1 All Profits for Polgooth Times

All profits for Polgooth Times www.polgoothtimes.co.uk 1 Polgooth Polgooth (Cornish: Pollgoedh, meaning "Goose Pond") is a former mining village, It lies mainly in the parish of St Mewan and partly in the parish of St Ewe. Antiquarians once claimed that the mines of Polgooth had supplied Phoenician traders with tin 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 To pump water from the workings an early 50-inch Newcomen steam engine was erected in 1727 by Joseph Hornblower, superseded in 1784 by a 58-inch Boulton & Watt steam engine and in 1823 (when John Taylor was manager) by an 80-inch William Sims engine.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 (who may have lived in Polgooth for a time) and Matthew Boulton, 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 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: 2 "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, and zinc. 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. The village of Polgooth grew up amongst the mines. In 1824, a travel guide noted that "The whole surface of the country in this 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, and the south Cornish coast. 3 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, founder of the Religious Society of Friends, 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 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, founder of Methodism, 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. Many of the older buildings in the village were built from elvan 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 4 VICTORIAN TIMES IN AND AROUND POLGOOTH AN ORIGIN IN MINING The village of Polgooth lies a mile south west of St Austell, touching the western border of the St Austell parish but lying mainly in the parish of St Mewan and into St Ewe parish to the west and south of the town. The first recorded evidence of the settlement of Polgooth dates from 1502 referring to it as Polgoyth, a name derived from ‘pol’ for ‘pool’ (or perhaps mine or pit) and ‘goth’ for ‘goose’. Early development of the village was associated with tin and copper mining since the time of Elizabeth 1. There is a tradition that the rise of the town of St Austell was due largely to the mining area of Polgooth. ‘St Austell was described as a poor village. It first rose to importance from its vicinity to Polgooth, one of the oldest tin mines in the county, and from the traffic arising from the numerous tin streams, both in the parish and in the locality.’ (Lake’s Parochial History of the County of Cornwall Vol 3 1870). When Celia Fiennes made her journey across Cornwall on side saddle in 1695 she wrote of ‘at least twenty mines all in sight which employ a great many people at work, almost night and day.’ These were later amalgamated into one large concern becoming known as the Great Polgooth Mine. For a long time this was the most important mine east of Truro and in 1741 was one of only five mines in Cornwall rich enough to have a Newcomen atmospheric pumping engine installed. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY At the dawn of the nineteenth century, the Great Polgooth Mine employed over a thousand people but by the time Victoria became queen this number had reduced to two hundred – 140 men, 10 women and 50 children. At the other end of the village a new mine had opened in 1836 – the South Polgooth Mine. Here there was copper, tin, arsenic, wolfram and zinc, but not much of any of these. In the mine’s early days over 130 persons worked there, but in 1839 this mine was abandoned, not to be worked again until 1880. A number of buildings in the village have survived from the early 5 nineteenth century in the form of miners’ cottages, the Polgooth Inn, the Count House and some of the streets and leats which were developed in connection with the Great Polgooth Mine. A quarry to the south of the village provided the fine, buff coloured stone used in the majority of these older buildings. From the beginning of the nineteenth century and until the early Victorian years, Polgooth developed from a mine with associated housing into a community with some services. PENTEWAN HARBOUR AND RAILWAY About two and a half miles south east of Polgooth lies the harbour of Pentewan. The emerging china clay industry had encouraged Sir Christopher Hawkins of Trewithen, near Probus, to rebuild the harbour there as an outlet for his own clay extracted from several clay pits north west of St Austell which he owned. The new harbour opened in 1824 with the final touches being made in 1826 and it remained in business for a hundred years. From here, china clay was shipped out with over half being dispatched from Hawkins’ pits and the remainder from other clay firms in the vicinity. Some coal was imported for the Polgooth Mine and other mines in the district such as the Great Hewas, Ventonwyn, St Austell Consols and Dowgas mines.. A stone pier extended for 500 feet from the harbour gates, built in an attempt to keep sand clear of the entrance. A hundred yards below the gates a granite stone, bearing the Hawkins’ arms is built into the pier bearing the inscription SIR C H BRT 1826. By the beginning of Victoria’s reign a mineral railway had been working for eight years, running the distance of four miles from West Hill, St Austell to the harbour at Pentewan. The line ran parallel to the St Austell River often named the White River owing to carrying clay deposits from the clay works. (The Cooperative stores now stand in the former yard of the St Austell terminus). Planned by Sir Christopher, he died before seeing his project completed and his estates and railway were inherited by his nephew, Christopher Henry Thomas Hawkins. Since young Christopher was a minor, his affairs were handled by his father at the outset. The railway was steep enough in its upper half for the wagons in use to run by gravity about half-way to Pentewan. The remainder of the journey, (from the Iron Bridge) and the return of the wagons to West Hill, was completed with the help of horses. At the outset there were six 6 wagons, each wagon having a capacity of 3 to 4 tons. AN INDUSTRIAL AREA Thus Victorian Polgooth was at the heart of an industrial area. The village lay amidst two tin and copper mines; a mineral railway serving that part of the china clay industry situated on the granite uplands of Hensbarrow to its north and west; with a small harbour to the south at Pentewan to permit the export of the products of this rapidly expanding industry.

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