no others (8.2% all pensioners, 39.5% married or same-sex civil partnership couples, 12.6% cohabiting couples and 9.1% lone parents). 29.9% of households had dependent children including 3.4% with no adults in employment. 72.4% of households owned their homes outright or with a mortgage or loan.
Of the town's 14,206 residents in the 2011 census aged 16 and over, 30.6% were single (never married), 51.3% married, 0.15% in a registered same-sex civil partnership, 2.4% separated, 9.0% divorced and 6.5% widowed. 26.0% had no formal qualifications and 50.0% had level 2+ qualifications (meaning 5+ GCSEs (grades A*-C) or 1+ 'A' levels/ AS levels (A-E) or equivalent minimum).
77.3% of the 6,597 men aged 16 to 74 were economically active, including 50.2% working full-time, 5.4% working part-time and 14.6% self-employed. The male unemployment rate (of those economically active) was 6.6% (See also Male unemployment). 67.2% of the 6,515 women aged 16 to 74 were economically active, including 31.9% working full-time, 25.4% working part-time and 3.5% self-employed. The female unemployment rate (of those economically active) was 4.7%.
Of people in employment aged 16 to 74, 14.3% worked in basic industries (ONS categories A, B, and D-F including 12.2% in construction), 13.9% in manufacturing, and 71.8% in service industries (ONS categories G-U including 19.6% in wholesale and retail trade and vehicle repair, 11.9% in health and social work, 8.0% in education, 6.0% in public administration, 5.9% in transport and storage, 4.5% in administrative and support service activities, and 4.0% in accommodation and catering). While 16.9% of households did not have access to a car or van, 84.6% of people in employment travelled to work by car or van.
79.1% of residents described their health as good or very good. The proportion who described themselves as White British was 96.9%, with all white ethnic groups making up 97.9% of the population. The ethnic make-up of the rest of the population was 0.88% mixed/multiple ethnic groups, 0.56% Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi, 0.18% Chinese, 0.15% other Asian, 0.28% Black and 0.046% other. 2.2% of Hednesford's residents were born outside the United Kingdom.
The responses to the voluntary question "What is your religion?" were 'No religion' (23.3%), Christian (69.8%), Buddhist (0.18%), Hindu (0.17%), Jewish (0.006%), Muslim (0.21%), Sikh (0.21%) and other religion (0.26%). 5.9% gave no answer.
Civil parish.
The civil parish of Hednesford constitutes 96.8% of the population of the town. In the 2011 census it had 16,789 residents, 7,239 dwellings, and 7,058 households.
Transport.
Hednesford railway station re-opened in April 1989 by British Rail. It is on the Chase Line with links operated by current franchise West Midlands Railway to Rugeley, Walsall and Birmingham. In 2019, a new London service launched.
D&G Bus operate four main bus services:
Education.
Built as Littleworth Secondary Modern Boys/Girls School, Kingsmead School, previously known as Kingsmead Technology College, and Staffordshire University Academy, previously known as Blake High School and Blake Valley Technology College, are both secondary schools for pupils aged 11–18 that serve the area. Both have academy status, too. Hednesford Valley High School is a school for children with special educational needs, which services the local and wider areas.
Hednesford and the surrounding areas (Heath Hayes, Pye Green etc.) also contain many primary schools.
These include:
Sport.
The town is best known for Hednesford Hills Raceway, the stock car track built on the site of a disused reservoir, which has brought tens of thousands of race fans to the area since the mid-1950s and still attracts crowds of several thousand to its major events.
The town's semi-professional football team, Hednesford Town F.C., nicknamed "the Pitmen", currently play in the Southern League Premier Division Central and won the FA Trophy in 2004.
The town's most prominent sportsperson is former footballer Brian Horton, who played for the Pitmen in the late sixties and early seventies. After a long professional career, he went on to manage Manchester City, Macclesfield Town and Port Vale amongst others, and is currently assistant manager of Championship side Doncaster Rovers.


Khushuut coal mine

The Khushuut Coal Mine () is a coal mine located in the Darvi sum in the Khovd aimag of western Mongolia.
The mine has coal reserves amounting to 460 million tonnes of coking coal, one of the largest coal reserves in Asia and the world. The mine has an annual production capacity of 3 million tonnes of coal.


