Polgooth
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Polgooth () is a former mining village in south
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. It lies mainly in the parish of St Mewan and partly in the parish of St Ewe. The nearest town is
St Austell Saint Austell (, ; ) is a town in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom, south of Bodmin and west of the border with Devon. At the 2021 Census in the United Kingdom, census it had a population of 20,900. History St Austell was a village centred ...
two miles (3.5 km) to the north-east.


"The greatest tin mine in the world"

Antiquarians once claimed that the mines of Polgooth had supplied
Phoenicia Phoenicians were an Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples, ancient Semitic group of people who lived in the Phoenician city-states along a coastal strip in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily modern Lebanon and the Syria, Syrian ...
n traders with
tin Tin is a chemical element; it has symbol Sn () and atomic number 50. A silvery-colored metal, tin is soft enough to be cut with little force, and a bar of tin can be bent by hand with little effort. When bent, a bar of tin makes a sound, the ...
3000 years ago, but in fact the earliest historical record is a list compiled in 1593, in which several well-established Polgooth workings were named. At that time and subsequently, the mines were owned by the Edgcumbe family. By the eighteenth century, Polgooth was celebrated as the "greatest tin mine in the world" and the richest mine in the United Kingdom. To pump water from the workings an early 50-inch
Newcomen steam engine The atmospheric engine was invented by Thomas Newcomen in 1712, and is sometimes referred to as the Newcomen fire engine (see below) or Newcomen engine. The engine was operated by condensing steam being drawn into the cylinder, thereby creating ...
was erected in 1727 by Joseph Hornblower, superseded in 1784 by a 58-inch Boulton & Watt steam engine and in 1823 (when John Taylor was manager) by an 80-inch
William Sims William Sowden Sims (October 15, 1858 – September 28, 1936) was an admiral in the United States Navy who fought during the late 19th and early 20th centuries to modernize the navy. During World War I, he commanded all United States naval force ...
engine. In 1822, Polgooth was the birthplace of geologist John Arthur Phillips. In the late eighteenth century shareholders or 'adventurers' in the mines included the engineers
James Watt James Watt (; 30 January 1736 (19 January 1736 OS) – 25 August 1819) was a Scottish inventor, mechanical engineer, and chemist who improved on Thomas Newcomen's 1712 Newcomen steam engine with his Watt steam engine in 1776, which was f ...
(who may have lived in Polgooth for a time) and
Matthew Boulton Matthew Boulton ( ; 3 September 172817 August 1809) was an English businessman, inventor, mechanical engineer, and silversmith. He was a business partner of the Scottish engineer James Watt. In the final quarter of the 18th century, the par ...
, the industrialist John Wilkinson, local entrepreneur Charles Rashleigh (who built the port of Charlestown, from which much of the tin was shipped), landowner Lord Henry Arundell, and the potters
Josiah Josiah () or Yoshiyahu was the 16th king of Judah (–609 BCE). According to the Hebrew Bible, he instituted major religious reforms by removing official worship of gods other than Yahweh. Until the 1990s, the biblical description of Josiah’s ...
and John Wedgwood. By 1800, over 1000 people were employed at Polgooth though, judging by a contemporary visitor, not in the most cheerful of conditions: "The shafts...are scattered over a considerable extent of sterile ground, whose dreary appearance, and the sallow countenances of the miners, concur to excite ideas of gloom, apprehension, and melancholy." In the nineteenth century, disputes and periodic slumps in tin prices led to several cycles of closures and reopenings. In 1836, a new mine known as South Polgooth opened to the west of the village, producing not only tin, but copper, wolfram,
arsenic Arsenic is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol As and atomic number 33. It is a metalloid and one of the pnictogens, and therefore shares many properties with its group 15 neighbors phosphorus and antimony. Arsenic is not ...
, and
zinc Zinc is a chemical element; it has symbol Zn and atomic number 30. It is a slightly brittle metal at room temperature and has a shiny-greyish appearance when oxidation is removed. It is the first element in group 12 (IIB) of the periodic tabl ...
. However, falling prices meant that by 1894 mining at Polgooth came to an end, though some little work continued at South Polgooth till 1916 and the spoil heaps were picked over till 1929.


