Random Mine of the Day : Wheal Calstock, or Cotehele Consols, or Danescombe Mine

[bunn]

I must confess, I assumed when we wandered through this morning that this must be a later mine because there's so much preserved: lots of deep holes, still gaping alarmingly, multiple buildings still in use, that sort of thing.  But it turns out that this is not due to less time passing, so much as the preservative action of the National Trust, and

Comments

[boggyb]

Oh, one of the hilarious bits of food trivia is potatoes probably wouldn't be approved as a food if they were discovered today, due to the low amounts (generally too low to cause any problems) of poisonous alkaloids in them.

[bunn]

Whereas the tomato was unjustly feared for hundreds of years as a poison apple!

(I can see the point. I must confess an unlove for tomatoes)

[wellinghall]

LJ ate my comment, so my anecdote will have to wait for another time.

[bunn]

Perhaps mixed with vinegar and chalk...?

[wellinghall]

While I was at University, I was heading home for a holiday, and went into town on the way to the bus station. A couple stopped me, to say that they had found my uni registration card, and handed it into the police; they recognised me from my photo. I just had time to go to the police station; they had rung the university, found my home address, sent it to the police station nearest there, and were about to write to me. Kindness and efficiency all round!

[bunn]

Yay for kindness and efficiency : so rarely found together! :-D

[puddleshark]

I always think it seems quite scary for holiday accommodation...

A holiday cottage for Dark Lords perhaps?

Fascinating stuff. Everything I knew about arsenic I learnt from Strong Poison...

[bunn]

It's so louring and gloomy! I can't help wondering how many people arrive there at the end of a long drive from Birmingham or somewhere in the rain, drive up the long, deserted leaf-covered woodland track as the light is going, take one look and buzz off to the nearest cheery B&B.

Maybe there is a Dark Lord Magazine and that's where they get all their bookings.

[puddleshark]

And now I'm wondering how they word the advert.

"Isolated louring stone holiday cottage, sleeps 2-6 minions, pleasantly situated among ruins, mine shafts, and contaminated post-industrial landscape, and surrounded by dark sinister woods..."

[bunn]

When I read this earlier, I didn't have time to reply because I had to rush off to a meeting of the Tamar Valley Tourism association.

I was so tempted to suggest we forget the families with kiddies and instead work on appealing to the lucrative 'Dark Lord' sector. :-D

[the_marquis]

That Lewisite link has a footnote link to a worrying problem with the stuff being dumped at the end of WW1 by burying it and where someone built houses on it in the 90s 0_o

[bunn]

We had that problem under some houses in the next village, a couple of years back. Although admittedly it wasn't weapons-grade!