Trevithick Society logo

THE TREVITHICK SOCIETY

 

FOR THE PRESERVATION AND STUDY OF CORNWALL'S INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE

 

Established 1935

Industrial gazetteer: mines

Botallack Mine

 

Back to list of mines

 

*See the archaeology section for more images *

 

The Botallack sett is a very old one, granted from the Boscawen family in 1721, while Botallack village was mentioned by John Norden about 120 years earlier as: 

 

…a little hamlet on the coaste of the Irishe Sea, much visited with tinners, where they lodge and feede, being nere theyre mynes.

 

However, the presence of numerous lodes outcropping in this area of the coast suggests that mining may be much older than this, and tin smelting, presumably associated with local mining in some form (either streaming or underground working), is almost certain to have been carried out in the area around 330BC. 

 

Surface plan of BotallackIn 1778 William Pryce reported that the mine was worked for 80 fathoms length out to sea (i.e. beyond the high water mark), and the workings reached to three feet from the sea bed, while an advertisement in 1813 stated that it had produced over £100,000 of ore over the previous twenty years.  The first pumping engine was erected on the Crowns rocks not later than 1819, and perhaps even earlier.  The shaft was sited here to save time and money; had it been sunk from the top of the cliff at the normal hand-drilling rate of about twenty feet per month it would have taken fifteen months to get the shaft down to sea level.  Erecting an engine house, even here, would take only a few months.  This was an incredible feat of engineering, particularly as the site of the house meant that no foundations could be dug for it, and it was necessary for the granite blocks to be bolted and mortared directly to the bare rocks.  The house may actually have acquired a new engine in 1819 as a 1½ year-old 22-inch engine was advertised for sale at this time. 

 

Back to top^


 Geological map of BotallackBy the late 1820s the mine was considered to be largely exhausted above adit.  New discoveries inland had made the adventurers concentrate their efforts in that direction, rather than under the sea, and when these had failed they had looked towards the boundaries of the sett.  By 1835 the adventurers had felt disinclined to continue their efforts, and the sett was relinquished that year and offered for sale.  Stephen Harvey James took up the lease of the sett.  James became purser the following year, a position he was to hold until his death in 1870. 

 

The financial situation of Botallack for the first few years was precarious to say the least and James must have wondered what on earth he had got himself into.  Between 1814 and 1835 the mine had produced tin and copper ores worth £53,230, while between 1837 and 1841 it could only manage to sell copper ore to the value of £2,055.  The mine’s finances were also made worse by the decision to rebuild the Crowns pumping engine house and to install a larger engine in 1835.  In November 1841 the situation was so bad that at a meeting of the shareholders the agent declared that he “knew not where to find two penny weight of ore in all the mine”.  The decision to continue the mine for the time being was in any event a good one as only two months later a copper lode was cut which yielded £24,000 profit to the mine over the next year and assured its prosperity for another few years.  It was the beginning of the mine’s reputation for high returns on shares, and was to pay out £42,500 between 1842 and 1846. 

 

Wheal Cock ladder wayDevelopment at the mine increased over the years.  In 1838 the mine was 100 fathoms deep below adit and employed 172 people.  Three years later the first steam winding engine (the Carne whim) was built on the cliff top above the Crowns – it also drove the rollers for crushing the copper ore.  In 1843 hundreds of spectators watched an eight ton boiler being lowered down to the new steam winder on Wheal Button Shaft, just to the north of the Crowns engine and not much higher above the sea.  Another steam engine was erected at the top of the cliff to wind from Wheal Hazard Shaft, just uphill (to the south) of the Crowns.  This engine wound using a steel chain, and going backwards and forwards when slack it cut a groove in the rocks of the cliff: this can still be found. 

 

Back to top^

 

Botallack was 200 fathoms deep in 1855 by which timeElectric pump at Wheal Cock some levels had been driven 200 fathoms beyond the cliffs.  In this year, a book entitled Cornwall: Its Mines and Miners was published, and appears to be the only source of the story of the blind miner of Botallack.  This man was alleged to have worked underground at the mine for some years after becoming blind, and apparently knew the workings so well he could guide his comrades through them.  After being discharged he apparently worked as a builder’s labourer at St Ives where he carried bricks up some scaffolding.  One day he missed his footing, fell, and was killed.  

