Just over 40 years ago, I went off to study Metallurgy. Worked with stainless steel for a while before getting side-tracked into IT. Returned to my native Devon 2 years ago & now look out the window each morning to the WF calciners.
I have Richardson's book "Mines of Dartmoor & the Tamar Valley after 1913" but would like to go back before, particularly as I have some mining architecture in our grounds. Must be some of you experts could direct me to the best reading? Hamilton Jenkin's Mines of Devon volume 2 would probably be good, but not available for under £100!!
Many thanks,
PilgrimFather

Landmark Publishing did a combined mines of Devon Vols 1 & 2 a few years back - should be able to pick that for a lot less.

Dines is worth a look - there should be a copy in Tavistock Library.

Pretty sure Booker mentions the mine (again try Tavy Library).

Unfortunately there is no one single source for the mine.

I was only thinking the other day that Wheal Friendship is the gaping hole in Devon mining literature (b*ggered if I'm going to fill it though!). It really deserves a tome.

I was only thinking the other day that Wheal Friendship is the gaping hole in Devon mining literature (b*ggered if I'm going to fill it though!). It really deserves a tome.

Why not ? :smartass:

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I was only thinking the other day that Wheal Friendship is the gaping hole in Devon mining literature (b*ggered if I'm going to fill it though!). It really deserves a tome.

Why not ? :smartass:

Because I am otherwise engaged.

I had started writing "The mines of Calstock Parish" a year or so ago. This was going swimmingly until last December when I managed to rupture my Achilles tendon. Because I couldn't move and I couldn't get to archives etc I had to put the Calstock project on hold. As I was off work I needed to keep the brain working so I wrote a book about the development of pumping engines in Cornwall during the 18th century (complete and due for publication by the Trevithick Society next spring). I also wrote a conference paper about John Smeaton.

With those out of the way and me mobile and back at work again I returned to the Calstock Parish project. On re reading what I had already done it struck me that a fathom by fathom account of every mine in Calstock Parish would probably only be of interest to you and I (and nobody else on the planet!), leaving the more general reader cold. That being the case I have re focused what I am doing and a working on a more general history of mining in the Tamar Valley (which I've been meaning to write for the last twenty years or so). To that end I am currently wrestling with Holmbush during the 1790s - 1820s period. I have given myself a timescale of 2 -3 years on this one. And (deep breath) that is why I am b*ggered if I am going to write a history of Wheal Friendship any time soon.

May have mentioned it before, but the survey we did when we had access prior to privatisation of the power industry showed three inclines (not two as shown on the plans). Of course there were the "chain roads" as well. Glad you spotted the OS shaft names are wrong.
The Mary Tavy mines really need a major write up, from there influence on mining in general through John Taylor as well as there individual interest. There is a huge amount of information there in all SW archives & in private hands. The major unfinished job for me is a systematic search of the Buller collection at Truro.

Thank you for the suggestions & I will follow these up at the library as you suggest.
It was reassuring to read your comments about names of the features. One of our local historians did say that it was the remains of the Old Sump wheelpit which sit just outside, but that just doesn't fit with what I have seen on the maps. As you say, we are just on the west bank of Cholwell Brook here. The wheel was certainly fed from a leat running on what is now the top boundary of the property. I guess that must have come across the valley from near the calciners. I have to visualize a big launder up in the sky! But looking at the depression, a lot of the wheel must have been below ground level. Does anyone know whether these wheels were over- or undershot? Did it make much difference?
There is gated access to the area enclosing the calciners on the other side of the brook, though there is now so much growth over there that the gate is barely visible. (According to the books, the flat-rods are still there somewhere just inside. I'd love to go over there with suitable weaponry to attack the vegetation, but questions as to who owns the land are problematic. Still, if anyone has any interest in the place before it disappears, do get in touch. I am in contact with the Heritage group in the village & we would like to produce some interpretive boards to give an idea of what the place used to be like.

Hello - Maybe a visit to the Peter Tavy Inn might help, as the landlord (Chris Wordingham) I believe, has a huge amount of info on the mine, and has been collecting it for many years.

Also, I have a tremendous amount of copied out documents from the local (Exeter, Plymouth & Truro) record offices, and have redrawn many of the maps along with a friend of mine (Greg).

There's also another chap (Rick) who lives very local to that area who has studied the water-courses in great detail. I visited underground the leat that was cut with all the air/access shafts through his property when he opened up one of the shafts some years ago.

Also I have over 100 pages of a Microsoft word document of transcribed newspaper reports... along with many documents that've been transcribed.

