A plaque has been put up on the site of the boiler and winder.
This is useful as it contains a large scale 1908 map, which locates the whereabouts of the original outside toilet in my Garden in 1908...now under a 40ft tree.

The 1908 map and plaque list the site as wheal harriet shaft dolcoath, but I have seen on other maps Harriet shaft dolcoath. Wheal harriet being shown as a mine near Carn Camborne mine in Beacon 1/3 mile away (Maps previously submitted by Roy M). Is there any definitive source that could confirm what is the correct name?

Unrelated - Another Dog rescued this weekend from a shaft near Temple, Bodmim. There seems to be lots of uncapped Shafts in North cornwall.

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I don't know about definitive (there may not be a definitive answer) but on page 37 of DOLCOATH: Queen of Cornish Mines by T. R. Harris there is a photo. The caption reads- The new steel headgear at Wheal Harriott's Shaft.

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Thanks. Sounds like this one has no clear answer and causes some confusion as there are 1 or 2 photo of Harriet shaft engine house on the Wheal Harriet mine listing, which has a position 1/3 mile away on the database entry (which seems correct).
Just that the plaque on Engine house says Harriet shaft engine house and the info plaque on the Winder base says Wheal Harriet engine house. This confusion seems to have existed 100 years ago on the map, so will just have to live with it.
Just a friend happens to live on th edge of the wheal harriet site up the hill, so I was trying to explain it to him.

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Very important point about open shafts in Cornwall. Plugging the ones you can see does no get rid of the danger. I have a horrible sick feeling that I was stood right a part of the shaft that ran in, in Pendarves woods, a few weeks ago.

In the old days, places like United Downs were no-go areas due to the danger of falling in a hole. We see the plug markers, benches and dog walkers, it is still very dangerous in various places.

At least with an open shaft, you can see it. The other day, a mate was down a well known shaft near consols and walked to 2 shafts which were not on plans and clearly unmarked on the surface. After going up Wheal Neptune adit, we bumped into a shaft that was capped with corrugated iron (v rusty) which was held in place by some very rotten timber.

Dog walkers and the general public need to realise the dangers of mining land, despite the fence, walls, clwyd caps surrounding most shafts. Nanny state can only protect you from the dangers she knows.......

I take it Harriet shaft was plugged in the plugging operations. ? It was open in Acton's book, or at least not properly capped......

Harriet engine house shaft:
Looking at the old photos showing the engine house and winder working, there is no visible marker where the shaft should be.
The marker may well be buried in gorse, or it maybe just capped and unmarked. I think the area was fenced when Bob A. wrote about it, but the fencing has gone, so I "assume" some work was done to make it safe (probably around late 1990's).
My impression is that modern capping uses steel beams and concrete plugs so should be "safer". But will tread more carefully from now on, especially where there are depressions
directly above known capped shafts.

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They built a housing estate over the Fan drift at Mosley Common Colliery in Lancashire....... and the locals knew about old shafts all round another field where they built on.... but they didn't take any precautions or build the houses on rafts...

Caveat emptor

Grahami

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I am not sure of the actual status at Harriet shaft, I have no recollection of any works being carried out in the vicinity when the rest of the shafts in the area were capped (Which was actually in the late 80's), the fancy shaft marker were placed in about 2001 when Dolcoath was reclaimed, and its strange that a shaft marker was never placed on harriet shaft, has Kerrier forgotten its existance?

Regarding names, heres a theory for you with wheal harriett, the original Wheal harriet was probably a small mine that was taken over by Dolcoath, who may have used Wheal Harriett shaft (Which is a larger more modern shaft) to access the Wheal harriett area, hence the name of the shaft.

I was wondering something along those lines. Originally Dolcoath was small undertaking separated from Cook's Kitchen by Bullen Garden and bounded on the west by Stray Park and Wheal Gons. It eventually embraced these properties together with Wheal Harriet to the south.

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T A Morrison says... "Harriett shaft, not to be confused with Wheal Harriett on the hill near Beacon", In the section on Wheal Harriett he says the mine was never re-opened and I can't find a ref saying Dolcoath ever having bought it or re-worked it, but by all accounts it was prospected by the later Dolcoath.
Wheal Harriett is South of the Dolcoath sett and was still being worked in 1865 independently, but part of the sett was aquired by Carn Camborne according to the mining journal in 1861 and closed again in 1875 to be re-opened in the 1880's very briefly.
So I can't see a connection between Wheal Harriett and Harrietts shaft which is is the northern end of the Dolcoath sett & not really near Whl Harriett.
I have also been told the shaft was named after one of the managers daughters.

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Going off on a bit of a tangent, it's long been a fascination of explorers to get into the legendary Dolcoath. I gather a lot of the shafts were choked and recently, the plugging programme sealed the place forever. I read bits and bobs about people trying to find the adit connections and various leads and interesting things that either went to dead ends or impossible ground.

If anyone can hop over a hedge and look at something interesting in the area. PM me. :)

NB:- I understand that the Dolcoath workings are at the centre of the Crofty operation, hence this discussion about what may be down there is purely academic.

