1

No 185 Jan 2012

www.sihg.org.uk

A Visit to CERN

see page 9.

Published by the Surrey Industrial History Group and printed by

YesPrint 3 Leafy Oak Workshops Cobbetts Lane Yateley GU17 9LW

© SIHG 2012 ISSN 1355-8188

SIHG is a group of the Surrey Archaeological Society,

Registered Charity No 272098, Castle Arch Guildford Surrey GU1 3SX

Group President: Prof AG Crocker FSA

The deadline for submitting copy for the next Newsletter is 10 March 2012.

Submissions are accepted in typescript, on a disc, or by email to news@sihg.org.uk.

Anything related to IA will be considered. Priority will be given to Surrey-based or topical articles. Contributions will be published as soon as space is available.

Readers are advised that the views of contributors are not necessarily the views of SIHG.

Website: www.sihg.org.uk

January 2012 2 Newsletter 185

Surrey Industrial History Group Officers

Chairman & Lectures Organiser: Robert Bryson meetings@sihg.org.uk

Secretary: Alan Thomas info@sihg.org.uk

Treasurer: Anne Lea treasurer@sihg.org.uk

Membership Secretary: Pam Taylor membership@sihg.org.uk

Newsletter Editor: Jan Spencer news@sihg.org.uk

Reports & Notices Details of meetings are reported in good faith, but information may

become out of date. Please check details before attending.

SIHG Visits, Details & Updates at www.sihg.org.uk

Contents

2 Surrey Industrial History Group Officers & Notices

4 Venues, Times & Contacts and Diary: 20 January - 31 March 2012

5 Historic Buildings and Materials by Martin Higgins, report by Rosemary Hughesdon

6 No Place Too Dangerous: Women and Children of the Cornish Mining Industries

by Lynne Mayers, report by Alan Crocker

7 Industrial Archaeology Review Vol. 33: No.2: November 2011 report by Gordon Knowles

8 The Surrey Archaeological Society Research Framework Conference 2011 report by Glenys Crocker

9 A Visit to CERN by Mike Davison

South East Regional Industrial Archaeology Conference

SERIAC 2012

28 April 2012

St Bartholomew’s School, Newbury

Organized by Berkshire Industrial Archaeology Group, www.biag.org.uk

An application form with full details is enclosed& at www.sihg.org.uk.

Surrey Industrial History Group: Half Term Visit

Thursday 16 February 2012 Coach: Leatherhead Leisure Centre at 0930, (park at far end) £20 (£15 for Leatherhead course members) (pub lunch extra)

Thames Bridges & Clock Museum via Thames Clipper

Contact Geoff Roles, 01372 453713, geoffrey@groles.wanadoo.co.uk

Surrey Archaeological Society Local History Committee

Saturday 28 January, 1400 - 1645 Surrey History Centre, Woking

Researching Surrey’s Infrastructure:

Deposited plans of roads railways & canals of Surrey 1789 - 1982

Talks by Julian Pooley, Dr Mari Takayanagi, Dr Gerry Moss, Prof Mark Casson

Tickets £8 will include refreshments, Advance booking essential: 01483 518737, shs@surreycc.gov.uk

SIHG Membership Renewal The SIHG membership database has been merged with the recently established Surrey Archaeological Society database.

Cheques payable to ‘Surrey Archaeological Society’ please, to Castle Arch, Guildford GU1 3SX

The membership form is available on our website, or please contact Pam Taylor (see below) for a printed form.

January 2012 3 Newsletter 185

SIHG Newsletter No 185 January 2012

DIARY

The 36th series of SIHG Industrial Archaeology Lectures continues on alternate Tuesdays, 1930 - 2130, University of Surrey (Lecture Theatre F)

Enquiries to programme co-ordinator, Bob Bryson, 01483 577809,

meetings@sihg.org.uk. Maps at www.sihg.org.uk

Free parking is available in the evening on the main campus car park.

Single lectures at £5, payable on the night, are open to all.

The Spring 2012 Thursday Morning Lecture Series at Leatherhead started on 12 January 2012.

Enquiries to Ken Tythacott, 01372 452569, Ken.tythacott@btinternet.com,

or Geoff Roles, 01372 453713, geoffrey@groles.wanadoo.co.uk.

As seating is strictly limited, enrolment is for the whole course only; casual attendance is not possible.

The Crown Chiddingfold,

Surrey's largest

Wealden hall house,

dated by

dendrochronology to 1440.

Photo Martin Higgins.

Historic Buildings

and Materials

see page 5

The long-wall frame of a

three bay barn being prepared

on the ‘frame plot’, see page 7.