 

Exploration work in the Crowns section throughout the 1850s prompted the commencement of the famous Boscawen Diagonal Shaft in 1858, completed in 1862.  The shaft was sunk at an angle of 32½o, and extended out to sea for about half a mile, reaching a total vertical depth of 250 fathoms below the adit.  To wind from the shaft a new engine, named Pearce’s Whim, was erected on the cliff just above the Crowns pumping engine.  Pearce’s Shaft was actually another name for Wheal Button Shaft.  This became disused after the Boscawen Shaft was finished, and the engine on the shaft supplied the boiler for the new whim.  Men were carried up and down the shaft in a gig, a wheeled box purpose-built by the Holman’s foundry to hold Californian stamp batteryeight men on an incline.  On April 18th 1863 the chain which pulled the gig suddenly broke, precipitating eight men and a boy to their deaths further down the shaft.  The gig was sent back to Holman’s to be cleaned and straightened out and was used by the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall for their trip to the mine two years later, although by now the chain had been pensioned off and replaced with a wire rope. 

 

By that time the mine had reached 220 fathoms depth and employed 299 men, 116 females and 115 boys.  The mine also had three pumping engines, one stamping engine and seven winding engines.  Carnyorth Mine was added to the sett in 1866, after which both mines were worked briefly as Botallack and Carnyorth United.  The latter sett was about 120 fathoms deep in 1865 and employed 111 people in its own right. 


Back to top^


 

The 1860s were the zenith of tin production at Botallack, with the dressing floors being greatly expanded during the early part of the decade to deal with the large quantities of lower grade ore which were being produced.  This included the erection of a new stamping engine at Narrow Shaft, driving 64 heads of Cornish stamps.  The engine also pumped water from Narrow Shaft for use on the dressing floors.  Increased production meant more workers, and in 1870 the mine employed 530 persons although the use of buddles meantPower house equipment being unloaded that 112 fewer girls were now employed at the mine.  In 1874 it was announced that all of the ends in the Crowns section were poor, and a decision was taken to abandon it, although the pumping engine remained in use until January 1883. 

 

In 1875, work in the Parknoweth section of Wheal Owles was found to have encroached on the Botallack sett (probably caused by the same surveying error that was to cause the disaster at Wheal Owles eighteen years later).  This section was acquired by Botallack at the end of the year for £300 in punitive damages, and subsequently worked as the Truthwall section.  Parknoweth was operating in the 1830s and 1840s but seems to have been a fairly small, ramshackle, affair; in 1842 the pitwork in the Engine Shaft of Boscaswell Downs was described as “ten degrees worse than the pitwork in Parknoweth Engine Shaft; we don’t know how we can describe it in any better way”.  The next decade saw the commencement of arsenic production at the mine, with the erection of a six-shaft calciner near the track down to the Crowns.  This was supplemented in 1889, at a cost of £110, by a Brunton calciner, built nearly opposite the count house. 

 

Inside the mill, 1908The mine however was in severe financial difficulties before this, with the accounts recording a loss on three months trading in 1883 of £1,740 19s 7d, to be countered by a call of £2, with a further £2 called in May and £4 in June.  In October it was resolved to try to sell the mine as a going concern, but no buyer could be found.  The mine had turned around somewhat by 1886, with the debit reduced to £526; an amazing reduction from the £3,427 it had owed in the previous month.  However, the situation was beginning to reverse again by the end of the decade, and breakages of equipment combined with low metal prices began to take their toll on the mine.  In the early 1890s the Wheal Cock section was equipped with new pumping and winding engines, the aim being to operate this as the main producing part of the mine.  A new skip-road was built in the Engine Shaft, and it is possible that timber from the old skip-road above the Boscawen Diagonal Shaft was used to build it.  During most of the year, however, much of the mine was idle, the reduced grades and low metal prices making much of the ore not worth mining. 