If this is the shaft behind the ELIM centre......
I can remember it being done about 10 years ago..
from what i can remember the shaft looked in pretty good
nick with a couple of large diameter cast iron pipes in situ ..

draw a line from the centre of the engine house parralel to the Elim centre about half way along the building there's a faint
circle in the grass no shaft marker 😮

Can you whack up a flashearth link? www.flashearth.com go where you want to go, click "permanent link". Copy and paste the contents of the address bar here.

Cheers!

It isn't that one 🙂

doesn't show up well as the ground is dry of flash earth
but her goes any way
[url]http://www.flashearth.com/?lat=50.214922&lon=-5.284643&z=19.7&r=351&src=msa

According to Harris some of the original bound stones are still in-situ. One is in a wall of a garden in Dolcoath Road, Another in a hedge near the site of William's shaft and a third in the cottage just over the railway bridge at the top of Foundary road.

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I don't suppose anyone on this site knows who puts together the information plaques that go on the restored sites?
Are they aware of the ambiguity?
Next time I go walking around the area (which normally 1x week) will take a map of known shafts and see what is there now, but I suspect any uncapped shaft would be heavily grown over otherwise would be known about if it exists at all.
I was hoping to see something with the Holman's regeneration work, but no luck.
Best way to get to Dolcoath in the future might be via South Crofty with an authorised bit of exploration, should it be accessible, drained (well partly anyway) etc.
(please no long debates about privately owned minesite etc, we all know and those interested would only ever do this with permissions etc) ::)

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batting this about in the pub the other evening, consensus among several people here on the Combe Down site who worked at Crofty at various times, is that there is no worthwhile access to any part of Dolcoath under any foreseeable drainage regime.

plus, the systematic 'knacking' of the mine in its last days and the fact that its abandonment was essentially caused by progressive and increasingly unmanageable runs of ground, mean that any remaining workings would probably be run in and at very best, in an extremely dangerous condition.

I always though that the old Crofty management knew a lot more about Dolcoath than they were willing to let on.

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I was wondering whether some part of the Dolcoath workings would need some professional exporation in the future should they affect any future South Crofty workings. I would imagine that WUM would want to avoid any contact with these workings, so it is unlikely (also considering that most of it will be flooded at depth).
I might ask my mate who was part of the Surveying team when Crofty shut in the 1990's if he recalls anything.
Thanks for info.

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commercial mining companies almost never 'explore' old workings. To know they are there, and give them a wide berth - 'wide' as defined by the various legislation plus any design detail that can be extracted from historic records, local knowledge and localised drilling - is usually the plan.

any remaining sections of Dolcoath still open, must contain vast quantities of water drawn from a huge catchment area. Said water will be under great pressure, due to the inevitable hydrostatic head, and will be highly dangerous at best and most likely, completely unmanageable, if contacted.

most of the former workings are likely to be at least partly run in, and filled with tens, or hundreds, of thousands of tons of unstable ground in a completely unknown condition. The structure of the mine was systematically compromised during the last phase of working, so things which stood up at the time will have been irretrievably compromised long ago.

the lower levels of Dolcoath will always be a closed book at this stage. WUM have no useful reason to access the upper levels, with the possible exception of adit maintenance if, as and when their dewatering requirements dictate it.

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I have some literature which was the result of an attempt to get into the main lode of Dolcoath in the '60's. They went up the adit (which is now impossible) as far as Eastern Valley shaft where there is no connection at that horizon.

I have a feeling that the new Dolcoath adit may be lower than deep adit and this is why people have had no luck with finding the links.

There is a lot of speculation as to what is in there. What I find odd is how no-one had a go at the shafts, when they were open.

I wonder if the current Crofty programme is to drive through the workings and on towards the WF. I assume it is.

see post above... I've long since felt that the old Crofty management knew much more about Dolcoath than they were prepared to let on.

I worked at Foraky in the early 80s, there were at that time a number of blokes there who had worked on the adit clearance works done in the 60s. I've heard reference before to this attempt to reach the Dolcoath lodes around that time, although I don't know the details.

there were a number of access options available around that time which are no longer available . CSM did a fair amount of unofficial research around that time, and a lot of politics surrounded who was allowed to go into various places


Crofty and Geevor were always tightly closed shops with the sort of jockeying for position, and secrecy-for-its-own sake which is common in closed communities which have ceased to look outwards, and where much of what happens is driven by long-term agendas between people who have already spent long periods of time in narrowly-defined communities with fairly limited ranges of options, and have every intention of contnuing to do so indefinitely.

Anyone with experience of the old British Army regimental system, or has worked in a local authority, or a number of other areas, will know about this.



I found the then-new offshore oil industry a great release from the claustrophobic atmosphere of Cornwall, and it doesn't sound much changed.


I've hd the interesting experience lately, of working with some people who were involved with Wardell Armstrong's consultancy work for WUM and the comments about their being a very difficult client who appeared at times, to be fishing for conclusions without releasing necessary information, are thought-provoking

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