Photo JoeThompson,

Sussex Oak and Iron.

January 2012 4 Newsletter 185

Venues, Times & Contacts of other Industrial Archaeology Organisations Amberley Museum & Heritage Centre: by Amberley Railway Station on the B2139; www.amberleymuseum.co.uk. Anne of Cleves House: 52 Southover High Street, Lewes, East Sussex, BN7 1JA; anne@sussexpast.co.uk. Berkshire Industrial Archaeology Group: Garden Room, Watlington House, Watlington Street, Reading, www.biag.org.uk. Brooklands: Brooklands Road, Weybridge, Surrey KT13 0QN.

Brooklands - Royal Aeronautical Society: Clubhouse. 1845, via the Campbell entrance off

Brooklands Road by JTI; kenmodavies@aol.com. Brunel Museum: walks from Bermondsey Tube; just turn up, £8, www.brunel-museum.org.uk. Chatham Historic Dockyard : Chatham, Kent ME4 4TZ; www.thedockyard.co.uk.

Crofton Beam Engines : Crofton Pumping Station, Crofton, Marlborough, Wilts, SN8 3DW;www.croftonbeamengines.org. Crossness Pumping Station : The Old Works, Crossness STW, Belvedere Road, Abbey Wood, London SE2 9AQ; www.crossness.org.uk. Cuffley Industrial Heritage Society: Northaw Village Hall, 5 Northaw Road West, Northaw EN6 4NW, www.cihs.org.uk. Didcot Railway Centre: Didcot Parkway railway station, Didcot, Oxfordshire, OX11 7NJ. Docklands History Group: Museum in Docklands, No 1 Warehouse, West India Quay,

Hertsmere Rd, London E14 4AL; 01689 851982; www.docklandshistorygroup.org.uk. Eden Valley Museum: Church House, High Street, Edenbridge, Kent TN8 5AR, curator@evmt.org.uk, www.evmt.org.uk. Greenwich Industrial History Society: The Old Bakehouse, rear of Age Exchange Centre,

11 Blackheath Village, London SE3 (opposite Blackheath Station). Guildford Museum: Castle Arch, Guildford, Surrey GU1 3SX, museum@guildford.gov.uk. Hampshire Industrial Archaeology Society: Underhill Centre, St. John's Road, Hedge End, SO30 4AF. Kempton Great Engines: Feltham Hill Road, Hanworth, Middx TW13 6XH (off elevated section of A316), www.kemptonsteam.org. Kew Bridge Steam Museum: Green Dragon Lane, Brentford, Middlsex TW8 0EN, www.kbsm.org. Leatherhead & District Local History Society: meetings at The Institute, top of Leatherhead High Street;

www.leatherheadlocalhistory.org.uk. London (Cobham) Bus Museum: London Bus Preservation Trust, Brooklands; www.lbpt.org. London Canal Museum: 12/13 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RT, www.canalmuseum.org.uk.

London Model Engineering Exhibition: Great Hall, Alexandra Palace, Alexandra Palace Way, London N22 7AY, www.londonmodelengineering.co.uk.

London Transport Museum Depot: 2 Museum Way, 118-120 Gunnersbury Lane, London W3 9BQ, www.ltmuseum.co.uk. London Underground Railway Society: Upper Room, All Souls Clubhouse, 141 Cleveland Street, London W1T 6QG; www.lurs.org.uk. Michelham Priory: Upper Dicker, near Hailsham, East Sussex, BN27 3QS; adminmich@sussexpast.co.uk. Markfield Beam Engine and Museum: Markfield Road, South Tottenham, London N15 4RB, info@mbeam.org, www.mbeam.org. National Trust: www.nationaltrust.org.uk. Newcomen Society London: Fellows’ Room, Science Museum, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2DD.

Newcomen Society Portsmouth: Room 0.27, Portland Building, University of Portsmouth, St James Street off Queen Street, Portsea. Railway & Canal Historical Society: The Rugby Tavern, Rugby Street, London WC1, www.rchs.org.uk.

Rural Life Centre: Old Kiln Museum, Reeds Road, Tilford, Farnham, Surrey, GU10 2DL.

