Strangely in all my trips to Cornwall over the years (3 decades) never visited here until last year, on a subsequent visit the grass had been strimmed and despite the crap light an interesting site was revealed. My question is there a definitive book on these types of tin streaming works???

---

I'm sure the guy to ask is Spitfire,

---

Why this place has aquired the name "Brea Stamps" is a mystery to me, It was and still is known by the name it traded under, "Brea Tin Streams".
There was never any stamps on this site, at least not in connection with any of the remains that are there today.
There were three sets of stamps in Brea and none of them bore the name of the village! all of them being named after their owners.
Going back to the site in question.
Any reduction in pulp size was achieved by a pebble mill not stamps, the feed for these streams coming from Gwithian in the form of tin bearing beach sand. sand would also been aquired from the Red River.
The pebbles for the mill were collected from the beach at Porthpean near St. Austell, South Crofty also sent a lorry up there for the same reason.
The round structures in the photo are not buddles but "Linkenbach stationary slime tables". These were very popular in the tinstreams along the Red River as they could be operated around the clock without any attention. To the best of my knowledge these tables were not used anywhere else in Cornwall, but I stand to be corrected on this.
A discription of the way they worked can be found in "Machinery for Metalliferous Mines", by Davies

---

Hello Spitfire... you are quite right of course and the name will be amended from the mess created by certain previous interference in the DB. Thanks for the Gen on the tables and the book title... Great to hear from you:)
BTW had to call it a mill as the only available description is stamps or dressing floor which makes it a stamps again!!! :blink:

---