Precariously-perched Powerhouses (photos)

Crowns Engine Houses, Botallack Mine, Cornwall, England, looking towards Newfoundland.

Cornwall’s coastline is impressive, but the sight of these engine houses was breathtaking. Photos just can’t do justice to the scene.

Built in the 1830s. Visited by Queen Victoria when she was young.



The nearest one housed a winding engine for a shaft running down at about 30 degrees to the horizontal, serving various levels deep under the Atlantic. The rectangular bay in the foreground housed the boiler. They had to build the chimney a bit further up the cliff.



As you can see from the background, they were not alone.

Clickable thumbnail:-


The first three photos were taken by my wife - they‘re better than mine. We spent a whole day in the immediate area, having started at Geevor Tin Mine, then walking to Levant mine to see the working beam engine.


Display board at East Pool tin mine museum, showing a painting of miners descending the shaft at Botallack. The original painting, by James Clark Hook in 1864, is in Manchester Art Gallery.

In 1863 the winding chain broke, sending the skip’s passengers - eight men and a boy - to their death.

Just one of the many hazards facing the miners.

I don’t suppose travelling to or from work in the dark was without risk.

Hi Asquith,

..OK I gotta ask......Why There?

Why not next to a river or something....


Dave

Didn't you listen to the man, he said the view was breathtaking.

Levant Mine Disaster

In 1919, there was a horrible accident at the mine at Levant. They had what they called a "man engine" to haul the men in and out of the mine. It was basically a Cornish pumping engine with a reach rod that went from the beam all the way down to the bottom of the shaft. It had about a 10' stroke with little foot boards at 10' intervals on the reach rod. At either end of the stroke, these lined up with platforms on the side of the shaft. You would step onto the footboard, the engine would make its 10' stroke and you would hop off on the platform on the side of the shaft. The stroke would return down and on the next up stroke, you would jump back onto the reachrod. There were footboards on both sides of the reach rod, so on one side the miners were going up and on the other they were going down. Sort of like a man lift belt that you used to see in grain elevators, but this was a recipricating version. All hoping on and off was done in the cold, the wet and with a candle on your head.

Anyway, the beam broke one day in October of 1919 and the whole works, beam, rod and miners went crashing to the bottom. It killed something like 30 men and it took a week to remove the bodies.

Sam

I went on a guided ture of a closed iron mine once and asked the guide how many miners had died in the mine. The answer was just under 3000 but they did not really know for sure because they did not keep records before 1900 and the mine had been in opperation from before the Civil War. In a copper mine I was in the guide said that only five miners had died in the mine. That mine had over a 100 levels and 3000 miles of addits ad drifts. The difference in the number of accidents was the strenght of the rocks. In the 1800's the miners in the copper mines used ladders to decend into the mine. It took two hours to climb down and three hours to climb back up. The did not get paid for climbing! They were paid by the amount of copper ore hauled to the surface by a steam powered winche. Gary P. Hansen

It's hard to know what to say. Fantastic.

I get this feeling of a foundation that created the society we live in today, that is all but forgotten. And taken for granted. Yet critical in it's function. The amount of work that was required pre-petroleum.

What a different world. More beautiful, and yet much more difficult.

Following on from Sam's comments, this shows the arrangement of the Levant man engine:-

On the left can just be seen a piece of red tape going from the position of the fractured strap down to the actual failed strap:-




This shows the top of the shaft where the failure occurred. The seam going away from the camera represents very early near-surface workings, so narrow that it’s thought that child miners (minor miners?) must have cut it,


This shows the Levant mine. The buildings cover a long time span, the Levant shafts having been used until recent times to connect with the adjacent Geevor mine (now a museum).


Looking down from Levant engine house. Immediately to the right of the rusty post can be seen some steps leading to an adit.


This shows the cosy confines of the engine house. Note the coal fire and kettle in the distance.

The 1840 Levant steam engine has been restored and runs on steam several times a week during the season:-
http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplace/w-levantmineandbeamengine/

A short walk away is Geevor tin mine museum.

Some more information about Levant mine can be found in the ‘Cornish Engineering’ thread:-
http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/showthread.php?t=154254

Outstanding pictures Asquith- thanks for sharing.

My ancestors were Cornish miners, so it has special significance.

Seanie,

Thanks.