Shere, Gomshall and Peaslake Local History Society: Shere Village Hall. Southwark & Lambeth Archaeological Society: Housing Co-op Hall, 106 The Cut. STEAM - Museum of the Great Western Railway: Kemble Drive, Swindon SN2 2TA; www.steam-museum.org.uk. Sussex Industrial Archaeology Society (SIAS): West Blatchington Mill Barn, Holmes Avenue, Hove. www.sussexias.co.uk. Twyford Waterworks: Hazeley Road, Twyford, Hampshire SO21 1QA, 01962 714716, www.twyfordwaterworks.co.uk. Victorian Society: Art Workers’ Guild, 6 Queen Square, London WC1, www.victoriansociety.org.uk. Wandle Industrial Museum: Lower Green, London Road, Mitcham (next to The Vestry Hall). Watercress Line (Mid Hants Railway): Station Road Alresford SO24 9JG or Station Road Alton GU34 2PZ

Weald & Downland Open Air Museum, Singleton: Chichester, West Sussex, PO18 0EU. Wealden Iron Research Group: Nutley Memorial Hall, N end of Nutley village, www.wealdeniron.org.uk.

Diary 2012

January

24 Tue

Surrey Industrial History Group Lecture Course at Guildford:

The Role of the Surrey Archaeological Society by David Calow, Surrey Archaeological Society Secretary.

February

7 Tue

Surrey Industrial History Group Lecture Course at Guildford:

The History of the London Underground by Tony Earle

February

16 Thu

Surrey Industrial History Group Spring Half Term Visit:

Thames Bridges & Clock Museum via Thames Clipper, see page 2.

March

6 Tue

Surrey Industrial History Group Lecture Course at Guildford:

Personality Clashes and Power Struggles in the History of

British Radar, 1935-41 by Dr Phil Judkins, University of Buckingham.

Recording Factory Closures

A good opportunity to record the history & to rescue traditional papers & machinery!

If you hear of a factory which is about to close, please report it to us; contacts on page 19.

January 2012 5 Newsletter 185

This talk, by Martin Higgins, Surrey County

Council’s Historic Buildings Officer, covered timber

supply, selection and conversion and construction meth-

ods for historic timber framed buildings.

Maximum use of the land was achieved using cop-

pice woodland with standard oaks, bringing in an in-

come per acre greater than that of arable but less than pasture1. The undergrowth would be cut at an interval of

8-14 years or so. Large banks and ditches protected the

regenerating coppice from deer and the trees from theft.

The woods were divided into compartments to allow an

annual income to be taken from the coppice and a peri-

odic one of eighty years of so from the oak standards.

The Surrey Dendrochronology Project has identified

some timber that is faster grown, probably from hedge-

rows or parkland where there was less competition for

light and water. The majority of timber was felled in the

winter.

Historically, a carpenter commissioned to build a

house would act as building contractor. His work would

start with marking the standing trees which would pro-

duce the timbers he had calculated were required. He

would convert the felled timber using a side axe to pro-

duce a square timber with much of the sapwood re-

moved. This boxed heart might be used as it was, or be

sawn in half or quarters. The timber was normally used

green. Smaller trees would be chosen for the rafters,

larger timbers would be taken from larger trees2. Some-times matching timbers were needed for long braces or

durn doorways - the selected timber would be sawn

lengthways into two rectangular timbers for this pur-

pose. Before timber was converted the need for jowls

had to be carefully considered to ensure the swellings

were not cut off. Wattles and staves were produced by

cleaving timber with a froe.

The sapwood of an oak is not resistant to worm

and weather so the carpenter would try to place the heart

of a tree on the outside. One way this was achieved was to quarter a tree to create four identical posts and to

place the four quarters into the diametrically opposite

corners of the building.

One important point is that small building timbers

are often taken from the largest timber. Large drums

could be split into shingles, a once much more common

roofing material. Staves are also commonly spilt from

the heart of a tree so that they were resistant to worm

attack.

Larger timbers might not be available locally and

have to be carried some distance. These might have

been specially grown in coppice woodland or more like-

ly in woodland pasture such as deer parks. A document-

ed example is the long timbers of seventy feet for Non-

such (Ewell) which were carried from Leigh and Betch-

worth3. This would be done by fixing a pair of wheels

front and back and hitching up a team of oxen.

Stockpiling is only very rarely detected in the dendro

project. It occurs in large buildings, like Barrow Green

Court in Oxted, where the timber was cut over three

winters. Seasoned timber was however essential for

staircases, carved work or panelling. The thin timbers

for panelling might be imported from the Baltic where

the skills and equipment of the sawyers seems to have been vastly superior.

Timber other than oak is found in Surrey occasion-ally, mostly for rafters. One exceptional area identified

by the dendro project, where many houses are almost

entirely of elm, is the Clandons and Horsleys. The rea-

son for this is unclear as elm was a more valuable tim-

ber, being worth six times that of oak4. In the manor of

East Betchworth the lord owned the oak and beech, but

the tenant the elm and ash.

