Description

SW 52 NE BREAGE

6/191 Engine house and capstan plat at
SW 598265, Old Shaft, Trewavas Mine

GV II

Beam engine house ruin, for pumping engine and adjoining capstan plat. Circa 1834.
Dressed coarsed granite bob wall, otherwise granite rubble with dressed granite
quoins and jambstones and wooden lintels.
Rectangular, plan engine house with thicker bob wall with small plug doorway at the
seaward side. Very tall opening in the rear landward side, necessary for the
insertion of the beam and boiler from the steep slope of the cliff. Machinery,
floors, framed wall and gable over the bob wall and roof structure removed. Rear
gable fallen. Wing walls each have ground floor doorway and first floor windows the
right hand wall also with ground floor window. Originally with 3 floors. The
building is set on a ledge half way up a steep cliff, the shaft immediately in front
and the front left hand corner built over a sheer drop of nearly 100 feet to the sea.
The capstan plat adjoins at the left hand side of the engine house and is retained by
a battered granite rubble wall, serpentine on plan. Within the plat is a masonry
lined pit for holding the capstan drum and leading from it, a masonry lined trench
through which the rope ran out to the pulley at the base of the sheer legs over the
shaft. The manually operated capstan was used for lowering heavy pieces of pumpwork
down the shaft. Higher up the cliff, to the north west, is a horse whim plat used
for hauling ore trucks up a tramway.
Wheal Trewavas was a copper mine worked between circa 1834 and 1846. In 1844, the
sea apparently broke into some of the workings just before a tributer's dinner was
due to be held underground.
These remains have one of the most spectacular settings in Cornwall and the capstan
plat pit and trench are easily the best preserved in Cornwall (Kenneth Brown).
Sources : Mines and Miners of Cornwall, A K Hamilton Jenkin,
Kenneth Brown, council member of The Trevithick Society

Listing NGR: SW5980026500

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26613703

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  A Buying and Owning a Listed Building: A Brief Guide
• 
  Old House Care and Repair
• 
  Gloucestershire 2: The Vale and The Forest of Dean: Vale and Forest of Dean Pt. 2 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  The Listed Buildings and Other Principal Structures at the Royal Gunpowder Mills Waltham Abbey
• 
  Cambridgeshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Churches: An Architectural Guide (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Introductions)