The third meeting of Council for 2019, was held at Ironbridge on 19th October.

In summary the minutes note :

• Restoration Grants – starting this year there will be a new category for small projects with a grant limit of £5,000 and for which the total cost must not exceed £10,000. Twenty percent of the available funds will be allocated to this strand. The maximum for the large grants remains unchanged at £20,000. All details are on the web-site.
• With the retirement of Roger Ford as Sales Manager orders for the Association’s publications can now be placed online.
• AIA Practical Weekend: North Wales Slate Industry, 24-26 April 2020. This will be based in the National Slate Museum in Llanberis. The main speakers are Dr David Gwyn, author of Welsh Slate, and Dr Dafydd Roberts, Curator of the National Slate Museum. Full details and booking arrangements will be on the website when finalised, they will also be sent to all who are on the AIA’s Mailing list. Note: numbers are limited, so make sure you are on the mailing list.
• The theme for the Friday seminar at the Annual Conference & AGM weekend, Liverpool 20 to 27 August 2020, will be Climate Change and Industrial Heritage. Booking for both will be open in spring 2020.
• Award application deadlines, for 2020 the deadlines for all awards will be unchanged, but from 2021 onwards they will be moved backwards to 1 January. It was also resolved that two year’s free membership be offered to award winners.

Other matters discussed and resolved were

It was confirmed that the venue for the Dublin Conference & AGM in 2021 will be the Dublin City University.

The Outstanding Scholarship Award for 2019 was presented to John Barnatt on the 15 October at the Peak District Mining museum.

Publication Awards – rather than differentiating between commercial publications and those produced by voluntary societies there will be just the one category with up to three awards a year from a pot of £600. Judges will be mindful to recognise the contributions of local and voluntary societies.

Dissertation Awards – it was agreed to abandon the restriction of one award per university, to abandon the distinction between undergraduate and postgraduate awards, and also to allow dissertations written within the last two years.
Marilyn Palmer and the Secretary, David de Haan, will revise all of the award criteria and once finalised they will be put on the web-site.

Finance and Membership – the Treasurer reported that a small operating surplus is expected for the end of the financial year. Twenty-twenty-three will be the 50th anniversary of the Association. How this will be marked has yet to be decided, but in the meanwhile the level of our reserves will be maintained to enable us to finance the agreed celebrations. Membership is holding up and is expected to remain the same as last year’s, i.e. 500 members.

Planning and Casework – our new relationship with the Ancient Monument society (AMS) is working well and Council thanked Amber Patrick for her work. The AMS notify us of industrial cases that are the subject of listed building or planning applications. In this way 19 potential cases have been reported to us and comment has been made on four cases with another two are outstanding. Two cases have been reported to Amber directly, one commented on and one outstanding.

Industrial Archaeology Review – the first 2020 issue is on course for publication at the end of May. Likely contents include articles on sulphur mining in Chile, approaches to the examination of industrial development in the Derwent Valley in north-east England, and an early railway that crossed the Cheshire/Staffordshire border.

Field visits :

Country House Comfort and Convenience Tours, two tours are planned, led by Marilyn Palmer:

• 29 June 2020, East Anglia
• 21 September 2020, Bucks, Oxon and Surrey

Spring Tour to Poland, 11 – 17 May, 2020. Poland is a large country and the intention is to travel north to south but in stages. At the moment it is envisaged that there will stopovers in Gdansk, somewhere in the middle of the country, possible Lódź and possibly Katowice in the south. The final programme and booking forms will be available on our web-site early next year.