The carpenter started the process of framing up the

building by using the sill beam (or with barns the wall

plate as the sill beam was not continuous) as a reference and then assembling the timbers of a wall on the ground,

outside face upwards. The main timbers were marked

with perfect right angles to ensure the structure was

square, see image on page 20 All timbers would then be

numbered and the frame dismantled. A corner post

would then be turned and the adjacent frame construct-

ed. This would continue until all frames were complete,

whereupon the timbers would be moved to the site and

erected, and the wattling completed. The carpenter’s

work was then complete and he arranged for others to

complete the build.

Houses would follow a standard plan with a hall

open to the roof in the centre as the main living space

with its central hearth. At one end of the hall (the High

end) would be a door at the rear leading to the parlour,

with a chamber (bedroom) over, at the other would be

the front and rear entrances to the building and beyond

that two service rooms. The smoke from the fire gradu-

ally made its way out of open windows and small trian-

gular shaped openings at the ends of the roof called ga-

blets.

While many features in Surrey buildings are simi-

lar throughout the county, there is some variation, such

as end jetties, and moulded dais beams - found in the

east, influenced by Kent traditions; crown strut roofs

with side purlins, found in the west, showing Hampshire

influence; internal jetties, found in the south and fancy

framing which only appears in the area around Godalm-

ing.

References

1. Oliver Rackham The making of the English Land-

scape gives figures from the 13th century, but suggests

this is true for the whole of the medieval period.

2. Rafters might be from trees 50 years old.

Fifty large timbers sampled during the dendro project

revealed most were felled at 80-90 years, just four were

over 120 years old.

3. The Quest for Nonsuch, John Dent 1981.

4. Rackham op cit.

5. From the text accompanying the 1634 survey of the

manor of East Betchworth, Surrey History Centre. ¤

SIHG Lecture 18 October 2010

Historic Buildings and Materials

by Martin Higgins, report by Rosemary Hughesdon

January 2012 6 Newsletter 185

Editorial Note

Many thanks to all who have sent in contributions.

Please send in reports or photos of holiday visits or thoughts on local, national or international Industrial Archaeology

for the March 2012 SIHG Newsletter!

SIHG Lecture 4 November 2011

No Place Too Dangerous: Women and Children of the Cornish Mining Industries

by Lynne Mayers, report by Alan Crocker

Balmaidens spalling and loading copper ore

into a waggon in about 1880

I volunteered to write this report because one of

my great-grandmothers worked in a tin mine at Cam-

borne in Cornwall until she was 14, when she ran away

from home ending up in South Wales. In 2007 I visited

the Cornish Mining Engines Museum at Camborne and

told this story to the attendant. She was very interested

as she was writing a dissertation on ‘Balmaidens’, the Cornish word for women and girls working in mining

and related industries. I promised to send her photo-

graphs of my balmaiden ancestor and she said I should

also send them to Lynne Mayers, the authority in the

field. So, I sent the photographs and Lynne sent me a

copy of her book entitled Balmaidens. We communicat-

ed for a while after that and I suggested to SIHG that she

should be invited to give one of our talks. However, I

did not meet her until she gave this lecture.

As you can imagine, I found Lynne’s talk fascinat-ing. She is an excellent speaker, which I anticipated as

she is a Methodist minister. She emphasised the role of

women and children in a wide range of extraction indus-

tries including mining copper, tin, lead, zinc, silver, iron,

arsenic, granite, slate, soapstone, china clay and brick

clay. She also covered smelting, calcining and pumping.

In addition the women and children were involved in

foundry work, loading slates on boats, looking after

horses at whims and working as waggoners. All of these

activities were illustrated with a large number of slides

based on photographs, paintings, engravings, sketches

and cartoons.

Before 1800 more than half of the workers in these

industries were women and children, some of whom

probably worked underground. In 1837 there were about

10,000 women and children and in 1854 about 7,000

females. The work was hard, for example using mallets

to break down ore and wheeling 1.5 cwt of ore in bar-

rows. A host of bewildering technical terms were used including, for example, spalling, cobbing, jigging,

washing, picking, bucking, sieving, tozing and budding

but Lynne defined and illustrated all of these. Following

an 1842 Act of Parliament it was forbidden to employ

women and children to work underground in coal mines

but this was not extended to cover metal mines until

1872. Some women worked in the counthouses (offices)

mainly doing housekeeping tasks and keeping accounts.

However a few had a management role and in 1841, for

example, one was the manager of a foundry.

