Blog
Research notebook
Notes published as the work proceeds. Some of these will turn out to be wrong; they will be corrected in place and the correction noted.
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How to ask a landowner, and which streams to ask about
The whole project comes down to a letter. Here is how to work out who to send it to, what to put in it, and the three or four streams that justify the effort.
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Mapping Dartmoor without Ordnance Survey
Every good map of Dartmoor is an OS map, and OS mapping cannot be republished. Here is how the maps on this site were built from open data instead, and what was lost along the way.
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Bampfylde, 1854: what happens when you believe your best assay
Victorian Devon had rich gold assays, imported American technology and serious money. The bulk processing recovered nothing at all. It is the most useful failure in the county's mining history.
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The byelaw nobody mentions
Most guides to UK gold panning discuss Crown ownership and landowner permission. On Dartmoor there is a third rule that matters more than either, and it is barely three lines long.
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Why the granite is a red herring
Everyone starts a Dartmoor gold search by looking at the granite. Three days in the BGS archive suggest that is exactly the wrong place to begin.
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