Steam Power - Tavistock Mining District Sites

New Consols Mine

New Consols photos by HG Ordish & Frank Booker

New Consols (earlier known as Wheal Martha) was heavily invested in from the 1850s to the 1870s, by a company keen on exploiting the potential for rich copper deposits immediately north-west of Devon Great Consols. The mine was developed over more than two decades, with extensive arsenic processing plant being added from the 1860s, but as a result of disputes among the shareholders, work ceased in 1877. Unusually, none of the mine's machinery was sold off, and four beam engines (and a fifth one on a nearby site at Broadgate), with all their associated machinery, gently rusted away in this little valley just west of the village of Luckett, for an incredible sixty years!

What should have been preserved for posterity, and would have today been justifiably famous, was cut up for scrap in 1937. The photographs here partly record this process, but we are incredibly lucky that they were taken at all. The photographer, Mr HG Ordish, had been photographing what was left of Devon and Cornwall's mining industry from 1915, but he seems to have been the only photographer to have discovered New Consols before it was too late.

The remaining two photographs show the mine in its later dereliction and come from the collection of Frank Booker, who first brought the industrial archaeology and history of the Tamar Valley to general attention. The mine site remains abandoned, in the care of the Duchy of Cornwall, and remarkably well-preserved remains can still be found there, despite the ravages of a further 75 years of weather.

Main part of site, looking north in 1930s
This older view shows evidence for early 20th century reworking of dump material in the valley floor, with barrels for packing the finished product. Behind it lies the crusher engine, minus its flanking crusher houses, with the older winding house to its right in the middle background, on the edge of Luckett village. At the rear, on the hillside, is the 80 inch pumping engine on Phillips' Shaft. The general air of dereliction, common in parts of West Cornwall, but rare in the Tamar Valley, is palpable here.

80inch pumping engine on Phillips Shaft
(left) Photographed when dismantling had already started, this was the largest engine on the site. The house had clearly been strengthened by means of buttressing the sides of the bob wall (with the odd little gabled roof sections) when this engine was inserted into an older, smaller house in the late 1860s.

Pumping engine detail
(above right) The length of time this engine had already stood derelict can be seen by the rotted stumps of the bob plat joists projecting on either side of the beam. Brick has been used to form the quoins on this slate-built engine house, while the double-depth door arches testify to the enormous weight of the cast iron engine beam above them.

Note the cast iron tie-bar ends - and the temporary sheerlegs and fence, presumably put up by the scrapping contractors.

Phillips Shaft 80inch pumping engine, south side
This shows the large steam pipe from the ruined boiler house on the left. Note the tie-bar passing horizontally along the wall face behind the pipe - the erectors of this engine were taking no chances with their insertion of a much larger engine into a house which was not intended to take such a load.

Phillips Shaft 80inch pumping engine, fallen beam during dismantling
This dramatic photograph shows how scrapmen removed such heavy items with minimal lifting gear. Dynamite was packed under the axle ends, forcing the beam off its bearings and down into the house. This explains why some derelict engine houses are significantly damaged.

Crusher engine, with winding engine to rear right
This detail view shows that the facing masonry of the crank axle and flywheel loadings had been robbed away, probably when the flanking crusher houses were removed. The cog wheels on either end of the axle show that two crushers were originally present. Phillips pumping engine is seen on the left, while to the right, the ivy-clad winding house with its detached stack can be seen. The earlier square stack on the left-hand gable suggests that this engine house may predate c.1800.

Crusher house engine
The slots in the masonry loadings for this engine's twin flywheels are evident in this view, which also clearly shows the four timber baulks onto which the bearings were bolted. A cog wheel lying on the ground to the right may belong to one of the roller crusher mechanisms.

Intact stamps engine on the west side
In addition to extensive stamp batteries on either side of this engine's flywheels, some of which can be seen here, the additional beam and apparatus to the left of the flywheels appears to have been used for pumping dressing water up the hillside to run through the stamps boxes and into buddles on the dressing floors below. The large archway in the lower right side of the house is most unusual and its purpose is not known. Remains of the arsenic works labyrinth can be seen in the foreground.

Stamps engine during dismantling, 1937
Only the flywheel is left and a small lorry is picking up light scrap in the foreground. The boiler house is unusually set at right angles to the engine house - perhaps the large arch was associated with it? The two seem to line up at any rate. Quite why this engine house was dynamited (in about 1980) is uncertain. Despite this, some features, such as the pump rod in the sump pit below the house, and much of the timber and wrought iron elements of the stamps boxes, survive, in a better state of preservation than is normal for 19th century mine sites.

Main part of site, looking south in 1960s
(left) The general layout of the site is shown here, with engine houses and dumps facing each other across the Treovis Valley, just west of Luckett village (off-view to the left).

Main part of site, looking southwest in 1960s
(right) The engine house in the foreground contained a rotative beam engine, driving one or possibly a pair of roller crushers in houses set forward of it, to either side - these had gone before 1937. The stamps engine house is opposite, since demolished. Its chimney is to the left; that to the right belonged to the arsenic works, which lay on the hillside to the right.