Mining Gallery

Perranzabuloe

© From the collection of the RIC

Cornish, Mining

Pednandrea stamps and mine dressing floor at Wheal Sparnon, Redruth, Cornwall. 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

Group of Miners, Dolcoath Mine, Camborne, Cornwall. Probably early 1900s

A group of miners at the surface. This photograph is probably taken somewhear near the dry or change house at Dolcoath, where the miners could wash and exchange their wet and dirty clothes for their surface clothes. It is taken prior to the men going underground, as they look clean and tidy, with some still wearing ordinary headgear. Also there are lots of candles in evidence that they will need underground. The older man on the right of the picture might be a Mine Captain. 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: Unknown

© From the collection of the RIC