A Book of Cornwall

by S. Baring-Gould

The Cornish tinners had their Stannary Court on Caradon.

Already in Carew's time mines had been driven into the bowels of the earth. It would appear that levels were at about five fathoms under each other, and the water was raised to the surface by means of "a winder and keeble, or leathern bags, pumps, or buckets."

Dr. Borlase describes the engines that were employed just after the middle of last century. He took a mine in Illogan as typical.

There were seven shafts upon the lode, upon one of which there was a fire-engine working the pumps, and raising the water of the mine to the adit level, twenty fathoms from the surface. Another shaft had a whim upon it, and the remaining six had common winzes at their heads. The walls of the lode were supported by timber, and planks were laid on them for the deads, or unprofitable rock. Captains superintended the work. The machines employed were the water-whim, the rag and chain pump, the bobs, and the fire-engine. The whim was much the same as the common horse-whim of the present day, employed to draw up the water in kibbles or buckets. The rag and chain pump consisted of an iron chain, furnished at intervals with knobs of cloth, stiffened with leather, which on being turned round a wheel was made to pass through a wooden pump cylinder, twelve or fifteen feet long, and to heave up the water that rose in this cylinder between the knobs of rag. These pumps were worked by hand. The water-wheels with bobs worked other pumps.

The machinery seems to us clumsy and imperfect in the extreme.

The atmospheric or steam-engine of Newcomen was costly, as it consumed an enormous amount of coal; but in 1778 it began to give place to Watt's engine.

Since then the machinery employed advanced with strides till reaching perfection, when the need for any ceased in Cornwall and Devon, where nearly all mines have been abandoned. Barca tin can be raised so much more cheaply, being surface tin, that lode tin cannot compete with it in the market.

Now the mining districts of Cornwall are desolate. Heaps of refuse, gaunt engine-houses, with their chimneys, stand against the sky, hideous objects, and as useless as they are ugly. The Cornish miner has gone abroad. There he remains till he has made his little pile, when he returns home, builds a house for his wife and children, remains idle till money gets low, when away he goes again.

A good deal of discussion has taken place relative to the causes of the decline and extinction of the mining industry in Cornwall. The primary cause is that already referred to, but there is another. Into that industry too much dishonesty was allowed to intrude. Speculators became shy of embarking capital in companies to work bogus mines. The promotion of such schemes was too frequent not in the end to discredit Cornish mining altogether.

The surface tin in the "Straits" mines must come to an end shortly, and then let us trust captains in Cornwall will have learned by experience that in the end honesty is the best policy.