Miners became one of Cornwall's biggest exports. They were tough men. Not tough enough to enjoy a decent lifespan, though. The terrible conditions saw to that, with the poor diet, and emerging from 100 degree humid heat for the long walk home in the cold weather, in wet clothes. (I'm talking about the far-off days before mines provided drying facilities).

When we went to Geevor Mine, our guide was a smashing bloke, ex-shot firer in the mine. He told us that in that part of Cornwall, there had been a limited choice of occupations, dangerous and/or poorly-paid, namely mining, fishing, or farming. Rather like having to choose between the army, navy or air force in wartime. He had no complaints about his time down the mine, but told us thought-provoking tales of the old timers. Apparently blindness was a big problem, working by the light of tallow candles, and never seeing daylight in winter.

Despite the problems, average life-expectancy was higher than for their opposite numbers in coal mines.

Some of the mines also processed the ore. One of the main bye-products was arsenic........

My favorite precarious workplace in the USA is atop the huge blimp shed at Alemeda Island in the SF Bay area. Atop the huge building is a tiny house reached by a ladder that must be an eight of a mile long.
It was for many years an official US weather observation station.

Zach

A.: Thanks for another beautifully illustrated and thought provoking tale.

Some of my early mineral collecting was done in Cornwall back in the 1960s before the old mining sites became 'Heritage Centres'. The spoil heaps were a good source of specimens, I found all sorts of copper mineral, large quartz crystals & native copper within sight of those engine houses. Many of the shafts and adits were still open with the occasional bit of barbed wire to stop the cattle from disappearing into the abyss and you could walk through the arsenic labyrinths (Health & Safety had yet to be invented).
Mark

Acorn Nut

When I think about the enormous depths of some of these hard rock mines and the profane difficulty of sinking the shafts by hand tools I am awed, humbled, and overwhelmed. Mankind developed a complex modern technological society by initially picking up nuggets of "free" ore [often of high purity] lying on the ground or hammered out of "rotten" surface rock formations. Stories are told by early explorers of discovering essentially pure copper ingots the size of their trade canoes submersed along the shore of Lake Superior. If our advanced society ever collapsed I fear we'd never recover because of the exhaustion of vital minerals. Can anyone imagine a future stone-age society struggling to rise-up once again by reopening "digs" which the most efficient technology had abandoned because the mineral seams were essentially exhausted? The worlds population has reached six million and may reach nine million by 2050...and each of those persons has developed a voracious appetite for an every decreasing store of essential natural resources. Of course the most serious current crisis is "peak oil". Petroleum is the "life blood" of modern society and the escalating cost and scarcity of that vital resource is sending shock waves across the globe. As an avid collector of the historic machines which launched our technological society I'm especially sensitive to the ecological [broadly speaking] dilemma we must confront with radical new ideas, selflessness, and sacrifice. I've ridden the "crest" of the Golden Age [1937 to present] and it's been a wild, reckless, and wonderful ride. We spent our children's mineral inheritance with complete abandon. I fear for future generations. Most likely they'll never enjoy such a "birds nest on the ground" and they risk harsh deprivation and ultimate collapse.

Acorn Nut!

Acorn, we're mining what's in our minds now. In an attempt to reverse the balance of diminishing resources.

Your comments are not missed by my eyes. I may be 52, but since the age of 16 I have been in a state of sheer panic. I saw this coming a long time ago. And it's so strange to see the cars that are coming out with 400 hp now. It's like a strange irony that as the poles melt, the most wild technology continues full steam ahead. And now the rest of the world wants to live the way we do.

Few people see it. Numbers. It's time to think in terms of "we" instead of "me". But that's a bigger sacrifice than we are all willing to do.

It's strange that in a time of so plentiful bounty those miners struggled to live meager lives. Sometimes I think the laws of thermodynamics apply to society. Conservation of energy. Conservation of happiness.

Even in this time I find it amazing that there has been a transition from deep mine shafts on a coast line, to software algorithms that enable internet communications and cell phone connections. I'm not sure which world I want. I'm trying to live in the old one. But it's not easy trying to swim upstream.

Cousin Jack



Beams made by Perran Foundry, in 1836, in the Caribbean. These, along with Cornish miners and their families, went to the Virgin Gorda copper mine in 1838. The engine worked until the 1860s. I don’t know why it’s on the beach. Perhaps they were taking it somewhere else and got into difficulties. Loading a sailing ship with heavy iron from a beach couldn’t have been very straightforward.


