Delve Deeper Audio Trail Three The Gunpowder Plot: Trevarno Estate

Delve Deeper
Audio Trail Three
The Gunpowder Plot: Trevarno Estate
If you wish to delve deeper into the history of Trevarno’s links with Cornish Mining
then this short guide will provide you with more information.
Trevarno and Cornish Mining
Between 1700 and 1914, the metal mining industry of Cornwall and west Devon
transformed the landscape. It fed the Industrial Revolution in Britain and influenced the
development of our modern world.
The Cornwall and west Devon mining landscape consists of ten areas with distinct
personalities. Trevarno is situated within the Tregonning and Gwinear Mining District.
World Heritage Site status recognises the importance on a global scale of Cornish mining’s
historic landscapes, its outstanding mine buildings and other features.
Cornish miners and engineers developed technologies which transformed mining
worldwide. Their innovations and skills were vital to the Industrial Revolution and helped
shape our modern industrial society.
Trevarno and the Safety Fuse Connection. Audio Points 2 & 3
Gunpowder was first used for blasting in Cornish mines at Godolphin Ball – not far from
Trevarno - in 1689. A ‘ball’ was a group of tin workings and Godolphin Ball included the mine
known as Great Work. The wealthiest owners of tin mining and smelting at the time were the
Godolphin family whose fortune was based on tin. If you wish to find out more about
Godolphin House and Estate (www.nationaltrust.org.uk) then a visit is strongly
recommended.
The Godolphins recruited Thomas Epsley, who worked for the Mines Royal in Somerset, to
teach their miners the art of ‘shooting the rocks’. He died at Godolphin Ball six months later,
presumably one of the first of many such accidents that were commonplace amongst miners
for the next 150 years. But as the practice spread, the time, labour and capital required to
drive drainage (adit) levels and tunnels to intersect lodes (crosscuts) was significantly
reduced. As a result, ore-ground could be opened up much more quickly. Gunpowder
revolutionised mining.
Fuses were used by miners to transfer the flame of a candle to the explosive charge, a
procedure that was extremely dangerous. Rudimentary gunpowder-filled reed or goose-quill
fuses burned unpredictably, and caused endless casualties including blinding, loss of
fingers, mutilation and death. The situation remained relatively unchanged until after 1830
with the invention of the safety fuse.
Once black powder had been inserted into the shot-hole, it was tamped (also a source of
accidents) and the fuse, or ‘rod’ as it was initially called, lit to fire the hole. Devon-born
William Bickford (1774-1834) devised a way of introducing a stream of gunpowder into the
core of twisted flax yarns which were afterwards bound with twine and sealed with a
waterproof varnish of tar. The fuse burned at a consistent 30 seconds per foot and so, at
last, miners had a reliable and safe method of ‘shooting the rocks’.
Bickford patented his invention in September 1831 and began manufacture at his factory in
Tuckingmill near Camborne. Countless miners across the globe owe a great debt to the
former leather merchant of Tuckingmill.
Generations of miners drilled shot-holes by hand and it was not until the 1870s that the rockdrill, powered by compressed-air, was introduced into the larger Cornish mines.
Bickford-Smith Fuseworks, Tuckingmill, Cornwall
Façade of the new derelict building
Photo: Barry Gamble
One of the most familiar views of the BickfordSmith Fuseworks, Tuckingmill, is this industrial,
archetypal, ‘saw-tooth’ façade of Bull’s-eye and
Roman-arch windows. It belongs to the earliest,
and largest, jute-spinning factory in the world
designed specifically to supply yarn for fusemaking. It dates from 1912 and was built on the
site of the former Vivian Iron Foundry facing
Pendarves Street, now part of the A3047
(formerly A30) but which in 1839 was an entirely
new and straight road cut as part of the Hayle to
Redruth Turnpike.
A factory complex was first established adjacent to this site by William Bickford’s son John
Solomon Bickford (a school master at Hayle, later Major Bickford) and Bickford’s son-in-law
George Smith (a Camborne builder, later Dr Smith). Their endeavours founded Tuckingmill as
‘fuse-making capital of the world’.