Lynne also discussed the gunpowder, safety fuse

and modern explosives industries in Cornwall. Glenys

and I have visited the gunpowder sites on several occa-

sions and I was pleased to introduce Lynne to our mem-

ber Kim Owen as he is a descendant of the well-known

Bickford family who developed the first safety fuses in

Cornwall. However, towards the end of the 19th century

the mining industries in the region declined and many

Cornish people emigrated. Indeed it is said that a Cor-

nish woman was the first to recognise high quality ores

in Australia. My great-grandmother only got as far as South Wales and my mother remembered some of the

stories she told about working in Dolcoath tin mine in

Camborne. In particular she claimed that she worked

with her mother, which interested Lynne as she thought

that women were sacked when they married. ¤

January 2012 7 Newsletter 185

The Editor, Michael Nevell, writes on Industrial Herit-age at Risk. He notes that October 2011 marked the launch

of English Heritage’s ‘Industrial Heritage at Risk Year’, and that the aim of the project is to embark on research that will

reveal how much of our industrial heritage, those monuments and sites for the period of Industrialisation from the 18th

century to the First World War, is at risk from decay, neglect or demolition. This will be achieved by getting owners, de-

velopers, local people, voluntary bodies, academics, profes-sionals and politicians, debating the future of our industrial

heritage before it is too late. An English Heritage survey showed that 43% of those interviewed did not know when

the Industrial Revolution took place, although 80% agreed that remains from this period were just as important as cas-

tles and country houses. Nearly 11% of Grade I and II* in-dustrial buildings are at risk, far higher than the 3% of Grade

I and II* buildings which are at risk in England. Cuts in funding of local authority archaeological services constitute a

threat as well as developers and neglect.

The 2009 Rolt Memorial Lecture; The Death of the

Industrial Past ? given by David Alderton, is reproduced. David has been a member of the AIA from the early days and

has held many posts on the Council, including President, Secretary, Affiliated Societies Officer and Conference Secre-

tary. He still sits on Council as Liaison Officer for the Herit-age Alliance. His paper examines the degree to which the

archaeological evidence for the industrial period has disap-peared. It compares a record of significant industrial sites in

Eastern England made in the late 1970s with what survived

30 years later. The paper then investigates whether the evi-dent decline in industrial activity and the disappearance of

some industries entirely really constitutes the death of the industrial past, or whether it is our perceptions and defini-

tions of what constitutes ‘industry’ and ‘industrial archaeolo-gy’ which needs examining. He considers engineering,

foundries, brickyards, lime kilns, malting and milling, and fishing; and notes the rise of new industries which sometimes

have replaced the old ones, as well as the conversion of many older buildings into flats and light industrial units, some un-

dertaken better than others.

There are three articles in this issue devoted to different

aspects of mills and milling.

Colin Rynne of University College, Cork, writes on ‘Technological Continuity, Technological Survival: the use

of Horizontal Mills in Western Ireland.’ His article discusses the continued use of the early medieval horizontal water-

wheel form, well into the post-medieval period in the Atlan-tic Provinces of the British Isles. He argues that archaeologi-

cal and documentary evidence demonstrates that the horizon-

tal mills of western Ireland represent the continued use of this technology from the early medieval period in to modern

times. Similarly, he argues that the traditional horizontal mills of Scotland and its western islands can, on linguistic

grounds, be linked into the same enduring tradition. The con-tinued use of this technology in these societies appears to be

as much a product of social context and choice, as it was a

technological survival in a marginalised area.

Excavating the 18th and 19th century Urban Flour

Mill: the Example of the Archaeological Investigations at the

Former J.A.Symes Factory Site, Highbridge Road, Barking is written by Rebecca Haslam, a professional archaeologist with

Pre-Construct Archaeology Ltd. The area covered by the

former J.A.Symes match factory was once home to a large steam, and water powered, flour mill. The mill was original-

ly driven by the tidal flow of the River Roding, prior to its expansion and gradual conversion to steam power. A resi-

dential re-development, undertaken in spring 2006, provided an opportunity to conduct a developer-funded archaeological

investigation, carried out by Pre-Construct Archaeology Ltd. The excavations exposed the partial, multi-phased remains

of the mill’s below ground foundations, in particular the evidence of successive power systems. These remains were

interpreted with the help of documentary research, demon-strating the complementary nature of these two forms of

evidence on an urban industrial site.

