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Nature's Treasures 3Barstow Lists Open Geoscience St. Aubyn Collection Mineralogy of Wales Caldbeck Fells Mendips Minerals Update Coed Y Brenin
If you have any topics of interest, mineral news, information or events that you wish to publicise to Russell Society members, or the wider mineralogical community, then please email details to who will include them on this page.
Nature's Treasures 3, Sunday, 12th December 2010.
Following on the success of Nature's Treasures 1 and 2 (report with pictures and copies of the presentations, at http://www.minersoc.org/pages/meetings/nature/nature-archive.html and also at http://www.minersoc.org/pages/meetings/nature2/nature2-archive.html), this is another one-day meeting, co-organised by the Gemmological Association of Great Britain, the Russell Society, the Mineralogical Society, and this year for the first time, Rockwatch, in association with the Natural History Museum, London.
The aim is to provide a day of short talks which will appeal to anyone with an interest in minerals and gems, including members of all four organizations. Students from schools and universities are welcomed and members of Rockwatch, in particular, are encouraged to participate. The day will commence with coffee and registration at 10.00 am followed by the first talk at 10.30 am. Lunch will be followed by some displays with more talks in the afternoon.
Registration is now open and costs £20 per person, £10 for those under sixteen years of age. For Rockwatch delegates, including parents, the cost £10 each. Register online or by means of a downloadable form on the Mineralogical Society's web site at http://www.minersoc.org/pages/meetings/nature3/nature3.html.
Provisional list of speakers
Morning session: Analysis and Identification
Afternoon session: General
Richard W. Barstow Monthly List Archive.
Richard William Barstow (1947 - 1982), known universally as Dick, was born in Bangor, north Wales on 7th January 1947. He was brought up in Caernarvonshire, and was later educated at Selsdon Grammar School, Dick joined an insurance company, but the job did not suit him and he left to look for work in Cornwall during the mining revival of the 1960's. He worked for a time in the sampling office of South Crofty mine, and subsequently in the same capacity at Geevor mine.
He was the most enterprising of the modern-day field collectors in Britain, and a formidable mineralogist. Trading by mail order from his home in Tregeseal, near Botallack, Cornwall, he began his mineral business in December 1972, later moving to Drakewalls House, Gunnislake in 1978.
Energetic and thorough, in everything that he did, he researched and visited many classic and recent localities and was remarkably successful in recovering good specimens. His hall-mark green card labels are still to be seen at mineral shows and on the Internet, together with the less-common white labels which accompany specimens from his personal collection. His monthly lists were very good, always containing something affordable and worth having, and his descriptions very accurate.
Whilst not an academic, or scientifically educated collector, Dick was extremely knowledgeable and highly respected within mineralogical circles. Sadly he died at the young age of 35, from liver cancer. In 1986 the Plymouth City Museum & Art Gallery purchased a portion of his fine private collection of Cornish and Devonshire minerals
This archive contains a more-or less complete set of his monthly lists. Some of the lists are in poor condition, and others have not reproduced well. If you are able to provide better scanned copies of any of the lists, please contact the webmaster. I would like to acknowledge help received from Richard Hotston, Nick Sleep, and Nick Carruth who assisted in this project by lending copies of lists not in my possession.
Jolyon Ralph has kindly agreed to host the archive on the Mindat server - you can follow this link http://barstow.mindat.org/ to access the archive. The photograph is of Dick (left) underground in old workings on the south lode 130fm level Levant Mine with Gary Reynolds(centre) and John Gorvin (right).
Roy Starkey.
For additional information about Dick see: Starkey, R.E., & Cooper, M.P. (2010) Richard W. Barstow - Mineral Dealer Extraordinaire. UK Journal of Mines & Minerals 31, 7-57.
Open Geoscience - an online resource from the BGS.
A new, free, online service from the British Geological Survey where you can view maps, download photographs and other information. You can use OpenGeoscience material free-of-charge for non-commercial private study, research and educational activities. There are six OpenGeoscience sections: Data, Education, Maps, Pictures, Reports and Software with a wealth of information and the BGS also encourage non-commercial users to use OpenGeoscience material with their own data. The image to the left of sphalerite and siderite from Force Crag mine, Coledale, Braithwaite, Cumbria and is one of hundreds from the site and all come in large format with full information.
Visit the BGS Geoscience web site at: www.bgs.ac.uk/OpenGeoscience/. The BGS site has a considerable amount of information making it an extremely useful resource for topographical mineralogy in the UK.
St. Aubyn mineral collection goes online
After two years of hard work, the
St. Aubyn mineral collection can now be viewed online with
images of the specimens themselves. Since January 2008,
Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery have been researching
their St. Aubyn Collection of minerals and pressed plants after
securing a grant from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.
