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On August 20th, members of the Trevithick Society attended a ceremony at
Laxey, on the Isle of Man, where one of the Society’s artefacts, a 50 foot 6
inch diameter water wheel, was handed over to the Laxey and Lonan Heritage
Trust. The wheel had been the subject of a three-year restoration project by
members of the Laxey Mines Research Group. The wheel has been restored to an
extremely high standard by its dedicated team and the Trevithick Society is
proud to have been associated with the project.
At the starting ceremony the wheel was officially named ‘Lady Evelyn’, after
Evelyn Jones, a hard-working member of the project team. The wheel was handed
over by Pete Joseph, the curator; other members of the delegation were Bryan
Earl (President), Kingsley Rickard (vice-Chairman), Sue Maunder (Membership
Secretary) and member Kevin Baker and his wife Chris. The wheel was accepted by
the Hon. Steve Rodan MHK, Minister for Health and Chairman of the Laxey and
Lonan Trust; the Master of Ceremonies was Laxey Village Commissioner Richard
Henthorn while the opening was preformed by Antony Hamilton, Chief Executive of
the Department of Local Government and Environment. Other invited guests were
the three great-grandchildren of Gilbert Howell, who built the wheel: Anna Gappa,
Jane Howell and David Keating.
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The ceremony was overlooked by the flags of Cornwall, the Isle of Man and Wales,
marking the wheel’s travels through a small part of the Celtic Arc. There is now
a permanent plaque, of black limestone, near the wheel which states: Presented
by the Trevithick Society as a gift from the people of Cornwall to the people of
the Isle of Man.
This was a major event for the area; it was the largest event to be held at
Laxey for a number of years and the attendance was estimated by the local police
to be in excess of 1,000 people.
The wheel was one of a pair made at the Hawarden Iron Works in Flintshire in
1865, built for use at the Snaefell Mine on the Isle of Man and used there until
1910. In 1920 it was acquired for pumping slurry from the Greenbarrow clay pit
at Temple. To provide water for the wheel the nearby Durfold China Clay Works
was partly flooded as a reservoir. The wheel had been transported to Wadebridge
in parts by rail and hauled by a traction engine to its new site. Initially the
slurry was pumped using 1500m of flat-rods which ran through a tunnel beneath
the A30. While in use the wheel was the largest then in use in Cornwall, but not
the largest ever used in Cornwall, as has frequently been reported; this honour
goes to a 65-foot diameter wheel working near St Just-in-Penwith in the 1840s.
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The unusual set-up at Gawns had a peculiar problem: the flat-rods were
lubricated by grease which was popular with cows and constantly being licked
off; consequently a man was employed to walk the line of flat-rods every day to
replace the lost grease. The course of the rods can still be traced across
Trehudreth Downs.
This system eventually proved too inefficient because so much of the power was
lost through friction, and the flat-rods were subsequently replaced by a
generator which was also run by the wheel. The generator fed power via a copper
wire, mounted on the flat-rods which were pushed into the ground. It is rumoured
that the voltage drop along the line was similar in magnitude to the loss of
mechanical energy through friction; this became total one day when the entire
cable was stolen. The wheel was disused by 1934 although the Temple Clay Works
lasted until 1942 when it was closed by the Board of Trade. The Gawns Wheel, as
it was called by then, was eventually disassembled in 1971 by its owners
(English China Clays International, now Imerys) on behalf of the Trevithick
Society.
For a while the pieces of the wheel were stored in a disused china clay dry but
in 1975 it was loaned to the Llywernog Lead Mining Museum near Aberystwyth. The
flat-rods had previously been donated to a park in Lerryn (near Fowey) where
they were used as railings. Attempts by the museum to re-erect the wheel came to
nothing and the Trevithick Society decided to ask for the wheel to be returned
to Cornwall. Negotiations were underway in May 2003 when the Society was
contacted by Peter Geddes of the Laxey Mines Research Group who expressed an
interest in returning the wheel to the Isle of Man and erecting it on the old
lead washing floors. This enquiry was favourably considered and on 20th
September 2003 groups from Cornwall and Laxey met at the Mid Wales Mining Museum
to remove the wheel, which arrived on the Isle of Man the following day.
The Laxey Mines Research Group managed to attract a great deal of support from
individuals, companies and, importantly, the local government. The story of the
project to restore the wheel has yet to be put in print however it is known to
have cost £97,000 and taken 7,000 man-hours. The wheel is presently the largest
wheel in use in the country. A bigger wheel, the 72 foot 6 inch Lady Isabella,
is about a kilometre away but at the present time is not in working order.
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