Category: Loftus
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Lewis Hunton: The Boy Who Read the Rocks
Stand on the site of the old Loftus Alum Works and you feel rather small. These 213-metre cliffs are not pretty. For centuries, workers burned shale and processed aluminium sulphate here, poisoning the ground so thoroughly that almost nothing grows. The place looks dead. It seems more of the remains of the seeping pits and…
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The Loftus Mine Rescue of 1935 and the Bravery of George Heslop
On this day, 17th December, in 1935, a roof collapse at Loftus Ironstone mine trapped two miners, John Cooper Henry and Henry Murrell, under a heap of rock. Enter George Heslop, the mine’s Agent and Manager, who arrived at 9 a.m. to find that the roof was still collapsing and other miners were understandably reluctant…