Steam Power in Mining and Other Industries - Early Years

Until the mid-19th century and the development of very deep mines, steam power was uncommon in the Tavistock mining district. The earliest known engine was installed at South Tamar Silver-Lead Mine, Bere Ferrers in about 1781 by the mine's then leaseholder Christopher Gullet. This was a Boulton & Watt beam engine of small size, being employed to pump the deeper levels which were then substantially below adit level. A distant view of it may be shown in this watercolour of Weir Quay painted by John Savery in 1812, although the building is in a position occupied at around this time by a smelter; the engine being on the other side of an adjoining valley. It is interesting that the engine house is of squat rectangular form, indicating that the engine and its boiler were in the same building, as was typical of earlier beam engines. Gullet's re-working of the mine was moribund by 1796 when the diarist John Swete was shown around. He noted the engine but not in any detail, and unfortunately did not sketch it.

An engine house which had housed a rotary steam winding engine on Wheal Martha at Luckett, near Stoke Climsland in East Cornwall, was stripped of ivy at the time of its demolition circa 1970. It was revealed to have been highly unusual, with a chimney of rectangular section in its rear gable, rather than at one corner or a little way away, as is normal for 19th century engine houses. This is much more like Newcomen or Watt engine houses of the 18th century, and it is therefore suggested that it housed a hitherto undocumented pre-1800 steam engine. The engine which it had housed until its scrapping in 1937, had a chain on its winding drum, suggesting a pre-1840s date. This 1930s photograph shows the house to the far right, covered with ivy, but with the gable stack clearly visible. (See the Steam Power Sites page)

The next steam engine recorded on a Tamar Valley metal mine was a pumping and winding engine of unknown form, installed by the Wheal Luscombe adventurers in 1811 on a shaft east of the Tamar opposite Gunnislake. This is shown in an extract from a long section of the Luscombe and Crebor Lodes made in 1812 at a time when the Luscombe adventurers were arguing over sett rights and pumping methods with the Tavistock Canal Company. This crude drawing seems to imply the same internal layout as Gullet's engine, but unfortunately nothing more is known about it and it was removed shortly afterwards when the lode ran out. It is probable that this engine is the one featured on the Tavistock Penny of 1811, which shows a very similar house.

Owing to the expense of bringing coal in quantity from South Wales, and the plentiful supplies of water for driving water wheels, no new steam engines were installed in the district until the development of deep mines in the 1830s and 1840s onwards. The only exception to this rule was the Bere Peninsula, which had inadequate water supplies. Steam engines were used there from the 1830s, replacing Gullet's by then derelict engine.