During that time, members of staff in the natural history
department have uncovered lots of information about the life of
Sir John St. Aubyn (1758-1839), and have carried out a variety
of work on the 18th centum collection, from cleaning the
herbarium sheets to re-storing the mineral collection in an
improved environment.
Creating an online resource where the famous mineral collection can be viewed marks an important milestone in the culmination of the project. Alongside Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery's own mineral collection of St. Aubyn specimens; it is also possible to see minerals which were located in external collections from around the country during this project.
The online collection can be viewed on the Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery web site www.plymouth.gov.uk/staubynminerals.
National Museum of Wales - Mineralogy of Wales On-line.
Of the currently around 4,000 officially recognized mineral species known to occur globally some 365 have been confirmed from Wales, with a further 50 or so listed in the literature but which have never been properly confirmed. There are 12 minerals for which Wales is the type locality and an amazing 71 for which Wales is the first recorded UK occurrence.
This site provides a comprehensive and authoritative listing of all known mineral species from Wales. By knowing what we have, we can value and conserve our geological heritage.
This site consists of two main parts, the main mineral entries (see the Mineral Database) and pages that provide background information. This gives both a brief history of the science of mineralogy in Wales up to the present day, and also provides geological details as to the way in which minerals occur and are associated with each other.
To visit this excellent site follow this link Mineralogy of Wales
Caldbeck Fells Collecting Policy
The Lake District National Park Authority has now put details of the restrictions on mineral collecting and the permit system on their web site. From this page you can access maps of the controlled areas and permit application forms.
The minerals on the Caldbeck Fells are fragile and finite. So that uncontrolled collection does not cause damage the LDNPA have adopted this mineral collecting policy on the Caldbeck and Uldale Commons. This has the support of the Russell Society and many other interested parties.
You can access the relevant page from this link Caldbeck Fells.
Mendip Minerals - An Update
Former Society President, Rick Turner has been carrying out extensive research work on the mineralogy of Torr Works quarry (Merehead quarry) and has produced a short article updating the known mineralogy to December 2006. This was published in the Russell Society Newsletter Issue 50 - March 2007. It is available here (Merehead Update (Adobe PDF file))as part of our continuing project to disseminate information about the mineralogy of the Mendips as a whole.
The Southern Branch Reference List of Mendip Minerals is a complete list of known minerals found in the Mendips area. This list is invaluable to collectors visiting the sites in in the area and is available here as an Adobe PDF file. This document will be kept up to date as our knowledge of the area grows so if you have any contributions or new finds for the area then please let us know. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader® to view these files. The list incorporates all the changes in the Merehead update and now contains one hundred identified minerals from the Mendips area.
Rick has placed some images of the Merehead minerals on Mindat which can be accessed from here.
The porphyry-copper exposure at Capel Hermon in Coed Y Brenin - Notified by Alan Dyer.
Hopefully you all enjoyed reading the note in Vol. 8.1 of the Journal on tennantite and tyrolite from Capel Hermon in Coed Y Brenin by Armstrong, Herrington and Savage from the British Museum (Natural History).
John Mason has contacted us with his concerns that the sensitivity and significance of the porphyry-copper exposure were not properly emphasised. He would like to remind everyone that the importance of the exposure in question was identified during the Gwynedd phase of the MINESCAN project in 1997 and that it has since been designated as an SSSI - i.e., it is protected by law. IT MUST NOT BE HAMMERED as this will quickly diminish its usefulness. People interested in the mineralogy should be able to find samples (mostly of micro quality) in the spoil along the bank to the left of the exposure. We would like to thank John Mason for bringing this to our attention, and would ask all persons reading this notice to spread the word appropriately amongst fellow collectors and amateur mineralogists/geologists
The Coed Y Brenin "ore-zone" is almost totally buried by overburden and this is by far the finest exposure of it, and in addition it is one of the finest exposures of a porphyry-copper deposit in the UK. In 1998, the section was carefully cleared of talus and soil in a joint operation between Forest Enterprise and the Countryside Council for Wales in order to improve its quality. It is now an integral part of a new geological trail in the Coed Y Brenin forest. The trail covers aspects of regional geology and in particular the mineralization associated with the porphyry-copper system, both primary and supergene. Some sites such as the Turf Copper Mine may be familiar to members, while others will be new, such as another trackside exposure, again a SSSI, which reveals brecciation, silica and pyrite mineralization in what appears to be the "roots" of an ancient fumarolic system. The latter site is illustrated on John's web site www.geologywales.co.uk/roads.htm
The trail officially opened in the Spring of 2004. Interpretation panels have been set up at each site and a trail guide will be available from the Coed Y Brenin visitor centre.
Alan Dyer
Reference: Bevins, R.E. & Mason, J.S. 1998: Welsh Metallophyte and metallogenic evaluation project: Results of a Minesite Survey of Gwynedd. National Museums & Galleries of Wales.
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