Talk:Treacle mining

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It was as an apprentice at nearby Aldermaston in the early 1960s that I came across the Tadley Treacle Mines, previous apprentices had made an 8mm film depicting the defence of the mines by Ancient Britons. The dramatic realism was frequently marred by said Britons jumping onto red Thames Valley double decker buses followed by legions of Roman soldiers.

It was from this that I got the idea for the Wymsey treacle mine mentioned in the article.

[edit] Source of joke?

The explanation I read that "treacle" originally meant medicine, so the various healing wells around Britain were called "treacle wells". Treacle later came to mean sticky syrup due to the popularity of a honey-based drug called "Venice treacle", and the continued use of the old form in the treacle wells led to the joke.

Source: Maypoles, Martyrs and Mayhem by Quentin Cooper and Paul Sullivan

DaibhidC 20:10 18 November 2005

The treacle mines at Maidstone were created by an ancestor of my family to explain the large blank buildings of the paper factory. Similarly the mines below Biggin Hill airfield which were in full production just before the second world war were created by myself during an intellectual discussion at the Greyhound at Keston for the education of a colleague who was also convinced that the word "gullible" cannot be found in the Oxford English Dictionary.