The Norbury one made me feel a total idiot!!! I drove by it on the main road for 4 years on the road to Whaley bridge from Stockport and used to think, "gods that looks like a Cornish house" but as there were no visible remains of mining in that area you kid yourself it can't be... plus it was up a private track... I felt a right idiot when I found out this marked the edge of the Poynton Coalfield!!
There maybe a couple of beam winders up there to at Lords and ladys pit Poynton at SJ931834, certainly one converted to a house! I am doing a trip up there to see them so will advise on return.
regs ICLOK :flowers:

EDIT 2 More I think so-

Restored more or less complete ,Rotative Engine at Ladywell at NGR SO327993

Conserved more or less complete Rotative engine house at East grit mine SO326981

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From memory i think this one is cornish type

SJ197577 Nant Engine House, Westminster Nant mine

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The Leawood Pump engine, on the Cromford Canal, near Cromford Derbyshire was built by Graham's of Elsecar - the same company that built the Sims engine at High Rake and a number of other pumps, wheels and engines in the Peak District. The Leawood engine has a 50" bore and is effectively a sister engine to the slightly larger one installed at the Mandale Mine, Lathkill Dale (both built within a year or two of each other.
The engine house at Leawood was first proposed as a "Half Engine House" - the Cornish type, with the pump outside - but was built as a full one, enclosing both engine and pump.
The best part of this is that the Leawood Pump is in working order and can be seen in motion on the first weekend of the month through Summer or Sunday and Monday of Bank Holidays - except May (check web-site to confirm).
Not intending to sound like a smart ---- here, it is just that I have been part of the Leawod team for a while now and can often be found stoking the boiler.
Of note too is that the pump was not needed until the Meerbrook Sough undermined and reduced the flow from the Cromford Sough, the original water supply for that part of the canal.

Must be great to see this wonderful old engine in motion, Thrutch. There aren't too many of them around :thumbsup:

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Visitors to the Leawood Pump ask a range of questions, the most asked being "how much coal does it use", which raises questions with regard to quantities of coal used by the mine engines and transport for this. Another frequently asked question is "how did they get it here/erect it" which raises questions about how mine engines were transported and erected, in difficult to access areas and using the roads, such as they were then. Jacks, sheerlegs, horse and man power plus a lot of practise and experience were used and our ancestors were no less bright than us, just not so well equipped.
When the engine at Mandale Mine was dismantled, it is said that 46 horses were needed to move the beam from the valley. Well, the Leawood engine beam weighs 27 tons (cast in two longitudinal halves) and knowing the Mandale location, those horses had a real task there!

They were certainly big chunks of iron and difficult to man handle. When you think how they managed without the large hydraulic lifting kit we have available to us today, you can realy begin to appreciate the skills of these guys, much of which has been lost today.
I wonder how people would manage today faced with the job of dismantling/erecting or transporting an engine using the methods of yesteryear.
The photo gives real perspective....

🔗Personal-Album-342-Image-30851[linkphoto]Personal-Album-342-Image-30851[/linkphoto][/link]

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Yep, amazing how things have changed in a mere 40 years.
In 1970 the mill I worked at jacked a 96 ton drying cylinder up 35 feet from the basement to the bearing seatings, 20 years later the replacement was dropped through the roof by crane!

Its the same everywhere, I had a train bodyshell rebuilt in sections in a workshop for strain gauge testing, after testing was complete the 20T bodyshell (21m x 3m x 3m) had to re-used back in Hong Kong. The managers turned up and said well the roof will have to come off the workshop, Cranes to be hired, risk assessments etc..... Price £24,000 plus !!

I phoned an old factory clearer I knew (he was 64 in 1994) who turned up with 4 big hand jacks, 2 Steel beams, 8 sleepers, 8 timbers, 8 Oak blocks, 8 Skates and the shell was skated out of the shop in 3hrs.... Superb .... No Fuss... £3000 and some elbow grease!

