CAGG committee, 2015-10-02
Minutes

Minutes of a CAGG committee meeting held at Latchbrook on 2015-10-02. Readership is CAGG members.

Present:

Peter Jackson
Pat Fitzsimmons
Tina Hitchings
Anne Bolt

Apologies:

Calum Beeson
Bob Jay

The meeting was chaired by PF.

Previous minutes

The minutes were reviewed and accepted without modification.

Arising from that, we agreed that we should bring our own screen if we can, rather than relying on one being available at the venue. PNJ agreed to bring the CHAHP-supplied screen used by Darite Heritage to the next meeting.

Rick Stewart is confirmed for January 2016 to talk about local mining.

The 2015-10-31 field trip will be led by Jonathon King at Churchtown Farm.

TH has had discussions with Paul Day. He says that he doesn't want to do a talk in the Long Room but that it would be better to visit the powder mills, which would be a field trip. However, John Manley has said that there is not much to see there. In particular, it sounds like the site is of more interest for its industrial archaeology than for visible geology.

Paul Day also said that there is someone who lives at Herodsfoot Farm, Richard Humphries, who says that the Herodsfoot mine is on his property. This is private land, so the only access is by arrangement with him. It is unlikely that we would be able to actually enter the mine so it is unclear what would be visible that's of geological interest.

Action: ask Calum what he knows about it. If necessary, we should inspect the site.

Paul Day also mentioned Kingsley Rickard (of the Trevithick Society) as a possible speaker. He is an expert on Arsenic.

John Manley is confirmed for the February talk (geological maps).

The meeting on 2016-03-18, which is also the AGM, will have a Reading the Hurlers talk by Calum.

The future programme will be presented in 6 month increments as "Summer" (April thru September) and "Winter" (October thru March).

Treasurer's report

Money for Reading the Hurlers has now been passed on. This was £1278.78, raised mainly through field trip and Carnglaze meeting.

Outstanding debts: TH is owed about £4.00 and CB is owed money for the Bude field trip.

The account currently holds £829.74 and we have £49.95 in petty cash, giving £879.19 working capital.

Income

Our meetings are not currently covering their expenses when we have to pay external speakers. For this to be balanced we should aim to attract 10 more attendees.

But we make more money on field trips, such as at Minions and the one in August.

Better advertising, such as the proposed leaflets, may help. An option is be to reduce the meetings to bi-monthly but continue the monthly field trips.

Action: CB to provide field trip information for the programme.

Reading the Hurlers

We now have the official permissions.

The project account currently holds £18751.26.

Emma Stockley and PF are going to Penryn on Monday to discuss the archaeological aspects of the project with Jacky Nowakowski.

On 2015-10-28, Emma, CB and PF plan to go to Exeter to meet the HLF regional controller for a "monitoring workshop". This deals with the mechanics of payments, measuring success and other processes and documentation.

Some time after the workshop CB, ES and PF will meet to create the main project plan. This will involve local schools. The best time for the actual digging will be September 2016. Between now and then a lot of the geological work will take place. This is managed under the U3A. Part of this will be a training session by CB on rock analysis.

Note that some of this activity may influence the CAGG summer programme.

Advertising

Deferred pending CB's presence.

Christmas trees

TH discussed the possibility of growing Na₂B₄O₇·10H₂O (Borax) crystals to use as tree decorations.

Another idea is to collect pebbles from local beaches and varnish them. This is the plan that was adopted.

Next meeting

Hosted and chaired by PF on 2016-01-08 at 19:30.

The agenda to include:

Constitution and AGM planning

We will review draft advertising online when it is produced.

AOB

Tax on insurance premiums is rising, so the insurance cost (due 2016-02-05) will be higher.

Updates

This document is maintained by the CAGG. Comments should be addressed to CAGG_secretary at caradon dot org dot uk.

PNJ, 2015-10-25. Transcribed from raw meeting notes.