Redressing the balance — an archaeological evaluation of North Yorkshire's coastal alum industry

Abstract

Recent acquisitions of coastline by the National Trust in North Yorkshire and Cleveland have included important archaeological evidence of North Yorkshire's former alum industry. Owing to its remote marginal location this evidence has been little studied and there has previously been a bias towards the study of documentary sources as a means of understanding the alum industry. The archaeology of the alum industry is seriously threatened by relentless coastal erosion and there is an urgent need to record this evidence and thus redress this imbalance. The Yorkshire Region of the National Trust owns the partial remains of three important alum sites and the results of the detailed archaeological evaluation of these sites are presented. The archaeological implications of the Trust's continuing acquisition of threatened coastline are also considered.