PM me for a chat sometime. Regards Tin Miner

A visit to the Peter Tavy Inn never goes amiss! It was the same Chris Wordingham to whom I alluded in my last post, so thanks for closing that loop. I hope to pick up on all these leads "dreckly"...

Just to add... Greg and I have transcribed the Wheal Betsy & Wheal Friendship record books of which there are 3... the 4th one from the set is missing.

There is a way into the calciners without having to clamber through all the undergrowth. Let me know if you'd like me to show you.

Also... I vaguely recall where the flat rods just over the wall were some years ago... maybe still there if no-one has taken them away for scrap...

Regards Tin Miner

I hope that my PM has got through this time, Tin Miner...

I found not only Booker but also the elusive Volume 2 of AKHJ's work on Mines in Devon at Tavistock library. Not quite as much detail as I had hoped, but his canvas was a very broad one.

Re the inclines, I always had a copy of that plan but evidently didn't look closely enough. The third incline is marked as a footway.
It would be interesting to know the extent of the fenciing wire blockage in Barkell's.

Again going back to when we had official access (CEGB days), Barkell's was vertical to close to adit then had a bit of a ledge & went down on the underlie for a short distance to adit, that ledge would easily hold anything up gone down the shaft. There was a level going off part way down which nobody seems to have swung off into.
Going upstream, there was a blockage at a shaft which was chemically attacked & released a lot of water (so two of us had to prussik on the same rope as the water was rising up Barkell's). On the return we could see through to the continuing level but the fill in the shaft immediately slipped & blocked it off again. If we had access again this would be an interesting project if this could be cleared & kept open safely. The adit as well as going to Betsy connected to Bennetts' lode, the point where it came into the stopes on the latter is buried under a few feet of deads. I have surveys of evertyhing we did, though drawn on lots of bits of paper once selotaped together.
Pre power nationalisation there were quite a few open shafts eg air shafts on the drive towards Betsy but I think niothing that really went. When the industry was privatised most were capped, then English Nature forced the company to uncap some of the shafts as they had ignored any bats.
This of course had nothong tyo do with the current owners (SWW).

The shaft was Stephen's, the fill described as 5mm slate fragments ie potentially very mobile.

Do you have a grid reference for Barkell's or anything which would help to identify where it is? It's not a name I have heard here.

going back to books, DB Barton A historical Survey of the Mines and Mineral Railways of East Cornwall & West Devon (1964) is recommended.

I have read somewhere online that the two wheels drained into different places, one into Cholwell brook and one into the river Burn, but that could of course be wrong, I don't recall it being an especially comprehensive account.

They must have been an impressive sight at work, the Ystrad Einion wheel is spectacular enough up close and I don't imagine it's anywhere near as big.

Wheal Friendship Tin & Copper Mine: - In Mary Tavy, near Tavistock, is in clay slate, and worked to a depth of 200 fathoms entirely by water power; for this and the adjoining mine, Wheal Betsy, a fall of water of 526 feet is height is employed in giving motion to seventeen overshot wheels; eight of them performing the duties of pumping water from a depth of 200 fathoms; the diameter of the largest of these wheels is 51 feet, with a width of breast of 10 feet clear within the rings; the smallest of the eight being 32 feet in diameter. Four other wheels give motion to machines for drawing up the ores to the surface, their diameters varying from 40 to 26 feet; and the five remaining wheels are employed for mills for crushing and stamping the ores. In addition to all this power, a steam-engine, with a cylinder of 80 inches diameter, and a 10 feet stroke, is provided as an auxiliary in periods of drought or frost. The principal working are on the 150 fathom level east of the engine shaft – 160 fathom level west; the 128 at Brenton’s shaft, and the 70 and 80 driving east.
They sold in 12 months ending 31st Dec. 1841, tin and copper to the amount of £31,836.14s.5d., leaving a profit after deducting every expense of £4,893.2s.6d. About 150 persons are employed.
Extracted from: - A Compendium of British Mining, with Statistical Notices of the Principal Mines of Cornwall: by Joseph Yellowy Watson. 1843 - Page 56

The main adit originally started in a seperate sett, I recently came across a reference about the possibility of it being driven into Wheal Friendship, so that shallow level would probably be the original Wheal Friendship adit.

That reference was relating to a sett of about 1802-3, the seperate sett in which the adit started being Wheal Hope, in Warne estate. A plan of Wheal Friendship a couple of years later (at Truro) shows the adit driven into the latter and to beyond the Mary Tavy stream.