BRITAIN’S BURIED TREASURE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 25 January 1934, Page 2

BRITAIN’S BURIED TREASURE

ROMANCE AND TRAGEDY Beneath the soil of Britain lie romance and tragedy. In the depths there are gold, silver, amethyst, tin, lignite, arsenic, and other precious minerals, all of which, at one time or another, have made and lost fortunes. There is gold in Scotland, Ireland, aiul Kent, but the most famous mines are in Wales and on the Welsh border. Companies have been floated to work veins there, and they have paid large dividends —until the ore suddenly petered out. Tho wedding ring on the Princess Royal’s hand was from a mine at Caio, in Breconshire. About 30 miles from Caio lies the Forest of Dean, where tile great English gold rush took place, 'and where claims were actually staked out by Free Miners on the mysterious Wigpool Moor, near the village of Mitchefdean. The Free Miners, a curious body dating back to Silurian times, have tho right to dig and search for minerals anywhere within the precincts of the forest. They were bitterly disappointed —tho “gold” 'turning out to be yellow ochre, with which the forest abounds. Besides unworked red ochre and iron (tho Roman “cindus” arc still sometimes smelted), there actually is gold here. Even more of a geological “freak” is the valley of Combe Martin, near Ilfracombe, North Devon, where gold, silver, iron, copper, tin, and lead abound. Eminent geologists think that an untapped source of almost untold wealth still exists.

Amethyst could also be still mined in Britain. There was a shaft at Cape Cornwall, near Land’s End, working what the Cornislnnen will tell you was tho only known rich lode in England. Tho unemployed tin miners get this stone still, and sell it for a few pence. They also find amber oil the beaches among tho flotsam washed up by the tide.

Much of the soil in that district of Cornwall is impregnated with arsenic. The miners had to take precautions against the poison, but they never lived beyond 40.

That strange stuff shale is, perhaps, the imworked mineral with the greatest “future” in Britain to-day. It has already lost fortunes. At Kimmeridge, on the Dorset coast, one can still see the evidences of such a “crash.” In 1860 a French company was formed to work the seams of oil-bearing rock. It built a pier, sank a shaft, and for a time all went well. A boat arrived, took the rdek away, and sold the soil to the Parisians. But shale oil gives off a terrible smell and soot while burning, and the boat sailed less often, till it ceased. —“Sunday Express.”