Chapter 6. Mineral workings
6.1 The headquarters of the world's largest mining corporation (The RTZ-CRA Group) has no signboard. The initials RTZ come from the Spanish for 'Tinted River' .
6.2 The Norfolk Broads: an abandoned mineral working which has become an area of outstanding 'natural' beauty.
6.3 Many good gardens have been made in old quarries.
6.4 A quarry (A) can be hidden (B) during its working life. When exhausted, it can be made similar (C) to its pre-quarrying landform or given a different form (C) .
6.5 Mineral workings can be zoned, concealed, treated conservatively or treated innovatively [venmin1].
6.6 The men who dug this quarry could never have anticipated its after-use as a regional turnip-washing facility.
6.7 Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe and his 1943 model for Hope Cement Works. The site is an example of the successful integration of a minerals project into the landscape. Sir Geoffrey recommended that the limestone quarry should be concealed inside the hill, that the old clay quarries should be restored to 'conform' with their surroundings, and that the main structure of the cement works should be accepted as a bold feature in the landscape. An after-use for the limestone quarry will be agreed when the land becomes available for reclamation.
6.8 While it is technically possible to restore surface mines for agriculture, they almost always leave the land less-productive and less-beautiful.
6.9 The Thamesside cement belt. Some quarries are still in use, some are dormant, some are derelict, some have been reclaimed. The landscape has been wrecked by mineral working. With foresight and imagination, a remarkable new landscape could have been made.
6.10 A design, by Chris Evason, for a small new town in a worked out quarry. The landform was shaped to accommodate the housing on a south facing slope looking over a new lake to a cliff surmounted by an existing woodland.
6.11 A browncoal mine, near T�rnich, with a giant bucket-wheel excavator (1996).
6.12 A restored browncoal mine, near Br�hl in Germany. The grass is part of a forest campsite and the lake is used for swimming and boating (1996).
6.13 The Big Hole of Kimberley is an artificial 'crater lake' in a worked out diamond mine. It is visually spectacular and much visited by tourists, but the visitors' sensations are of sublimity and terror, not beauty (Courtesy of Satour).
6.14 Dysart Harbour in Fife: the cliff and the inner harbour were produced by quarrying and are now the focus of a picturesque fishing village.
6.15 Kilsyth Quarry. After quarrying operations ceased the quarry was made into a visually dramatic country park.
6.16 A computer visualisation of the proposed superquarry near Lingerbay on the Isle of Harris (Courtesy of Scottish Natural Heritage].
