paint, coca-cola cans, plastic pipes, tennis balls, trainers, rubber bungs, plastic coving over car engines, car hub caps, sanitary ware, paper, plastic moulding, porcelain, rubber mats, car bumpers, white road lines, sparking plugsash soda skin
kaolin smoothed
waste deposit slowly bedding down
gravity sifts through porous layers
a silt secret kept below
this is cloth worn over broken surfaces
caked through impact and attrition
blended, pressed, noodled, dried
her tongue finds fissures
through ancestral scree paths
eyes scan the chalk periphery
where ponies flick damselflies
around gravestones
stone laid over crevassed hand and sedminent lung
kaolin smoothed
waste deposit slowly bedding down
gravity sifts through porous layers
a silt secret kept below
this is cloth worn over broken surfaces
caked through impact and attrition
blended, pressed, noodled, dried
her tongue finds fissures
through ancestral scree paths
eyes scan the chalk periphery
where ponies flick damselflies
around gravestones
stone laid over crevassed hand and sedminent lung
The formation of china clay http://www.dartmoorsociety.com/files/debates/chinaclay.html
Granite is one of the commonest igneous rocks, but varies considerably in its composition from place to place. While the quartz is never anything but quartz, the feldspar can be a silicate of alumina with potash, soda or lime and the mica can be the potash-rich muscovite or the iron-rich biotite.
In some parts of the South West, the feldspar in the granite is higher in its soda content than its potash content and these places are where china clay is found today. It came into being through a complex sequence of events. While the molten rock was still cooling, it was attacked successively by steam, boron, fluorine and tin vapour, these acting on the alkali content of the feldspar and converting it into china clay.
The South Western granite has been converted into china clay only in those areas where the feldspar contained a sufficiently high soda content.
China clay, or kaolin, is believed to have been formed through two processes:-
Hydrothermal activity (hot gases combined with high pressures) caused the granite (feldspars) to decompose.
Surface precipitation combined with humic acids from the bogs that were present, or by deep tropical weathering.
Sustainable Development
Policies for sustainable development have been laid down by government. Sustainable development is concerned with ensuring a better quality of life for everyone, now and for generations to come. The Government's Strategy for Sustainable Development published in 1999 set out four key objectives, which the clay companies aim to achieve:-
a) social progress which recognises the needs of everyone.
b) maintenance of high and stable levels of economic growth and employment.
c) effective protection of the environment.
d) prudent use of natural resources.
Summary
The industry has been an important part of Dartmoor life for over 170 years and intends to continue for many more. Although it has a long history, it has a modern outlook, fully understanding its environmental and social responsibilities to the communities affected and influenced by the winning of this nationally important mineral and aggregates.