Mining Gallery

Driving an end at East Pool Mine, Illogan, Cornwall. 1893

Driving an end with a box drill mounted in a stretcher. Copy photographer: Charles Woolf

© From the collection of the RIC

Candles, Compressed Airline, Felt Hats, Hammer, Joyce Greenham, Miners

Tincroft Mine, Illogan, Cornwall. Late 1800s

Miners and bal maidens posed in front of surface buildings. Part of the A.K. Hamilton Jenkin collection. Photographer: Unknown

© From the collection of the RIC

Cornish, Engineering, Industrial Buildings, Industry, Late 19th Or Early 20th Century, Mining, Women Workers, Workers

Battery of Cornish stamps with engine man, miners and grass captain (or surface captain) in white, Wheal Sparnon, Redruth, Cornwall. Around 1865

The area in the photograph is now covered by Clinton Road, Park Road and Albany Road, Redruth. According to the Ordnance Survey Six Inch map Cornwall LXIII. NE, surveyed 1877 to 1879, the mine is disused at that time. By the same OS area map Cornwall LXIII. NE Revised 1906, the whole are is covered in housing. The mine produced copper, as well as traces of cobalt and gold. Thomas Spargo states in his book, The Mines of Cornwall (1865), that "Wheal Sparnon was in the the parish of Redruth, Cornwall, in 6,000 shares. Secretary, Mr G.H. Cardozo, London. Purser, Mr W.P. Cardozo, Camborne. Manager, Captain Wm. Tregay, Redruth. Rocks, granite and clay-slate, 60 men employed in the mine, operations on the surface of which commenced in 1864. Land owner, Lord Clinton. Dues 1-20th. Depth of adit, 18 fathoms; depth under adit, 60 fathoms. A 70-inch pumping-engine just completed, also a 22-inch winding-engine. Little has been as yet been done by the Company under the surface; but it is generally believed that enormous quantities of tin will be raised after the mine has been cleared of water". Photographer: Probably Henry Opie

© From the collection of the RIC