Mines, Moors & Minerals…. Discover so much more about the industrial archaeology of the District with a range of new and exciting FREE podcasts, narrated by knowledgeable local experts. Learn more about each area and get out and explore!

Each of the five podcasts can be streamed at www.visitliskeard.co.uk/discover/mining-heritage/ or scan the code to listen to on your favourite device.

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Liskeard & District Museum Liskeard Information Centre Foresters Hall · Pike Street Foresters Hall · Pike Street Liskeard · PL14 3JE Liskeard ·PL14 3JE www.museumsincornwall.org.uk www.visitliskeard.co.uk 01579 346087 01579 349148 [email protected] [email protected] Official Interpretation Centre for the For details of public transport options Mining District, part of the please ask at the information centre, & West Devon Mining or visit www.travelinesw.com Landscape World Heritage Site www.cornishmining.org.uk

www.naturalengland.org.uk Both leaflet and podcasts are designed to be /countrysidecode used in conjunction with OS Explorer maps 107 & 109.

Always follow the Countryside Code www.liskeard.gov.uk

Written by: Liskeard Information Centre and Liskeard & District Museum. Translation by: Anja Jones Translation Design: Aawen Design Studio, Print: Cornwall Design and Print 2017 www.caradonhill.org.uk Funded by eastcornwall local action group The industrial archaeology of the Liskeard District Introduction Cornish Mining Vocabulary The Caradon mining area is a magnet for industrial heritage enthusiasts. Adit Dip Sett The remains of engine houses on the south eastern edge of Moor horizontal tunnel used for a candle fixed to miners’ the boundary of a mine tell of 19th century mines producing copper, tin and other minerals. They draining water from a helmets with lumps of clay leased to adventurers mine, or to look for ore circle the dramatic Cheesewring quarry which eats into the dark grey Dry House Shaft granite of Stowes Hill. Adventurer miners changing room the vertical tunnel investor/ shareholder in From here the trail of the Liskeard & The base of the mountains melted under Dressing Floors Stope Caradon Railway can be followed for the immense pressures and temperatures a Cornish mine land and buildings at space left when ore much of its route to Moorswater from to form magma which rose into the core Assay House the surface where ore bearing rock is dug out where first a canal and later a railway of the mountains and solidified into granite. building where ore samples was processed from the lode carried the copper ore and stone to The granite slowly cooled and fractured. were tested (assayed) for for transportation by sea. Strong mining Hot water, rich in various elements, their metal content Kibble Skip communities developed in the villages of circulated through these cracks depositing An egg shaped iron bucket a wheeled container for Herodsfoot and Menheniot where lead minerals containing tin, tungsten, copper, Bal for lifting ore up a shaft ore which ran on rails and silver were mined and explosives silver and lead. Cornish term for a mine were made. Lode Tributers Millions of years of erosion lowered the Bal Maidens Cornish word for a vein paid by weight for the ore Geology mountains and shaped the moorland we women who worked on of minerals running they extracted, crushed see today. Where the killas was worn away The oldest rocks in the area were the dressing floors downwards through and cleaned tors and outcrops of harder granite such as the bedrock formed around 400 million years ago the Cheesewring have been left exposed. Beam Engine Tut Workers when sea levels were much higher and a versatile steam engine Mineral Lord paid by the measure in muds were deposited on an ancient sea During the last ice age the area became used for pumping, winding The owner of the land to fathoms for digging out bed. During a tectonic collision around an icy tundra, the rock and minerals were and stamping be mined shafts, levels and stopes 300 million years ago these deposits were shattered and broken down filling the compressed to form slates (locally called valleys. When the climate warmed, the Coinage Mine Captain Tull killas) and uplifted to form a huge returning rivers washed away less dense tax paid on refined tin person in charge of the felt hat dipped in resin to mountain chain. rock leaving behind deposits of heavy (abolished in 1838) mine, sometimes mines harden it minerals such as the tin-bearing cassiterite. had a surface and an Counthouse underground captain Wheal the mines office, pay office a mine Pitch Crib the cubic area of rock Whim mine workers food worked by tributers in winding machine used for (often pasties) each contract hauling things up shafts, often powered by horses Consols Stannary Law a group of mines mediaeval law governing Winze ‘consolidated’ under tin mining in Cornwall and shaft mined downwards joint management W Devon from a tunnel not from the surface Minions Moorswater Herodsfoot Podcast Narrators The village of Minions was formed by Moorswater village formed at the junction By 1910 mine traffic had fallen off and created settlements. Here veins of galena Herodsfoot lies in a steep sided valley being pacifists, they only sold their product By the 1860s, an influx of miners doubled Be captivated with stories uncovering immigration to the area following the of the Liskeard & Caradon Railway and the a new railway linked Liskeard to Coombe were mined for lead and silver .The distant carved out by a river and undisturbed by for industrial use. Herodsfoot explosives were the population to 2,500 and the rural spot the industrial heritage of Liskeard in discovery of copper ore in . A Liskeard & Looe Canal. The flat valley floor Junction. Moorswater lost its function as the cut through the granite spine the last Ice Age. The killas rock here holds transported around Britain until production had become an industrial village. The first our fascinating series of audio podcasts. few moorland farmhouses were joined by was ideal for a goods yard and the reliable transfer point for passengers and freight. to provide a border between Devon and lodes of galena, an ore containing lead stopped in 1965. two mines were worked down to 1400 feet Minions – from the Bronze Age to the rows of miners’ cottages and a Methodist water supply helped other industries develop The declining village gave way to the A38 Cornwall. On a clear day you can see the and silver. From at least the C17th these below the surface. Eventually more than For a century Herodsfoot was alive with early twentieth Century, geologist Calum chapel. New roads and railways linked the including a concrete works and wool factory. road widening in the 1960s. Only a weekly granite tors of Dartmoor where Devon’s were mined by digging sideways into the twelve lead and silver mines were worked in industry and a church was built, but when Beeson explores copper and tin mining. He settlement to Liskeard and the coast. In As freight increased the canal was replaced cement train still departs from Moorswater. hard rock mines are found. hillsides, a practice known as adit mining. the Parish. production ceased the hamlet returned to digs deep into the industry on the moors. 