Par Docks is an

Imerys IMERYS S.A. is a French Multinational corporation, multinational company that specialises in the production and processing of industrial minerals. The main headquarters is located in Paris and are constituents of the CAC Mid 60 index. Groupe Bru ...

-owned

harbour A harbor (American English), or harbour (Commonwealth English; see American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, spelling differences), is a sheltered body of water where ships, boats, and barges can be Mooring, moored. The t ...

in the village of Par,

Cornwall Cornwall (; or ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is also one of the Celtic nations and the homeland of the Cornish people. The county is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, ...

, England, United Kingdom, which was used for the export of

china clay Kaolinite ( ; also called kaolin) is a clay mineral, with the chemical composition aluminium, Al2Silicon, Si2Oxygen, O5(hydroxide, OH)4. It is a layered silicate mineral, with one tetrahedron, tetrahedral sheet of silica () linked through oxygen ...

from the numerous Imerys sites in the clay-rich region of Mid-Cornwall.

History

Joseph Treffry Joseph Austen Treffry (1782 – 29 January 1850) was an engineer, mining adventurer, and industrialist who became a significant landowner in Cornwall, England. Biography Born in Plymouth, Devon as Joseph Thomas Austen, to Joseph Austen (d 1786 ...

(born Joseph Austen in 1782) was the owner of the

Fowey Consols mine Fowey Consols mine is a group of mines in the St Blazey St Blazey () is a small town in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. St Blaise is the civil parishes in England, civil parish in which St Blazey is situated; the name St Blaise is also ...

and wanted a harbour to export

copper Copper is a chemical element; it has symbol Cu (from Latin ) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkish-orang ...

and import

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal i ...

. He started work on a harbour in the small cove of Porth in 1829. The first ships used it in 1833 and it was finished in 1840. The

breakwater Breakwater may refer to: * Breakwater (structure), a structure for protecting a beach or harbour Places * Breakwater, Victoria, a suburb of Geelong, Victoria, Australia * Breakwater Island, Antarctica * Breakwater Islands, Nunavut, Canada * ...

enclosed of harbour and was capable of taking up to about 50 vessels of 200 tons each. The port is tidal so the vessels would sit on the bottom at low tide. Cornish

granite Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...

was exported from Par in the early days for such famous landmarks as

Waterloo Bridge Waterloo Bridge () is a road and foot traffic bridge crossing the River Thames in London, between Blackfriars Bridge and Hungerford Bridge and Golden Jubilee Bridges. Its name commemorates the victory of the British, Dutch and Prussians at the ...

in London, Chatham Docks, Gibraltar Docks & Glasgow Docks. As the china clay industry grew in the area during the 19th century this became the main export through the docks. According to the Imerys Blueprint For Cornwall published in 2003: 1858 – 15,154 tons of china clay went out through Par 1885 – 86,325 tons 1987 – 700,000 tons 2002 – 313,425 tons + 134,810 tons of aggregates Treffry Estates sold the harbour to English China Clay (ECC) in 1964 having leased it to them since 1946. In the 1950s and 1960s, vast dryers were built on-site. The current Grade Dryer was built in 1996. In 2007 the port and some of the clay dries (those dealing with clay for the paper industry) closed with the loss of 200 jobs. All shipping for clay now goes to

Fowey Fowey ( ; , meaning ''beech trees'') is a port town and civil parishes in England, civil parish at the mouth of the River Fowey in south Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The town has been in existence since well before the Norman invasion, ...

. The port is still the site of a Milling Centre and a Grade Dryer and this continued industrial usage means ECO-BOS's ideas for a marina and residential Eco-village on the dis-used dryer site to the west of the docks is unlikely to come to fruition. The port is used by vessels servicing the St Austell Bay Mussel Farm.

The Stack

The port was famous for its “Stack” – the chimney of a

lead smelter Plants for the production of lead are generally referred to as lead smelters. Primary lead production begins with sintering. Concentrated lead ore is fed into a sintering machine with iron, silica, limestone fluxes, coke, soda ash, pyrite, zinc, ...

that had to be demolished in 1907 after it was hit by lightning – and for its low-roofed engines Alfred & Judy (Bagnall 0-4-0ST), the inspiration for Bill & Ben in Rev W Awdry’s children’s books about

Thomas The Tank Engine Thomas the Tank Engine is a fictional, anthropomorphised tank locomotive who originated from the British children's books ''The Railway Series'', created and written by Wilbert Awdry with his son Christopher Awdry, Christopher, first publish ...

after his visit to the docks in 1966. The port is still served by a rail line from

St Blazey St Blazey () is a small town in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. St Blaise is the civil parishes in England, civil parish in which St Blazey is situated; the name St Blaise is also used by the town council. The village of Biscovey and the se ...

and still has the occasional early morning train. The old St Blazey to Fowey railway closed in 1968 and was turned into a

haul road A haul road (also ''haulage road'' or haul track) is a term for roads designed for heavy or bulk transfer of materials by haul trucks in the mining industry. It is also used for freight-only roads in other contexts, for example in South Boston leadi ...

for the clay lorries delivering to the port of Fowey. They access this haul road on the Docks site. Par Docks at Low Tide

References

{{Cornwall Ports and harbours of Cornwall Imerys St Blazey