"Enlivened by humble cottages"

The village of Polgooth grew up amongst the mines. In 1824, a travel guide noted that "The whole surface of the country in
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vicinity, has been completely disfigured, and presents a very gloomy aspect...The immense piles of earth, which have been excavated and thrown up, have quite a mountainous appearance: roads have been formed in several directions leading to the places or shafts, where the miners are at work; and the dreariness of the scene is only enlivened by the humble cottages, which have been erected for their residence." Many of these cottages were originally grouped in small settlements in and around the mines. These only coalesced into a single village in the nineteenth century, when most of the mine workings had moved onto the surrounding hillsides. Following the end of mining, Polgooth's population dropped sharply and the village became a mainly agricultural, rural settlement. More recently, from the 1960s onwards, large numbers of bungalows and suburban houses have been built, thanks to the proximity of St Austell,
Truro Truro (; ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and civil parish in Cornwall, England; it is the southernmost city in the United Kingdom, just under west-south-west of Charing Cross in London. It is Cornwall's county town, s ...
, and the south Cornish coast.


Religious radicals

Tregongeeves Farm on the northern edge of the village was home to Loveday Hambly, (1604–1682), who was later dubbed "the Quaker saint of Cornwall".
George Fox George Fox (July 1624 Old Style and New Style dates, O.S. – 13 January 1691 Old Style and New Style dates, O.S.) was an English Dissenters, English Dissenter, who was a founder of the Quakers, Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as t ...
, founder of the
Religious Society of Friends Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after in the Bible, and originally, others referred to them as Quakers ...
, stayed at the farm in 1656, 1663, and 1668 when meetings of Cornish Quakers (much persecuted at the time) were held there. The Quaker Burial Ground nearby was donated for that purpose in 1706 by
Richard Edgcumbe, 1st Baron Edgcumbe Richard Edgcumbe, 1st Baron Edgcumbe, (23 April 168022 November 1758) of Mount Edgcumbe in Cornwall, was an English Whig politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons from 1701 until 1742 when he was raised to the peerage ...
to the Quaker Thomas Lower (brother of the physician Richard Lower), though much of the ground was destroyed by road-widening in the 1960s. Tregongeeves farmhouse was rebuilt in the nineteenth century and the farm buildings have now been converted to 'holiday cottages'.
John Wesley John Wesley ( ; 2 March 1791) was an English cleric, Christian theology, theologian, and Evangelism, evangelist who was a principal leader of a Christian revival, revival movement within the Church of England known as Methodism. The societies ...
, founder of
Methodism Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a Protestant Christianity, Christian Christian tradition, tradition whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's brother ...
, preached at Polgooth in 1755. A Wesleyan Meeting House was subsequently built in the village and later enlarged as a Methodist chapel. The latter has now been demolished, but a former Sunday School has been converted in its stead.


The village today

Many of the older buildings in the village were built from
elvan Elvan is a name used in Cornwall and Devon for the native varieties of quartz-porphyry. They are dispersed irregularly in the Devonian series of rocks and some of them make very fine building stones (e.g. Pentewan stone, Polyphant stone and Cat ...
stone, quarried locally until the 1920s. The Polgooth Inn dates back to the sixteenth century and is still extant, though the present building is mainly nineteenth century. The old count house survives, as does one of the old engine houses and a stamping mill (all now converted to private residences) plus several mining cottages. In 2000 the prime minister
Tony Blair Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party (UK), Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He was Leader ...
visited Polgooth Post Office for a photo opportunity, to the bemusement of several residents.


Notes


Related

Trewoon – village in St Mewan Parish, St Austell


External links

{{authority control Villages in Cornwall