1900 the village was called Cheesewring with a railway . At its height the village was Dominating Moorswater is the mainline Heading east from the car park, the railway’s By the C19th the mines had gone its agricultural identity. Peak production years for lead and silver were Railway and sometime in the C20th it well populated and had a Methodist Chapel. Liskeard & Caradon railway viaduct. In 1881 Brunel’s weaker granite sleepers can be followed on foot underground: first water then steam between 1857 and 1872 but by 1875 the acquired the name Minions. Railway – railway expert Copper ore was taken from Looe to Barry in wooden-topped structure was replaced with around the contour to Minions. The power were used to work the pumps and Menheniot mines were closing. Rising costs, low mineral Alec Kendall highlights the The village has an open aspect with South Wales, the barges returning with coal stronger piers and a cast iron parapet. The remains of discarded mines can be lifts. For about 20 years the mines were prices and falling production made them significance of the Liskeard animals grazing freely in the centre. This to heat buildings, power steam engines original piers can be seen next to the viaduct. seen along the way. Heading north highly productive, but by the end of the Farming was the main industry of the ancient unprofitable. However, rock was recovered and Caradon Railway, which is because it is on common land. From and make town gas. Horse-drawn wagons west the contoured track leads through century they had run down. parish of Menheniot until, in 1843, a road from the workings during World War I. serviced the mines on the moors. He reveals Minions you will see mine engine houses carried coal and passengers up the New the many ruined buildings of South digger near the church exposed a shallow some of the shenanigans and politics in a Tokenbury Corner The characteristics of the valley made it A silver salver made from Menheniot silver in every direction reflecting the mineral Road to Liskeard. An old kiln beside the Caradon mine to Gonamena lode of lead ore. The landowner, Charles fascinating story. suitable for the production of explosives. and presented to Peter Clymo in 1859 is on wealth of the granite underlying Bodmin level crossing is a reminder that lime was From this open land on the side of Caradon where another branch of Trelawney, granted mining rights to James Menheniot – archaeologist The forest provided a supply of charcoal, display at Liskeard and District Museum. Moor. The fascinating granite Cheesewring an essential import both for the building Hill you get an idea of the wider landscape the railway came up and Peter Clymo, who had discovered Colin Buck uncovers some an ingredient of traditional explosive. The was formed by millions of years of erosion. industry and agriculture, Roasted lime was which gave birth to the District’s industrial to collect the ore. copper in Caradon Hill. Wheal Trelawney of the practices of the wooded steep valley absorbed the impact You can walk along the old railway to the spread on fields to reduce soil acidity and history. To the north the granite hill rises was joined in 1845 by Wheal Mary Ann silver-lead mining around of explosions – a regular occurrence - with Steam engines introduced to mining quarry and see the grey stone which was toxin levels in crops. beyond 1000ft above sea level making a named after the landowner, Miss Mary Ann the village. little damage to other property. 1826 - Explosives works opened used to build much of C19th London convenient site for 20th Century Pollard, a farmer. at Herodsfoot Moorswater – historian including the piers of Tower Bridge. communication masts. The original owners of the East Cornwall Iain Rowe explores the Gunpowder Company were quakers and, 1828 - Liskeard & Looe Union Canal To the south and east the killas bedrock industrial heritage on the 1836 - Copper discovered at South Caradon edge of the town, from has been eroded to wide valleys granite and minerals to where the fault lines have 1844 - Liskeard & Caradon Railway opened china clay. Along the way he uncovers some Famous architects working in Liskeard relics of Brunel’s Great Western Railway. including George Gilbert Scott, John Foulston and Henry Rice Herodsfoot – Blue Badge guide Mark Camp leads 1880s - Caradon copper becomes uneco- you on a walk from the nomic, mass emigration to New World Anglo Saxons settle in Liskeard Liskeard becomes a coinage town in the village of Herodsfoot, and copper mines begins and build an early church 14th Century. Underground mining for tin around the forest of Deer- Tin Streaming on - Cornish tin exported to Ireland to make bronze, Burial at Rillaton Barrow Cornish tribes settled in the area led by chiefs such as Doniert. on Bodmin Moor Early 1900s - Mines and railways close park Woods, once the site of an explosives works. There he meets Paul Day, one-time worker there, who explores some of the goings on at the explosives (very little known) BRONZE AGE MIDDLE AGES factory in the 1960s. BC EARLY MID LATE EARLY - ANGLO SAXON HIGH LATE AD 2000 1500 1000 700 500 0 500 1000 1500 1760 - 1840 2000 Industrial Period Timeline Tokenbury Corner Minions Facilities: off main road  old railway path to Minions 9 Bus No 74 or 236 to Tokenbury Corner Wheal Tor Hotel; Crows Nest Inn; Victoria (Pensilva)  Millennium House (Pensilva) Millennium House (Pensilva)  General Store (Pensilva) Facilities:

