Killifreth Mine was a mine near
Chacewater
Chacewater ( kw, Dowr an Chas) is a village and civil parish in Cornwall, England, UK. It is situated approximately east of Redruth. The hamlets of Carnhot, Cox Hill, Creegbrawse, Hale Mills, Jolly's Bottom, Salem, Saveock, Scorrier, Todpool, ...
in
Cornwall, England, producing at various periods copper, tin and arsenic. The engine house over Hawke's Shaft is a Grade II
listed building; it has the tallest surviving chimney in Cornwall.
History
The mine produced copper from shallow workings from 1826 to 1860. Some time before 1856 the mine was joined to the
Great County Adit
The Great County Adit, sometimes called the County Adit, or the Great Adit was a system of interconnected adits that helped drain water from the tin and copper mines in the Gwennap area of Cornwall, in the United Kingdom. Construction started in 1 ...
, a branch coming from
Wheal Busy
Wheal may refer to:
* Wheals, a type of skin lesion
* Brad Wheal (born 1996), British cricketer
* Donald James Wheal (1931–2008), British British television writer, novelist and non-fiction writer
* David John Wheal, Australian businessman
* "Th ...
. In 1864 it was bought by a new company, and tin was mined; it was deepened to 100
fathoms below the County Adit.
["Killifreth"]
''Explore Cornwall''. Retrieved 26 November 2020.
''Cornwall Calling''. Retrieved 26 November 2020.
The engine house over Hawke's Shaft (named after Edward Hawke Jnr, the purser in 1865) was built in 1892, and housed an 80-inch pumping engine. The bob (the beam of the beam engine) broke in 1897, and the mine was abandoned for a period.
[
It was reopened in 1912, mining for arsenic. A new boiler house contained four boilers; these served an 85-inch pumping engine, a horizontal ]whim
Whim may refer to:
* Whim, U.S. Virgin Islands, a settlement
* Whim (mining), a capstan or drum with a vertical axle used in mining
* Whim (carriage), a type of carriage
* ''Whim'', a reissue of ''Adventures of Wim'', a book by George Cockroft as ...
and an air compressor. The chimney was augmented to its present height. The price of arsenic was volatile, and the mine failed after a few years. Although there was an attempt to open the mine in 1927, no further mining took place.[
]
Description
The engine house at Hawke's Shaft is made of granite rubble and killas. It had three storeys; the walls are virtually intact. The thicker bob wall, on the south side, survives up to the wall plate, that supported the beam of the beam engine; above was originally timber framed with weather boarding. The chimney is the tallest surviving in Cornwall.[
Another engine house of Killifreth Mine is to the east at Engine Shaft, : there are ruins of a late 19th-century engine house, attached chimney and boiler house.]
See also
* Mining in Cornwall and Devon
* Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape
References
{{Reflist
Tin mines in Cornwall
Grade II listed buildings in Cornwall
Arsenic mines in Cornwall
Copper mines in Cornwall
Grade II listed industrial buildings