The third mill article is The Hawton Gypsum Mill and

Developments in 19th century Grinding Technology by Ron Fitzgerald of Structural Perspectives Ltd., and formerly

Keeper of the Armley Mills Museum in Leeds. Hawton Gypsum Mill was formerly part of an extensive complex of

gypsum extraction and processing plants that extended over a considerable acreage of south-western Newark in Notting-

hamshire. The sites were linked by a standard-gauge tram-way, worked by steam locomotives, enabling the output of

the quarries to be matched to the capacities of the mills. Hawton Mill was attached to its own quarry, which seems to

have been in production since the 1840s. Evidence is incon-clusive, but there may have been a processing mill on the

site from the beginning. The present mill was probably com-pleted in the second half of the 19th century, possibly after

Messrs. Cafferata became owners of the site.

The brick building that enclosed the milling machinery

followed the local traditional style of industrial buildings. Although the plant was intended solely for gypsum reduc-

tion, it had all the characteristics of corn milling. There were several similar plants in operation locally until the last dec-

ades of the 20th century. The type of plant installed had become virtually standard throughout the milling trade after

the 1830s. This was the layshaft mill, which used a horizon-tal main drive shaft carrying several sets of bevel gear-

wheels, each driving an individual pair of stones. The stones were thus linear as opposed to the circular style driven by a

great wheel and an upright shaft, which had been the previ-ous pattern in the 18th century. The engineer-built all-iron

mill was constructed from standard components in a series to create a twin line each of eight stone sets. The mill and its

machinery survived until recently and was surveyed in 2000, by when it had suffered from vandalism and fire damage,

but was still substantially intact. Other buildings on the site

had been demolished by the time the survey was undertaken.

There is one abstract of local interest. Dorian Gerhold writes on Wandsworth’s Industrial Transformation c1634-

90 in Surrey Archaeological Collections No. 95, 2010. He says that Wandsworth attracted little industry until the

1630s, despite having a powerful river for driving mills, plenty of water and an ideal position for bringing in coal,

together with its closeness to London. New industries that arrived included metal-working in the 1630s, gunpowder,

bleaching and dyeing in the 1650s, and hat-making and leather by 1680. By the 18th century Wandsworth had as

great a range of industries as any parish in the country. The

crucial role of foreign workers bringing in new skills to the

area are noted. ¤

Industrial Archaeology Review Vol. 33: No.2: November 2011

report by Gordon Knowles

January 2012 8 Newsletter 185

The conference was held at the Letherhead Institute on 15 October, with a programme arranged by the Surrey Indus-

trial History Group to cover a longer time span than the

period of industrialisation.

The first lecture was given by Wayne Cocroft of Eng-

lish Heritage on the National Heritage Protection Plan,

which aims to bring together work by EH and other part-

ners and is to run from 2011 to 2015. He explained the structure of the plan, which can now be seen on the EH

website. ‘Measure 4’, about assessing character and signifi-cance, was of particular relevance. It contains 17

‘activities’. These include subjects such as field systems, battlefields and Pleistocene and Early Holocene archaeolo-

gy as well as several concerned with industry and with 20th century heritage. Wayne selected ‘Twentieth Century Mili-

tary Heritage’, which has been the subject of much of his own recent work, for example on the archaeology of the

Cold War. In particular he discussed the disposal site of the underground stone quarries at Corsham in Wiltshire, which

were reused by the Royal Naval Stores Depot. He also dis-

cussed the Hoo peninsula on the Medway, which has been proposed as a site for a new London airport. This has the

kind of remains - of salt and gravel working, cement works, explosives works, an ordnance depot, plant for power gen-

eration and radio communications that pose problems for

industrial archaeology because of their massive scale.

David Bird followed with a talk on Aspects of the

Roman Tile Kiln Industry. This used new technology and its early products were for high-status buildings. It expand-

ed quickly and tile stamps range from the Imperial and

Classis Britannica stamps to those of towns and ordinary civilian tileries. These show a significant level of literacy

among craftsmen. More research is needed on modes of production, for example in the matter of scale in relation to

demand. One can distinguish between a heavy sector for very large deliveries in cities and a lighter one for smaller

and more varied markets. The processes of manufacture - digging, weathering and preparing clay, moulding the tiles,

drying and firing them - were illustrated with photographs taken at the local Swallow’s Tile Works in Cranleigh short-

ly before it closed in 2008, as well as examples from Roma-nia and China. Matters to consider include fuel supplies, the

location of tileries, for example in relation to transport and land ownership, the design of kilns, and which way up teg-

ulae were made.