 

Back to top^

 

At the end of 1894 the surface labourer were working only part time owing to flooding by the very bad storm (on November 12th) which had also destroyed many of the mine’s stamping mills in Botallack Bottoms.  Flooding also occurred at Levant.  To try to reduce losses the Carnyorth section was given up at the end of the year, saving the mine £50 a month.  A meeting in December considered whether the mine should close, however it was kept going to give employment over the winter period.  In January 1895 it was rumoured that the mine would close but would be worked by another company.  A meeting at the end of the month was adjourned, but when re-convened it was decided to try to sell the mine as a going concern.  When no buyer could be found, the management resolved to sell the materials and equipment. 

 

In his book Botallack, Cyril Noall tells the story that the mine was peremptorily closed in February 1895 following the failure of several dams between the Wheal Cock and Carnyorth sections and the consequent flooding of the former.  When the Cornish Telegraph’s reporter put this story of the mine’s flooding to the manager, Stephen Harvey James junior, in February 1895, it was refuted totally.  Some leakage had occurred from one of the lodes in the vicinity of the dams, however this had not resulted in danger to men or mine, nor had it resulted in any mass evacuation of men from underground.  The rumour that the mine would be stopped for this reason was “completely false”. 

 

The last men were discharged from the mine on February 15th 1896.  The remaining materials were sold off in March that year, when the stamping mills in Botallack Bottoms (part of the Kenidjack valley) became independent.  For the next decade the tips were reworked for their tin content using water powered mills in the Kenidjack Valley to the south, while water filled the underground workings. 

 

Back to top^

 

Several schemes to reopen Botallack appeared but it was not until the end of 1906 that this happened, with Botallack Mines, Limited being floated by Cornish Consolidated Tin Mines, Limited, a company created to reopen old Cornish mines and provide funding for them.  The story of ‘Conols’ is a complicated one which I may add at a later date.  When opened the new sett included Botallack, Carnyorth and Wheal Edward. 

 

The plan for the new company was to sink a new, central, shaft (Allen’s, after the managing director) and to unwater the Crowns and Wheal Cock sections.  Following the departure of the local manager to work for Consols in Camborne, his replacement decided to stop this and concentrate on the inland section where he had been told that large quantities of ore had been left standing.  At this time Wheal Cock had already been drained to he 60-fathom level.  At Allen’s Shaft old workings were intersected which flooded it.  This required firstly the pumping of the old Botallack section and then the Crowns section.  When old Botallack was finally pumped the stopes were found to be worked out and while the lodes had narrowed to “knife edges”. 

 

Exploratory work was also carried out at Wheal Edward, where deposits of pitchblende (now uraninite) were known to exist.  Although about half a ton of concentrate was eventually sold to the Curies in Paris, probably from a chance finding, no true development work took place. 

 

In 1911 the company was forced to reconstruct because of financial reasons and the following year Cornish Consolidated went into liquidation.  Botallack closed in February 1914 during the general mining depression.  A major problem the company faced was actually recovering concentrate from ore; it was mentioned in a paper in 1913 that the waste from the mill carried about 5lbs per ton of cassiterite, but chemical analysis showed that it was closer to 50lbs.  The ore was so fine-grained that the mechanical methods of concentration then in use could not trap it. 

 

Back to top^

 

Further exploration and a small amount of development work took place at Botallack during the 1980s through the expansion plans of Geevor Tin Mines, but the crash of 1985 stopped this.

 

Production (from Dines):
1815-35, 1837 and 1845-1905: 14,040 tons black tin and 20,290 tons 12% copper ore.  This includes production from Carnyorth after amalgamation, while production 1895-1905 is from waste tips and possibly other mines.

 

Carnyorth (1853-65): 1,050 tons black tin

Wheal Cock (1821-38): 8 tons black tin and 2,175 tons 10% copper ore

 

Botallack (1875-1895): 1,525 tons crude arsenic

 

Botallack (1906-14): approx. 1,000 tons black tin

 

 

Back to list of mines