Grib diamond mine

The Grib mine is one of the largest diamond mines in Russia and in the world. The Grib diamond pipe is named in honor of Vladimir Grib, a post-graduate member of the exploration team, led by Andrѐy V. Sinitsyn, who died prior to the mine's discovery. The mine is located in the north-western part of the country in the Arkhangelsk Oblast. The mine has estimated reserves of 98.5 million carats of diamonds and an annual production capacity of 3.62 million carats.


Great Panther Mining

Great Panther Mining Limited (formerly Great Panther Silver) is a Canadian company that owns and operates mines in Mexico and Brazil that produce gold, silver, zinc and lead. Headquartered in Vancouver, the company is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange in Canada and the NYSE American in the United States. The company became a metal producer in 2006 after a re-restructuring in which Robert Archer took over as Chief Executive Officer and acquired several dormant mines in Mexico. After the company brought both the Topia and Guanajuato mines back into production, its stock graduated to the Toronto Stock Exchange. The company acquired other mineral interests and merged with TSXV-listed Cangold in 2015 but only acquired its third mine after merging with ASX-listed Beadell Resources in 2019 for its Tucano mine in Brazil.
History.
The company that would become Great Panther Mining was founded in 1965 as a private company called Lodestar Mines Ltd, prospecting emeralds in Zimbabwe. It became a public company, as Lodestar Energy Inc, with its initial public offering on June 18, 1980, on the Vancouver Stock Exchange. It underwent several name changes, mergers and acquisitions and pursued several business interests throughout the 1980s and 1990s, including oil and gas development in Oklahoma, agriculture as Controlled Environmental Farming International Ltd, baby bassinets as New Age Ventures and oil again, this time in California and Thailand, as Great Panther Inc.
The company re-organized again in 2003-04 to become Great Panther Resources Limited, with a new CEO, Robert Archer, to pursue the development of various mineral rights in Mexico. Among other interests, it acquired the Guanajuato Mine complex and the Mexican mining company Minera Mexicana el Rosario SA de CV for its dormant Topia Mine. They brought those former mines back into production so that in 2006 they produced 730 tonnes of zinc, 616 tonnes lead, 313,484 oz of silver and 1,394 oz of gold. With this production, in November 2006, the company's stock graduated to the Toronto Stock Exchange from the TSX Venture Exchange. In 2010, when the company changed its name to Great Panther Silver they produced 1,534,957 oz silver along with over a thousand tonnes of both zinc and lead and, subsequently, in 2011, their stock became cross-listed on the NYSE Amex Equities Exchange. While the Topia and Guanajuato mines would remain their only operating mines until 2019, they pursued other mineral interests, such as the El Horcon silver-gold project in Jalisco, Mexico and the Coricancha gold-siver project in Peru. In 2015, Great Panther Silver purchased TSXV-listed Cangold for its the Guadalupe de los Reyes gold-silver project in Sinaloa, Mexico, in an all-share deal worth $1.7 million. The company has been challenged with several deaths at its mine sites. In 2014 a trespasser was killed by guards, in 2016 a worker was killed while operating an underground loader, both at the Guanajuato complex, and in 2019 two more workers were killed in a work place accidents.
The company added a third mine to their operations with the 2019 acquisition of Australian Securities Exchange-listed Beadell Resources Limited for their Tucano gold mine in Brazil. The all-stock deal, valued at $105 million, gave Beadell shareholders 38% of the combined company.
 With work on mining gold and other metals making up more of their operations, the company changed its name from Great Panther Silver to Great Panther Mining, and then in 2020, hired a new CEO, Rob Henderson, and replaced much of its board of directors.
Operations.
In addition to exploration properties in Mexico and Canada, and its ownership of the Coricancha Mine Complex (on care and maintenance since 2013) in Peru, as of 2020 Great Panther Mining owns and operates three operating mines:


