Well, South West's AGM at Filleigh, near Barnstaple, last Saturday was almost the last of the OUGS branch AGMs. Just our own, Severnside, this weekend and then we are done. I go to some branch AGMs as OUGS chair especially if they want some support from 'on high'. (Not sure how that works... makes me feel like a crane!) In this case it was Rich's first as BO.
Although I must have gone past Filleigh on the North Devon Link Road, and probably through it years ago too, I don't know that part of Devon despite living in the county for 12 years. Amazed to see the beautiful Palladian house at Castle Hill - but their pheasants are just as daft as the Hereford ones: one chap saw us coming and decided the time was right to dash his brains out on the wing mirror. Unfortunately this also did for the mirror, and its housing :( .
Lovely village hall venue for the meeting with plenty of tea and coffee, and a soup and sandwich lunch catered by the WI. That was a great opportunity to see all my old SW branch friends!
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| Jack King, SW Branch Treasurer, on a trip to Greencliff in the late 1980s to see the "Bideford Black" seam. You can just make out the arched entrance to what in fact is a drainage adit just behind him. |
No fewer than four talks either side of the meeting: particularly interesting ones in the morning, Chris Cornford talked about "The unusual history of coal mining in Devon", specifically the Bideford Black and Paint seams, and the Oligocene Bovey Basin.
I've found some old photos from past trips with OUGS and Exeter Extra-mural classes, and even one from a school A level trip
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| This is the big pit in the Bovey Basin in 1964 when I went there on an A-level field trip. Sorry about the colour but the slide was rather faded. However you should be able to see the dark lignite bands and the paler kaolin bands on the faces midway up the image. |
Then Richard Scrivener on "The Drakelands Project - a new metal mine for Devon" - this is Hemerdon wolfram mine (now renamed Drakelands) which I last visited around 1985 when Amex were first thinking about redeveloping it before the price of wolfram dropped badly.
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| Old Hemerdon mine - an evening class visit with Richard Scrivener in the mid 1980s |
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| The old plant at Hemerdon, looking down off Dartmoor towards Plymouth Sound |
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| Trial area for reseeding spoil heaps if the mine at Hemerdon were to be redeveloped. Again this was about 30 years ago. |
Rich Blagden dealt with the AGM business well, and then a local writer, Fred Harding, who has been putting together a book on gold mining in the Bampfylde area talked about that. Sadly, with a long journey, had to leave before Dave Williams on the William Smith map.
Thanks to my old branch for making me welcome!