Exports soon reached every foreign mining field and manufacturing, too, was organised
overseas where demand was high. As early as 1837 the Bickford, Smith & Davey Company
sent a complete set of fuse machinery, of the latest design, to Granby, Connecticut, in America
where a partnership manufactory was established. Foreign factories were further set up in
Rouen, France (1843), Meissen, Saxony (1844), Spain (1860), Wiener-Neustadt, Austria (1879)
and Bendigo, Australia (1884).
The Company’s business received a great impetus at the conclusion of the Anglo-Boer War
(South Africa, 1899-1902), mainly due to the greatly increased demand for safety fuse in the
gold mines of the Transvaal. This led to the enlargement of the works and the erection of an
additional plant increasing overall fuse output by 100%. Colonel G E Stanley Smith DSO, who
returned from this second Boer War where he served with the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry,
managed the factory and its expansion; he later became chairman of the Explosives Group
Board of Imperial Chemical Industries. The new jute-spinning factory had a daily capacity of
2,800 lb of yarn spun on 556 spindles and operated by a workforce of fifty. The factory finally
closed in 1961 and is known locally as ‘North Lights’.
Great Work Mine and the Godolphins
Great Work is situated in the saddle of Godolphin and Tregonning hills, just under a mile southwest of Godolphin Cross and roughly four miles west of Helston. The engine house and
telescoped stack at Leeds Shaft are owned by the National Trust, acquired as part of
the 550-acre Godolphin Estate in 2000. There is a small car park at Great Work but at
Godolphin House, bought by the National Trust in 2007 and now being restored, is a car park
from where the Estate walks start. The climb to the summit of Godolphin Hill is less than a mile
and provides breathtaking views of west Cornwall; from there it’s a ½-mile south-easterly
descent to Great Work. When the House and Gardens are open, it’s a great place for tea and
cakes (and to check out progress in restoration) whilst the Godolphin
Arms is close-by at Godolphin Cross.
Pumping Engine House, Great Work Mine.
The pumping engine house and telescoped stack at
Leeds Shaft served a Harvey’s of Hayle 60-inch
pumping engine made in 1829 and re-cylindered in
1857. Great Work possessed a distinguished
succession of Cornish engines, commencing with a
63-inch Newcomen engine installed in the
eighteenth century. During a re-working from 1934
the gable of the engine house was removed and a
flat corrugated iron roof installed.
Photo: Barry Gamble
Aerial view of Great Work Mine.
The National Trust have carried out
conservation and safety works around Leeds
Shaft and have provided a small car park and
circular path that takes in the principal
features: pumping engine house and stack at
Leeds Shaft (grilled for safety, and for bats!)
and the Cornish-hedged Burnt Whim Shaft
(centre right).
Photo: Barry Gamble/CCC
Great Work was one of Cornwall’s richest medieval tin mines and one of the longest-lived, albeit
intermittently: Leland commented around 1538 that ‘There are no greater Tynne workes yn al
Cornwal than be on Sir Wylliam Godolcan’s Ground’; and it was still a major producer in the
nineteenth century with its final re-working being in the 1930s. The mine contributed
considerably to the rise of the Godolphin family: Sidney Godolphin (1645-1712) was a leading
British politician and financial wizard of the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries,
under four sovereigns, and in 1684 Baron Godolphin and First Lord of the Treasury and under
King James II was one of his close advisers. In 1704 he was knighted and in 1706 became the
first Earl of Godolphin. He was fond of horse racing and introduced the Godolphin Arab. Francis
Godolphin (1678-1766), Sidney’s only son (his wife dying in childbirth) and the second Earl, was
at the forefront of Cornish mining technology like the earlier Sir Francis (1540-1608) who was an
expert in adit drainage. Mines such as Great Work and Wheal Vor were the first in Cornwall to
introduce gunpowder for blasting and the first metal mines to employ steam pumping in the
early 18th century.
The last Godolphin of Godolphin was William, Marquess of Blandford, after whose death in
1731 the title and property passed to Thomas Osborne (1713-1789) the fourth Duke of Leeds in
1785 - after whom Leeds Shaft, and nearby Leedstown, is named.
The mine worked principally for tin, though a little copper was also produced, in SW-NE trending
lodes in the Godolphin-Tregonning granite, overlain with shallow killas
(sedimentary rock altered by the heat of intruded granite).