Minions, Cornwall

Lost industry

In eastern Cornwall the other week, and driving towards the Devon border and the house of friends we were to visit, it occurred to us that we’d not actually stopped to have a look at one of the many old engine houses that are scattered across the landscape. We’d previously passed through the village of Minions and knew there was one thereabouts, so made a short diversion…as the mist descended and the wind got up. So we looked as closely as we could, and my photographs of what was once the Houseman’s Shaft engine house at the South Phoenix mine show it as a grey eminence seen through an atmosphere as much water vapour as the air we breathe.

Buildings like this housed steam engines that were used to pump water out mines and to haul the excavated material to the surface. Cornish engine houses are generally built out of local stone – usually granite, which is as hard as nails. Thick walls of granite, with corners made extra strong by being built with carefully cut stone quoins, can give a lot of support to the heavy and constantly moving mechanism of a large steam engine – some people see the building as the steam engine’s exoskeleton. Most engine houses have one wall that’s stronger and thicker than the others. This, known in Cornwall as the bob wall, supports the iron beam of the engine, which projects out of the engine house and connects with the mine shaft below ground.

Further information would no doubt have been available in the adjacent building if it had been open, but one can’t expect such facilities so be open all the time, let alone on a wet Sunday morning in October. So we looked, admired the chunky masonry and the tall chimney, and reflected that such engine houses are reminders of an enormous mining industry, extracting copper, tin, arsenic, and other materials. There were once between 2,000 and 3,000 engine houses in Cornwall and western Devon; now some 300 are left in varying degrees of ruination. The workings below the ground near Minions opened in the 1830s (Wheal Prosper was the mine’s original name) before a series of amalgamations and changes of ownership. It was originally a copper mine, and when the copper began to run out, tin was also extracted. The mine closed for good in 1911.

So this engine house saw only a short period of activity in the long history of Cornish metal mining, which began in prehistoric times, had heydays under the Romans, in the Middle Ages, and in the 16th century, before reaching its most productive era in the 19th century. Competition from overseas led to the decline of the industry in the 20th century.* Since the engines have gone, many visitors are unaware of how extensive the industry once was, and how much of a blow to Cornwall’s prosperity its decline represented – just as much of a blow, in its way, as the later closure of coal mines was to communities from Yorkshire to South Wales. Tourism helps, but it’s a seasonal business. Few visitors want to visit and admire Cornwall’s striking beauty and rich history in a rainy October. I’m glad, though, we made that choice on this occasion. Granite in the rain has its beauty, and still carries its powerful message of a great industry long gone.

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* Other mining industries, the extraction of kaolin, for example, and the quarrying of roadstone and slate, do continue in the area.