Open questions: Dorset

Where sources disagree, MineArchive keeps both accounts rather than picking one; where a fact could not be settled, the record says so. 3 such claims on 2 records. All regions.

Kimmeridge Oil Shale Workings

• Sources disagree on how far Clavell’s ventures actually operated: the Royal Commission inventory states that the alum, salt and glass enterprises "came to nothing", while contemporary accounts quoted by Parkins describe the works in production, including a 1620 Survey of Dorsetshire description of men labouring about the glasshouse fires. (disputed)
• The identity of the shaft sunk after 1883 is disputed: recent histories, following Ian West’s summary, call it the Manfield Shaft, while the Museum of the Scottish Shale Oil Industry holds that this is an error arising from a misreading of Strahan’s account of the Manfield shale pit at Portesham. (disputed)

Norman's Quarry

• This archive's own account of the Purbeck marble quarries has Norman's sunk in the early twentieth century by the Norman family and worked until the Second World War; the Dorset Life account has the workings reopened in 1995 by the widow of the last quarryman, which implies working later than that. (disputed)