MY old village school has just closed. Its pupil count fell to just five and it became economically unviable. When I attended the school in the 1970s, the school population was between 70 and 80 and this decline is almost entirely down to the demise of local industry. Young people growing up in the community were forced to leave in search of work, only to be replaced with retirees.

The pub, the working men’s club and the local shop have all gone. 

When I was young and the school was bursting at the seams, the main employers were agriculture (sheep farming), the cement works and several mineral mines. The sheep farming began to decline as foreign buyers purchased the moorland for grouse shooting. It’s just a personal view, but contrary to the general perception that the landscape is being carefully managed, it seems the gamekeepers of these estates kill everything from weasels to birds of prey.

WANT MORE VOICE? 

The cement works was bought by a French company and asset stripped for its order book. They used the excuse that it was run down, but at the time it was showing massive profits. In its last year it was producing something equivalent to about £40k per employee, which is about £100k per worker in today’s money. I don’t think money was the issue, but the owners wanted the order book for other quarries with better road links. Its demise killed the community. 

As for the mineral mines, there were several operating in the area producing fluorspar, which was used as a flux in the steel industry. It also had a minor role as a ‘non-stick’ element on pans, but its key use was as a flux. The main company at the time was SAM UK (Swiss Aluminium Mining), which worked in conjunction with British Steel. They were basically working old lead mines from the 1800s that had supplied lead for piping and roofing. The story is familiar as the lead mines ceased to be competitive, with cheaper imports coming from Spain. By the 1920s, lead mining had virtually stopped and was gradually replaced by fluorspar, which was relatively easy as much of it was just back fill from ‘T’ and man (old man); a name given to the first miners.

The last fluorspar mine struggled on until the 1990s, when the import of high-quality iron ore (which didn’t need a flux) took over.

I suppose there’s always an upside to things and during the ’70s and early ’80s my mates and I used these old workings as a playground, riding the spoil heaps on our pushbikes until they were replaced by motor bikes, and exploring the old mine workings, until the sites were eventually cleared by bulldozers and scrap men.

Even as children we wondered, why destroy all this hard work? Maybe we were a bit naive, but it was obvious that much effort had been made to dig the mines, so why fill them in and flood them? It was very sobering having to watch centuries of toil being destroyed before our very eyes. It was as though every trace of the past had to be eradicated. A good many of these sites were only a small entrance in the hillside where generations of people had toiled away, still serving as a testament to their efforts. Ironically, only a few years after the bulldozing of these sites, new technologies came along like computers, mobile phones, etc, creating a huge thirst for the minerals that had just been sealed into the hillsides; galena (lead ore), silver, zinc, cadmium and a host of other minerals whose names I don’t know. The term ‘industrial suicide’ springs to mind.

We seem to have a self-destruct button in the UK. Mention mining to most people and they’ll immediately picture huge, dirty scars on the landscape. These small mineral mines left behind by the fluorspar miners could have been mined with virtually zero environmental impact if limited to a small scale. I know this because as children we explored them and saw several huge veins of galena spreading upwards. Vertical seams were always more difficult to mine than horizontal ones, even though we witnessed several big horizontal veins known as flats.

At some point someone might have thought about this as a large drilling rig appeared and drilled down into the seam, though if they’d bothered to ask us we could have told them. A large metal pipe was inserted into the drill hole to enable future exploration and we took great delight in dropping the many steel balls lying around the site into it. The steel balls were from the old crushing plant and as children it was highly amusing listening to the ping, ping, clank as the balls ricochet off the sides of the pipe. We must have spent hours doing this, though I’m still troubled by the thought of some small child falling down the hole (of course, things were different then and children were pretty feral). At some stage another rig arrived, but didn’t seem to get very far.

Moving on, it’s now 20 years since CCA was banned, probably bringing about millions of post failures. From being a small mill which supplied the farming community we have changed to sawing wood for the DIY trade, with the production of pallet wood out of the poorer cuts. This carries a problem in that the majority of people involved in DIY live on newly built estates where conformity is the key. Everything has to be perfect and bland and pine logs with dead knots are unwanted, as are redwood, larch and Douglas, because when treated they assume a darker hue.

If we dispatch mixed conifer orders then we invariably get the darker wood returned, so we are increasingly turning to spruce. Bland and boring, but that’s what the customer wants.

At this time of year there is usually a drop off in demand for both DIY and agriculture, so we would naturally turn more towards farming to keep us busy. However, farmers are turning more towards imported creosoted timber from Sweden and in some respects I don’t blame them. I’m also getting increasing numbers of farmers trying to sell me round timber. Most farms have packets of woodland and farmers are increasingly puzzled as to why no-one wants their pine or larch mill wood, with much of it going for biomass.

Some farmers, angry at having to pay £7 or £8 per post from Sweden, are paying me to mill their timber. 

Once it’s been returned they are then trying to treat it themselves with creosote, which as we all know is very messy, dirty and detrimental to one’s health. I’ve even heard of one individual who in trying to heat the creosote actually set fire to the premises. We have a 40’ treatment tank in the mill, which would easily do the job, but I can’t guarantee the modern green liquid inside it will do any good.

The WPA appears to have hidden the results from its last two ground tests which seem to confirm its ineffectiveness. I can’t stand there and tell lies, so when a customer asks me directly whether or not the stuff is effective then all I can do is shrug my shoulders and say, ‘No. It’s crap.’

Unfortunately I’m not one of those people who can stand there and tell a bare-faced lie. I just can’t do it.

The most annoying aspect of this 20-year CCA ban was that it was only ever banned in gardens and playgrounds, yet the chemical companies stopped its production. 

Here are its legal uses:

  • as structural timber in public and agricultural buildings, office buildings and industrial premises.
  • in bridges and bridge work.
  • as construction timber in freshwater areas and brackish waters, e.g. jetties and bridges.
  • as noise barriers.
  • in avalanche control.
  • in highway safety fencing and barriers.
  • as debarked round conifer livestock fence posts.
  • in earth-retaining structures.
  • as electric power transmission and telecommunications poles.
  • as underground railway sleepers. 

Why do we always shoot ourselves in the foot?