Compass Minerals

Compass Minerals International, Inc is a public company that, through its subsidiaries, is a leading producer of minerals, including salt, magnesium chloride, sulfate of potash and other plant nutrition products. Based in Overland Park, Kansas, (a suburb of Kansas City), the company provides bulk treated and untreated highway deicing salt to customers in North America and the United Kingdom and plant nutrition products to growers worldwide. Compass Minerals also produces consumer de-icing and water conditioning products, consumer and commercial culinary salt, and other mineral-based products for consumer, agricultural, and industrial applications. In addition, Compass Minerals provides records management services to businesses throughout the United Kingdom.
Ranks.
Compass Minerals is the biggest:
In 2012, Compass Minerals had total sales of $942 million and ended the year with market capitalization of just $2.5 billion. The company is part of the S&P MidCap 400 Index, the Russell 1000 Index and was included in "Fortune" magazine’s 2010 listing of the “100 Fastest-Growing Companies.”
Though the company’s history stretches back as far as 1844, Compass Minerals became a public company following its initial public offering in December 2003.
Production methods and facilities.
Underground salt mining.
Underground salt mining produces rock salt using both drill-and-blast and continuous mining techniques in deep deposits. Compass Minerals is the largest rock salt producer in North America and the U.K. It operates underground salt mines at Goderich, Ontario, the largest salt mine in the world with an annual capacity of 9 million tons; Cote Blanche, Louisiana, with annual capacity of 3.4 million tons; and Winsford, Cheshire, United Kingdom, with annual capacity of 1.5 million tons.
Mechanical evaporation.
Mechanical evaporation uses high-efficiency vacuum processes to produce high-purity, fine- and coarse-grained salt products for commercial, agricultural, and industrial applications. Compass Minerals is a leading producer of mechanically evaporated salt in North America. It operates mechanical evaporation salt facilities in Lyons, Kansas (annual capacity 450,000 tons), Unity, Saskatchewan (160,000 tons); Goderich, Ontario (130,000 tons); and Amherst, Nova Scotia (130,000 tons). Compass Minerals also operates an SOP evaporation facility at Wynyard, Saskatchewan, with annual capacity of 40,000 tons.
Solar evaporation.
Solar evaporation is the oldest and most energy-efficient method of mineral production. At the Great Salt Lake near Ogden, Utah, Compass Minerals draws naturally occurring brine out of the lake into shallow ponds and allows solar evaporation to produce salt, sulfate of potash (SOP) and magnesium chloride. Its SOP plant at the Great Salt Lake is the largest in North America and one of only three SOP brine solar evaporation operations in the world. Annual capacity is 350,000 tons of SOP, 1.5 million tons of salt, and 750,000 tons of magnesium chloride.
Business segments.
Compass Minerals operates two business segments, Salt and Plant Nutrition.
Compass Minerals’ Salt Segment mines, produces, processes and distributes sodium chloride and magnesium chloride in North America and the U.K. The segment’s largest business is highway deicing, which primarily sells bulk rock salt to states, provinces, counties, municipalities and road maintenance contractors for ice control on public roadways. The highway deicing product line also includes flake and liquid magnesium chloride used for deicing and dust control; treated rock salt treated for deicing in very low temperatures; and rock salt for the chlor-alkali industry.
The salt segment also includes consumer and industrial product lines, which includes pure sodium chloride and blended products containing magnesium chloride, calcium chloride and potassium chloride for applications such as consumer and professional deicing, water conditioning, culinary salt, animal nutrition, swimming pool minerals, and industrial applications.
Compass Minerals’ Plant Nutrition Segment produces sulfate of potash fertilizer.
Compass Minerals also manufactures micronutrient and secondary plant nutrition products under the Wolf Trax brand. Wolf Trax products include DDP Nutrients and PROTINUS Seed Nutrition.
Compass Minerals’ domestic sales of SOP are concentrated in the Western and Southeastern U.S. and exports to Latin America, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.