A touching memento: Matchboxes from the wreck of the Clipper ‘Avalanche’, which sank on 11 September 1877 when taking Cornish emigrants to New Zealand.

These items were at the Cornish Engines and Mines museum at Pool, Redruth. For more information, and photos of the massive beam engine there, see:-
http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/showthread.php?t=158570

A display board at the museum bore these words about the emigrant miners, know as ‘Cousin Jacks‘:

‘There is scarcely a mine:
Be it in the auriferous reefs and diamond-bearing kimberlites of South Africa
Or the gold and platinum-laden creeks of British Columbia;
From the lead mines of Wisconsin and the golden mother lodes of California;
Way down to the silver of the Sierra Madre;
From the Copper Triangle of Australia
And back again…

… where a Cornishman may not be found.’

‘Also, and I know there’s no point recommending music, but I’ll do it anyway, this chorus is going round my head, from the superb double album ‘The Best of Show of Hands’:-

‘Where there’s a mine or a hole in the ground
That’s where I’m heading for, that’s where I’m bound
So look for me under the lode and inside the vein.
Where the copper and clay, the arsenic and tin
Run in your blood and under your skin
I'm leaving the county behind, I’m not coming back
Follow me down cousin Jack’

A bit off topic, but the thread turning to Cousin Jack brings to mind two great traditions the Cornish miners brought to the USA- mine supervision and the Pasty. A Cornish Pasty is a kind of turnover made of dough, filled with chunks of beef, potatoes, rutabaga, onion and carrot. It weighs perhaps a pound and is a meal in itself. The "Cousin Jacks" brought the pasty with them to the USA. Initially, it was the miner's lunch. It was taken down into the mine workings and heated on the blade of a shovel over a few candle flames.

In two areas of the USA where deep hardrock mining was done, the pasty is commonplace. These areas are the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and Butte, Montana. The Cornishmen brought the pasty, and the rest of the regional populations seemed to adopt it. n the UP in winter, a pasty is a heck of a good lunch or supper. On jobsites, I have seen pasties warmed in welding rod ovens or on the engine blocks of heavy equipment. Walk into any oldtime repair shop and there's be a pasty or two warmign on the woodburning stove, along with a speckleware pot of black coffee.

In Michigan's Upper Peninsula, there was even a pasty bakery called "Cousin Jack's". Supposedly, most of the Cornish mine supervision as well as the Cornish miners who emigrated to the USA were all related distantly. As a result, they were referred to as "Cousin Jacks", perhaps in a derisive way. The name stuck. So did the Pasty. The eating of pasties soon caught on with everyone else in the regions where the Cornishmen had arrived to work the mines. The mines ar emostly closed, the Cornishmen are "homogenized" into the rest of the population over many generations.... but the pasty survives. I've always thought the pasty was the greates "fast food" and wished they had caught on elsewhere in the USA. To many people, the pasty is the most tangible piece of the Cornish miners' legacy.

Joe Michaels

Our guide at the Geevor Mine told us that the crimped edge round the curved side of pasties was in effect a handle, thrown away after eating, so that the miners didn’t consume arsenic from their hands.

Sometimes they had two course pasties, with potatoes etc at one end, and fruit (apple or berries) at the other. Not much meat though, too expensive. In fact they couldn’t always afford wheat flour, and had to use barley flour, which made the pastry very hard. This led to the joke that a true Cornish pasty should remain intact after being dropped down a mine shaft.

Asquith:

Thanks for posting this, as always.

Nobody seems to have picked up on what I consider to be the key phrase in your OP: "serving various levels deep under the Atlantic. " Sheesh!!! Mining out under the ocean!!! It's bad enough when there's just rock overhead.....the ocean is active and powerful. Does this mean the seepage water is corrosive saltwater?

Any records of sudden flooding of the workings?

Can anybody come up with a recipe to make one of these Pasty thingies?

