Mining Gallery

Perranzabuloe

© From the collection of the RIC

Cornish, Mining

Dolcoath Mine, Camborne, Cornwall. 1893

The Man Engine at 234 fathoms level below adit, in 1893. The man engine went down to the 314 fathom level. Miners can be seen standing on the steps of the engine rod while others stand on solars or platforms fixed in the shaft at intervals of 12 feet. The man engine made 5 strokes a minute, thus enabling men to ride up or down 60 feet a minute. Ordinary ladders were fixed alongside the man engine or against the footwall of the lode. Photographer: John Charles Burrow

© From the collection of the RIC

Dolcoath Mine, Camborne, Cornwall. Probably 1890s

The photograph shows a group of men waiting to go underground. The man on the right with the white coat is probably the 'lander' or banksman. The man to his left, wearing the jacket and waistcoat, might be a mine Captain. Behind him is a man with a long beard, who has the look of a miner. The other three men wearing miners hats with candles attached look like visitors as there are few candles being carried and no tools. One man is wearing Cuban heeled boots. The man sitting with a chin beard and moustache looks similar to other photographs of Oliver Wethered, vice chairman of the Dolcoath Company. The other two young men to the left of picture are dressed in normal clothing. The earliest records of this mine show that it was being worked for copper in 1740, and probably earlier. It was nearly 300ft deep in 1746 and an extensive mine in 1778, when a section of its eastern part was published in Pryce's Mineralogis Cornubiensis. It closed ten years later, to reopen in 1799. In the next 120 years it became the largest and deepest mine in Cornwall, with its bottom level 3,000ft below the surface. Its output of copper and tin ores to 1788 is thought to have been no less than 1,2500,000, pounds, of which copper alone realised some 450,000 between 1740 and 1777. Between 1799 and 1920 its output amounted to over 9 million pounds, including income from sales of arsenic, silver and other minerals. The mine was in the dividend list for most of its working life, and shares, nicknamed 'Dollies', were the 'blue chip' of the industry. Photographer: John Charles Burrow

© From the collection of the RIC