This book grew out of a research project set up by Sheffield University's archaeological practice (ARCUS) where Tim Cooper is historical consultant. It was carried out in partnership with English Heritage with support from the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund, one of several examples of collaboration between the aggregates industry and a wide range of interested professionals including geo-archaeologists, historians and conservationists. A rapacious and highly visible industry met resistance from landowners, farmers and local residents objecting to sand and gravel working ‘in their backyards’. In the 1940s and 1950s, tension went beyond local opposition. The Ministries of Agriculture and Housing found themselves on different sides of the debate. In such a climate, extraction companies were quick to realise the positive public relations potential of accommodating archaeological investigation alongside quarrying. Finds from the extensive sand and gravel quarries along the Trent Valley have added enormously to our knowledge of human and environmental prehistory. Hoveringham Gravels Limited adopted a mammoth as their company logo. Discoveries of fish weirs, water management systems for mills, and bridge piers have provided new insights into the medieval period. Reinstatement of sites has left a legacy of nature reserves, marinas and other leisure resources including the National Watersports Centre at Holme Pierrepont.
For centuries, sand and gravel dredged from the riverbed was used for road improvements and building projects by local estates. Small-scale use is documented in late medieval charters and deeds. Essentially it was a by-product of maintaining the commercially important Trent navigation. Exploitation of deposits in surrounding river terraces began as demand increased. In the transition from local enterprise to major national industry during the twentieth century, the Trent Valley played a key, and largely neglected, role, vying with the Thames Valley as England's largest producer of aggregate minerals.
The book is divided into four chapters covering the history of the industry, the process of extraction, its impact on the landscape, and the people involved. There is a great deal here for the industrial and economic specialist, particularly in the section on extraction, screening and crushing processes, but potentially mundane technical background, such as the British Concreting Standard for gravel amended by European Union regulations, is dealt with briskly. Relevant case studies illuminate the main narrative, a format that enables a great deal of information to be packed into the book's 168 pages. Most telling are the results of Dr Cooper's interviews with people involved at all levels of the industry. Their accounts add a defining and authentic human dimension to a book that might otherwise have been of limited interest.
Inevitably in such a tightly focused account topics are touched upon that are not developed. I wanted to know more about the major archaeological finds and to have details of the early lawsuits disputing ownership of the riverbed, to give two examples. But this information is available elsewhere. Dr Cooper's achievement is in covering new ground, and in collecting oral testimony, recording important information that would otherwise have been lost. This is a book of obvious appeal to those interested in industrial and economic history that has an equal attraction for social and landscape historians.