JRR

Here is a copy of a magazine article I wrote a few years ago


THE BEST PASTIES IN THE WORLD

Anyone who has taken a drive through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, has surely come across many “Pasties Sold Here” signs. Many people who are not from the U.P. do not even know what pasties are. A pastie is a type of vegetable and meat pie that the early miners in Michigan’s iron, copper, silver, or gold mines took to work with them every day during the winter. The meat came from the deer the miners shot and the vegetables came from their gardens. The miner’s wife would bake the pastie, wrap it in a couple of towels, and then the miner would stuff it in his shirt and head off to work. The hot pastie kept the miner warm on his way to work and while down in the mine. Mining was a cold, damp, dark, dirty, and dangerous job, which often came in twelve hour shifts. A good lunch was one of the few things a miner could look forward to. Imagine several miners sitting on the floor of the mine eating their pasties with the illumination of only one candle!

Several years ago, on a fishing trip to the Upper Peninsula, we stopped at a restaurant that had a sign claiming “The Best Pasties in the World”. Maybe instead of a restaurant I should call it a Pasties Shop because pasties are the only thing they serve. After our meal, the owner, who was also chief cook and bottle washer, came over to our table and asked how the pasties were.

I told her they were very good, but she needed to change her sign to read “The Best Pasties in the U.P.” because they were not the best in the world; that title goes to my wife’s pasties. The proprietor just laughed, and said the phrases “The Best Pasties in the World” and “The Best Pasties in the U.P.” were really the same, because no one below the bridge could possibly make the “best” pasties. She was wrong. Her pasties were very good, but my wife’s are much better.

My wife has family ties to the iron ore country of the Upper Peninsula. On one of our pilgrimages up there, we searched for and found her Great, Great Grandmother’s grave in the Wakefield Cemetery. I would like to tell of how this pasties recipe was handed down from mother to daughter throughout the generations. Unfortunately, I can’t. The family recipe seems to have taken a wrong turn some where and has become lost! My resourceful wife, Julie, worked this recipe out all by herself. Now while cooking one of her recipes, Julie often does not measure anything. Instead she relies on her instincts and experience to know when she has added enough of an ingredient. So, this recipe does not list the amounts of each ingredient. Each cook will have to judge for themselves how much of each ingredient to add.

Pasties just can not be authentic without some rutabaga in them. Rutabagas are one of those vegetables that most people have heard of but few really know what a rutabaga is. The miners liked rutabagas because they would keep all winter in the root cellar. Rutabagas can be found in the fresh produce department of grocery stores in the fall and winter. They are brownish orange in color and have been dipped in wax. Peel and dice the rutabaga, then boil until tender and set aside. (It might be wise to have less rutabaga than any other ingredient.)

Peel and dice carrots and potatoes and boil each separately until done. For the meat, dice up left over venison roast or steak. No left over venison! No problem! Brown some venison hamburger with some diced onions in a frying pan. Drain the venison hamburger and mix in the other ingredients.
Now add Julie’s secret ingredient, cream cheese. Dice the cream cheese into small cubes and mix with the other ingredients. Spoon out this mixture into the center of a 10” to 12” pie crust, fold the crust over like a clam shell and pinch the ends together. Poke a few small holes in each pastie with a fork. Bake in the oven at 350 degrees for about a half hour or until the pie crust is done. The finished pasties may be served hot and fresh or refrigerated or frozen and heated up in a microwave. They may be served with hot gravy over the top, if desired.

With the exception of a couple of iron ore mines, most all of the mining operations in the U.P. have closed down now. Michigan Technological University in Houghton no longer offers new students the opportunity to earn a degree in mining. However, reminders of the Upper Peninsula mining era will dot the landscape for the next two hundred years and the pastie will be one of them. I know a lot of U.P. deer hunters who would not think of heading to deer camp without a supply of pasties

Gary P. Hansen

Asquith said:

Our guide at the Geevor Mine told us that the crimped edge round the curved side of pasties was in effect a handle, thrown away after eating, so that the miners didn’t consume arsenic from their hands.

Sometimes they had two course pasties, with potatoes etc at one end, and fruit (apple or berries) at the other. Not much meat though, too expensive. In fact they couldn’t always afford wheat flour, and had to use barley flour, which made the pastry very hard. This led to the joke that a true Cornish pasty should remain intact after being dropped down a mine shaft.

Click to expand...

The two course pasties were popular with workers in the brick making industry in Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire and were known as 'Clangers' I think that they may still be found on sale in Bedford. See this link for the recipe:

http://uktv.co.uk/food/recipe/aid/513570

Malc.