 footpath from Cheeswring Hotel 2 off main road Crows Nest; old railway from  Hurlers Halt tea  Post Office Tokenbury Corner rooms; Minions General Store 0 0.25 0.5 9 Bus No 74 to shop & tea rooms Kilometers 0 0.25 0.5 not guaranteed @Crown copyright and database rights 2013 Ordnance Survey 100049047. Kilometers Crows Nest & walk @Crown copyright and database rights 2013 Ordnance Survey 100049047. via Gonamena

Did You Know? Common Land is actually privately owned but cannot 0 0.25 0.5 be fenced. People holding Kilometers @Crown copyright and database rights grazing rights may let their Moorswater 2013 Ordnance Survey 100049047. beasts loose on the common. Facilities:

Did You Know? on road The word coinage does not  pavement from Liskeard refer to money. A corner (coin in French) would be taken from the ingots of tin to check the quality and calculate the tax.

Menheniot Facilities: 9 Map Key: Herodsfoot bus from Liskeard no.283 White Hart Hotel Main road Minor road on road in village

Railway line not guaranteed Kilometers 0.5 Railway Station Did You Know?  Post Office / General Store Urban area Herodsfoot is one of only 14 Forests / woodland

0.25 Doubly Thankful villages in  Walking Route the UK – this means that all 9 Public Transport the men who left the village @Crown copyright and database rights and database copyright @Crown 100049047. Survey 2013 Ordnance 0 Public House to fight in both the First and Facilities:  Café Second World Wars came home alive. Parking  valley walk from on road in village,  Forest Retreat, West Looe off road in Deer Park Cabins 0 0.25 0.5 Toilets Kilometers Deerpark Wood Forest Retreat, @Crown copyright and database rights  General Store 2013 Ordnance Survey 100049047. Deer Park Cabins

0 0.25 0.5 1 21.5 Kilometers @Crown copyright and database rights 2013 Ordnance Survey 100049047.

Audio Podcasts: 1: Minions 2: Liskeard & 3: Menheniot 4: Moorswater 5: Herodsfoot Each of the five podcasts can be Caradon Railway streamed at www.visitliskeard.co.uk/ Be captivated with stories uncovering the industrial heritage of discover/mining-heritage Liskeard in our fascinating series of audio podcasts. or scan the code to listen on your Narrated by: Calum Beeson Narrated by: Alec Kendall Narrated by: Colin Buck Narrated by: Iain Rowe Narrated by: Mark Camp & Paul Day favourite device