Jan Spencer, newsletter editor and webmaster of

SIHG, is making a study of Animal Powered Engines

worked by rotary movement. He showed a power graph of

the various animals known to have been used, with horses and camels at the top, through oxen, mules and buffalo in

the middle to donkeys. He then listed a wide range of appli-cations with many illustrations, including corn milling

(Pompeii), knife grinding, driving a pug mill (Compton pottery), hauling ships, working cranes in cathedrals, oper-

ating a pile driver in the construction of Westminster Bridge and turning spits for cooking. There was a special

breed of Turnspit dog, which has now died out. Several illustrations were presented as moving images. These in-

cluded an experimental reconstruction of the Roman bucket chain for raising water from Gresham Street, City of Lon-

don, which is now at the Ancient Technology Centre, Cranborne, Dorset, complete with sound. An animated dia-

gram showed how a recently inspected horse wheel at Cob-

ham Park may have worked with planetary gear. Jan showed a map of known sites in Surrey and nearby counties. He thinks

there are many more examples to be discovered and indeed there were some suggestions at the meeting, including St

Philomena’s at Carshalton. This project looks likely to run for

some time.

The presentation on the Glass Industry of the Weald

was in two parts, the first by Colin Clark, who welcomed the inclusion of Wealden Glass in the National Heritage Protec-

tion Plan, as outlined by Wayne Cocroft in the first talk. He

outlined the history of the industry and noted previous work on the subject by the Rev. T S Cooper, S E Winbolt (1933), G

H Kenyon (1967) and the excavations by Eric Wood in the 1960s at Blunden’s Wood and Knightons. Both of these were

medieval sites and no excavations have been carried out for the later period (1570-1615) when French technology had

been introduced. The stages of glass making were outlined. The fuel used was wood, not charcoal. The inclusion of cullet,

broken glass waste brought back by distribution merchants, was an early example of recycling. There is no proof that col-

oured glass was made in the Weald and those fragments that are known are thought probably to be cullet. Tom Munnery'’s

contribution on Surrey County Archaeological Unit ’s Wealden Glass Project was delivered in the event by his col-

league Wayne Weller, who was thanked for standing in at short notice. The aim of the project is to define the scale and

extent of the industry, confirm accurately the locations of sites, of which nearly 50 are known, and assess their condi-

tion. Application for funding has been made to English Herit-

age.

The next talk was on Archaeological Evidence for Ex-

tractive Industries by Paul Sowan, who, following on from

the previous speaker, first commented on the absence of an early glass industry in east Surrey. The large deposits of sand

there were not exploited for a hundred years after the glass industry in south-west Surrey ended. There is hardly any doc-

umentary record of the extensive and varied sand workings under Reigate. Regarding archaeological evidence, one has to

consider whether a hole in the ground was made primarily for the hole or for its contents, or for both. It can be difficult to

distinguish between man-made and natural features. It is use-ful to have mapping of industrial and transport sites that pre-

dates the works. The British Geological Survey is now map-ping made ground. It is a challenge to obtain the Ordnance

Survey water-and-contours-only maps that were available in the 1930s and try to locate features. There were questions

about the kind of chalk used for limeburning. The major lime-works at Dorking and Betchworth made greystone lime from

the Lower Chalk, which contains clay. It sets under water and

is therefore known as hydraulic lime. There are no flint mines in Surrey and only two chalk quarries for building stone, as

distinct from chalkpits for lime, at Guildford and West Hum-

ble.

Gordon Knowles gave the final talk on Surrey’s Avia-

tion Buildings. He showed many historic photographs, for few associated structures survive, compared with those of the

contemporary motoring scene. The whole industry started and finished within the 20th century. It began in the first decade

with A.V.Roe’s efforts to become airborne at Brooklands in 1907and, successfully, in 1908, the year when the first sus-

tained heavier-than-air flight in Great Britain was made by

(Continued on page 9)

The Surrey Archaeological Society Research Framework Conference 2011

report by Glenys Crocker

January 2012 9 Newsletter 185

I had always been fascinated by the work carried out by CERN in Geneva so in the summer I took the opportuni-

ty to reserve places on a conducted tour. These tours are free of charge but need to be booked a couple of months in

advance. Most are in English, and they last about two hours. Our guide was an Italian researcher called Marcella

who has to her name a number of doctorates in Particle Physics. With great clarity and enthusiasm she explained

the workings of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) as she showed us round the various facilities including the control

room, occasionally inserting a little humour to keep us alert. (A “hadron” is a general term for a fundamental parti-

cle, such as an electron, quark, muon, neutrino, etc).

CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Re-

search) has 20 European member states and employs 2,400 people, with some 10,000 visiting scientists. It came into

being in 1954 and its Convention states that its nuclear research is to be of a purely scientific character and shall

have no concern with work for military requirements. To-day its main area of research is particle physics. Physicists

explore matter using particle accelerators, where beams of particles are smashed into each other to create high energy

conditions similar to those in the first instants of the Uni-

verse.

The LHC is installed in a tunnel 27 km in circumfer-ence and at an average depth of 100 m, located near Geneva

and running under both Swiss and French territory. It pro-duces head-on collisions between two beams of particles,

mainly protons. In the LHC they travel through a vacuum, and super-conducting magnets, operating at 1.9 degrees C

above absolute zero, guide the beams around the ring. Car-rying it out at this low temperature greatly increases the

power of the magnets while at the same time reducing elec-tricity consumption. With the particles being so small, the

chances of a collision are very slight, but even so the LHC will generate up to 600 million collisions per second. Clev-

er electronics separates out the interesting data and discards the rest. Grid computing, developed at CERN, allows thou-

sands of scientists around the world to take part. In the con-

trol room, which operates round the clock, we witnessed some of the scientists at work. Travelling at near-light

speed a proton makes 11,245 circuits every second. A beam might circulate for 10 hours, travelling more than 10 billion

km - all of which makes F1 racing seem rather tame!

Samuel Cody at Farnborough. The industry ended in Surrey

with the closure of the BAE factory at Dunsfold in the year 2000. In between, Brooklands became a centre of club fly-

ing and flying schools, and of aircraft manufacture by Vickers and others. Manufacturing was also developed at

Kingston by Sopwith, followed by Hawker, which also took over the wartime airfield at Dunsfold .. Surrey also

had several early airports, of which Croydon was the world's first international terminal. Croydon’s control tower

survives and its memory is preserved by the Croydon Air-port Society. The Brooklands Society covers both the avia-

tion and motoring heritage. Some structures survive at Brooklands, including the first flight ticket office (1911)

and Blue Bird restaurant, the stratospheric chamber and the office of Barnes Wallis, who designed the Wellington

bomber. Manufacturing sites have been redeveloped but

(Continued from page 8) there is scope for recording work at Dunsfold. The history of aviation in Surrey is a large subject and fortunately a

detailed summary was given by Sir Peter Masefield in a lecture to the Surrey Local History Symposium in 1985.

This was published by Phillimore for the Surrey Local His-tory Council in 1993, entitled ‘Surrey Aeronautics and Avi-

ation, 1785-1985’.

The Society is grateful to Surrey County Council Heritage Conservation Team for its support of the research

framework conferences. The theme for autumn 2012 will

be Local History.

This report appeared in the Surrey Archaeological

Society Bulletin, where it was intended for the wider com-munity of archaeologists who may not have a special inter-

est in industrial history. ¤

At various points around the tunnel there are four huge detectors called ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb.

These enable the researchers to explore new aspects of mat-ter, energy, space and time. The Compact Muon Detector

(CMS), for instance, is one of the most complex scientific instruments ever built, and has taken 20 years from concep-

tual design to completion and commissioning in 2008. It has a length of nearly 22 m, a diameter of 15 m and weighs

12,500 tonnes The largest component weighs 1920 tonnes. During construction this was lowered 100 m down a shaft

into the tunnel in a 12 hour operation, working from a site in a field in France, see the bottom image on page 1. This

was one of the operations we were shown in 3D in CERN’s

cinema.

We were not able to go into the tunnel itself as experi-ments are now on-going and there would be a radiation

hazard. After the guided tour we did however visit other buildings where there were interactive displays and where

many of the components of the LHC were on display.

Neutrinos, in particular, have always been of great

interest to CERN. While we were there they had already started an experiment by sending beams of neutrinos under

the earth’s surface to Gran Sasso in Italy, 730 km away. A couple of weeks after our visit they announced that these

particles had exceeded the speed of light, thereby apparent-ly confounding Einstein’s theory. Surrey University’s Pro-

fessor Jim Al-Khalili was quick to express his doubts about the results, vowing to “eat his boxer shorts live on TV” if

they were proved correct. And I’m sure that that is one of his programmes that we would not be so keen to watch! In

the meantime CERN scientists continue to scrutinize the

test results.

Note on the top image on page 1: this shows the barrel part of the Silicon Strip Tracker. The inner tracker contains

205 m2 of silicon sensors and is the world’s largest silicon detector. The inner tracker identifies the tracks of individual

particles. The curvature of charged particle tracks in the magnetic field allows their charge and momentum to be

measured.

The LHC may not yet be “Industrial History” - but it

is certainly history in the making. ¤

A Visit to CERN

by Mike Davison