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I have been following this thread since it started with some interest. What is a Cornish Design engine house? The truthful answer after over fifty years of visiting and recording mine sites is I don't know! I have never found two that are identical, all are different and therefor unique.
Take for instance Fortesques at Grenville United, Taylor's at East Pool & Agar, Batters at West Chiverton, Cook's at south Crofty. All of these housed 90" engines and yet their houses are completely different. As mentioned the Crowns house has an internal stack but so has the one on West Wheal Owles stamps engine. The stack at Wheal Drea is a integral part of the wing wall as was the stamps engine house (now demolished) at Levant.
Some houses had a lot of windows others hardly any.
Wheal Henry, and Brea Consol's had the stack at the bob wall end.
Stacks themselves were quite different at Wheal Tehidy it had a hexagonal base and then a waisted top two thirds that it resembles a Bottle kiln rather than a mine stack
So I think it would be a brave soul that looked at some ruin and said, "Yes that housed a Cornish engine

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Although Bradford Barton tended to apply the term to all engines built in Cornwall after the expiry of Watt's patent in 1800, Ken Brown has more precisely defined a Cornish Engine House as one housing 'a single acting beam engine operating on the Cornish cycle'. ie operating pole or plunger pumps working on the downward stroke (Cornish pitwork). This required valve gear specifically deigned to serve this purpose and enabled the use of high pressure steam as developed by Trevithick. The term Cornish may therefore only truly apply to pumping engine houses. Although rotative engines powering stamps and whims are loosely termed Cornish, by Brown's definition that is not correct. The varied layouts of the buildings and associated features are not particularly relevant to the definition of a Cornish engine house.

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This is where things get complicated. Some rotative engines were single acting, Rostowrack just to name one there were many others especially in the clay district.
To imply that watt engines did not operate Cornish pit-work is also not correct, even atmospheric engines pumped on the outdoor stroke.
The earlier Watt engines had the condenser inside the engine house, the later ones were fitted outside the same as a Cornish engine. So, the "Footprint" left by such an engine would be virtually the same as a Cornish engine

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Up until now I had a fairly simple idea of a Cornish Pumphouse, chimney in one corner, non-rotative engine and wall for beam bearings. 😉
Obviously too simple.

Aha but it gets better, we haven't mentioned the inverted type yet!
The point is if one were asked to build a "Typical", Cornish engine house today what design would be chosen, and what makes it more Cornish than the others?
There is over three hundred remains to pick from in the county
( all different ) but if one were to be picked out from old photo's there are thousands

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Perhaps we should be saying Cornish Style Engine house then... I keep photographing these places in the UK and I have to agree with Spitfire here... The footprint left by the engines seems mostly more or less the same... the building exterior of the intact examples varies regionally being stone, brick, mixture of both and having looked at some Watt engine houses verses Engine houses labelled as Cornish and containg a cornish engine on the old Sth Staffs/West Mids coalfield- I cant really see beggar all difference in many cases!.
The Cornish pattern of engine house from an Architectural point of view is what we see typically in Cornwall and see copied sometimes across the UK and some foreign mining fields as per Morlocks simply put point, but there have been shed loads of Architectural variants of so called Cornish Engine houses across the UK.
Some of the Welsh examples are typically Cornish in architectural terms (the big 100" s in Nth Wales) but other Welsh engine houses are less typical and the one in Gloucs at Brandy Bottom Colliery is not typical at all, but all had cornish engines!!! :confused: 😉

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Just found this thread. Are you aware of the following article: DE.E.Bick "The Beam-Engine House in Wales", pp.84-93 in Industrial Archaeology Review, vol.12, no.1, Autumn 1989. It includes a gazetteer listing all known surviving examples, a few of which have since disappeared. I can add one to the list: Gorsgoch Colliery, Cross Hands, Carmarthenshire, NGR SN 570/131 - slightly more details may have been published in the Welsh Mines Society Newsletter around the mid 1990s. I seem to recall another discovery being published in the WMS N/L around this time but cannot be sure. Hope these notes are useful if you are still interested in the subject.

Thanks and I'll look that out... cheers 😉

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