Bowes Railway

The Bowes Railway, built by George Stephenson in 1826, is the world's only operational preserved standard gauge cable railway system. It was built to transport coal from pits in Durham to boats on the River Tyne. The site is a Scheduled Ancient Monument. The railway is open every week on Thursday, Friday and Saturday (Easter til October) as well as on a number of event days throughout the year.
History.
Background.
The "Grand Allies", a partnership of businessmen including John Bowes, opened a colliery at Springwell in Durham. A railway was needed to transport the coal to the River Tyne. The plan was to build inclined planes and use a combination of steam power and gravity to move the coal wagons. The railway was designed by George Stephenson, who built the Hetton colliery railway completed in 1822.
Construction.
The railway was built between Mount Moor and Jarrow via Springwell village. The first section, between Springwell and Jarrow, opened on 17 January 1826. Mount Moor followed in April 1826. When the line opened it comprised four inclined planes: one steep incline from Mount Moor to Blackham's Hill, and one from Blackham's Hill to Springwell. At Blackham's Hill, the summit of both inclines, was the "hauler house", housing stationary engines to wind the ropes. A long self-acting incline ran from Springwell. Nearly of locomotive-worked line extended to Jarrow where a final incline served the coal staiths. The line was extended across the Team Valley to Kibblesworth Colliery in May 1842. The railway was completed in 1854 when a link from Marley Hill to Kibblesworth was connected enabling collieries in Dipton to be accessed.
Operation.
From 1 January 1947, the railway was owned and operated by the National Coal Board. After 1974 no inclines remained working and the line was only worked north east of Wardley. The last day the inclines were used, Friday 4 October 1974, was filmed by BBC and Tyne-Tees TV crews.
What was left of the Bowes Railway north east of the inclines was served by a shed at Wardley. The line was reduced in length, until at the end there was only about in use. This last section closed on 10 January 1986, a few days short of the 180th anniversary. This attenuated system the NCB called the "Monkton Railways", after the coke works that was its mainstay between 1975 and 1986.
Preserved railway.
Tyne & Wear Industrial Monuments Trust was established April 1975 and took control of the line around Springwell from the National Coal Board through the medium of county council direction. By 1975 Springwell Workshops were building replica locomotives such as Locomotion No. 1 trading as Locomotion Enterprises.
The preserved Bowes railway, includes Springwell Colliery workshops, a one mile passenger railway and a further mile of rope hauled inclines.
Visitors can visit the Victorian workshops and see engineering and blacksmithing demonstrations. A tour of the railway buildings, see the railways Waggon fleet as well as visit the small museum, cafe and shop can all be done at Springwell.
In the future the railway wish to restart passenger rides and rope haulage demonstrations for the benefit of the public.
Rope Haulage.
Original System.
When the Bowes Railway was in full operation the line employed eight rope-worked inclined planes. Two of these (the Springwell and Birkheads inclines) were operated on the self-acting principle; the weight of descending full waggons hauled up the empty waggons via a rope running around a return wheel at the top of the hill. On the remaining six inclines (the Kibblesworth, Black Fell, Blackhams Hill East and West, Starrs and Allerdene Inclines), the ropes were driven by a stationary steam or later electric haulage engine located at the incline top. This type of railway operation pre-dates modern locomotive-type operations, and was laid down here by George Stephenson in 1826. The line's gradual closure eventually left only four inclines in use, these finally closing on 4 October 1974.
Preserved System.
The line, as preserved post-1974, includes two rope-worked inclines. These are the Blackhams Hill East and West inclines. Both are worked by the Blackhams Hill engine, a 300 h.p. Metropolitan Vickers engine commissioned on 30 July 1950. This engine works both the East or Flatt Incline (1170 yards at a gradient of 1 in 70) and the West or Short Bank (750 yards at a gradient 1 in 13). Over these inclines, the preserved railway demonstrates one of the oldest and most unusual types of railway operation. It is now the only place in Britain where this can be seen. The inclines are not currently operational, however, due to vandalism and decline.
Locomotives and brake vans.
Steam locomotives
Diesel locomotives
Passenger Stock
Wagons
The railway also has a fleet of 45 original Bowes Railway wagons dating from 1887 through to 1963, as well as seven similar wagons from other industrial sites in the North East.


Ulaan mine

The Ulaan mine is one of the largest lead and zinc mines in Mongolia. The mine is located in southern Mongolia. The mine has reserves amounting to 38.8 million tonnes of ore grading 1.09% lead and 1.9% zinc thus resulting 0.42 million tonnes of lead and 0.74 million tonnes of zinc. The mine also has reserves amounting to 256,000 oz.