Cliffside excavation

Archaeologists are defying cliff erosion to study a quarry containing the remnants of Britain’s first major chemical industry, which flourished for 250 years with the help of a stolen Vatican secret and the urine of Londoners.

The site at Loftus, near Whitby, on the North Yorkshire coast, was one of 20 quarries which provided a living for generations of workers between the early 17th and late 19th centuries, producing alum for the cloth-dyeing industry.

Experts from English Heritage, equipped with ropes and harnesses, have spent the past month perched on cliffs to record evidence of the process by which shale dug from the quarry was turned into what was then one of the world’s most valuable commodities.

The crumbling 600ft cliffs will vanish into the North Sea within ten years and some sections are so dangerous that they can be photographed only from the air, but archaeologists have already found remains of old buildings, culverts and other workings left untouched since the industry collapsed with the arrival of new technology in the 1870s.

Posted by David on July 24, 2003 8:46 PM