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PRESTONGRANGE Lo-Inch CORNISH ENGINE a MYTH

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PRESTONGRANGE Lo-Inch CORNISH ENGINE a MYTH PRESTONGRANGE lO-inch CORNISH ENGINE­ A MYTH EXPLODED h u Kenneth Brown a o VI If S c F a The preserved 70-inch Cornish pumping engine at Prestongrange Colliery near E Edinburgh, now the Prestongrange Mining Museum, has always been assumed from E the inscription on the cast-iron beam to have been built by Harvey & Co. of Hayle in r 1874. The author has uncovered evidence that the engine is a little older than Robinson's famous 80-inch engine at South Crofty and enjoyed a similar working life of 101 years at four sites; moreover only the beam is of Harvey manufacture. This article is submitted in the hope that it may encourage other members to dip into the morass of literature and crumbling remains in an attempt to unravel other 'Cornish engine mysteries' which still puzzle us. My list of surviving Cornish pumping engines published in the Society's newsletter No. 31 (November 1980) was challenged by a few members on the grounds that the history given for the Prestongrange 70-inch engine is wrong. I wrote individually to each explaining how I had arrived at my conclusions concerning the engine's age and parentage, and this aroused such fascinating correspondence that I realised that the story should be made available to members generally. The various research steps were taken very much as a 'learn as you go along' process, and it is hoped that they In themselves will be of some interest, quite apart from their final outcome. This research has proved beyond any doubtthatthe enginewas built by J.E. Mareof Plymouth Foundry in 1853 to the designs of the celebrated engineers Hocking and Loam. It was provided with the unusually long cylinder and shaft stroke of 12ft and erected on Porter's shaft, Wheal Exmouth and Adams silver-lead mine at Christow In South Devon along with two boilers, a third being added later. After a move to Wheal Neptune, Perranuthnoe, with two of the boilers in 1862 and another to Great Western Mines two miles away in 1869, the engine was purchased by Harvey & Co. in 1873 at a time of great depression in Cornish mining. They sold it early the following year to Prestongrange Colliery after providing a new beam to shorten the shaft stroke, new pitwork and 'lengthening' [sic] the piston rod. There it was erected by Matthew Loa~ of Liskeard whose father had erected a Perran Foundry 60 at a nearby pit some 3 years earlier. D.B. Barton in his excellent book The Cornish Beam Engine published in 1965 42 repeated the error caused by Harvey having put thei r name and the date 1874 on the beam. 1 My suspicion that the engine was not built by this firm because of the 'un­ Harvey' features goes back to 1952 when I was lucky enough to see her working. She was in very poor condition. The practice was to work her for two 3-hour periods each day, and she just about managed to make 2% strokes a minute, going flat out. There appeared to be no counterbalance and steam was taken throughout the whole stroke. Asteady 15 inches of vacuum was maintained not by an air pump but by a syphon pipe leading down the pit. As my visit was made after dark I had no chance to study the exhaust arrangements, which I now regret as the evidence has gone. The driver sat on a tall stool in front of the gearwork. He was able to shut the 'bottom handle' if the engine went short, but to close the steam horn without leaving his seat he used a long bar with a hook on the end. I vividly recall telling the late W.A. Michell about my visit and his laconic reply 'They never ought to be allowed to have an engine'! In the years which followed I must have spent many hours comparing photographs of engines, the small details on Prestongrange suggesting that the most likely builder was Perran Foundry. In fact, the detailing was the work of Hocking and Loam who left less to the engine builder than most designers of the time, and whose details were to some extent copied by Perran Foundry on engines of their own design. This became clear when I began examining the Society's collection of drawings held in the County Record Office at Truro. It seems that, also in 1853, H. & L. invited Harvey to tender for an exactly similar engine for Devon Burra Burra mine near Tavistock. 2 ln the event, a 50-inch engine by Gill & Rundle, Tavistock Iron Foundry and said to be the biggest ever made by the firm, went to Burra Burra instead.3 Traces of the house and the stack may yet be seen beside Brake Shaft (1981). Apart from the long stoke, the Prestongrange engine is notable in having separated top nozzles, the steam and equilibrium valves being on either side of the engine centreline, and no top nozzle governor. The gearwork is unusual in having the steam arbor at the bottom. The single plug rod is set well forward (to limit its travel, presumably) and the eduction pipe below the floor is offset to miss it. Barton states, probably correctly, that only a handful of these long-stroke 70s were built and lists four built in the early 1850s - none by Harvey.4 Of the Wheal Exmouth and Adams 70 he states: 'Built 1853, 12' e.b, by J.E. Mare & Co, Plymouth (engrs. Hocking & Loam) for Exmouth & Adams United (Christow), cost £2,552. Sold July 1862 to Old Wheal Neptune (Perranuthnoe) for £1,225 with two 1O-ton boilers. For sale May 1865 and re-erected September 1869 at Great Western Mines nearby, altered to 12ft x 10ft by G. Eustice & Son. For sale February 1873 .. .' At this point be becomes inaccurate, referring to a reworking of the mine renamed Wheal Florence and sale of the engine in July 1876 to a South Wales purchaser for £980. 4Actually this refers to a , different engine as we shall see. I have been through the relevant issues of Mining Journal at Redruth Library and can • confirm that the history of the 70 up to its operation at Great Western Mines is correct. In July 1862 tenders were invited5 'for taking down and erecting at Old Wheal Neptune, Marazion, Cornwall, a 70-inch engine and two boilers now at Exmouth Mine .. .' (This was a silver-lead mine on Viscount Exmouth's estate near Canonteign House in the Teign Valley. A third boiler there was unfit for further service.) Wheal Neptune is marked by a line of shafts running east-west about a quarter of a mile north of Perranuthnoe village. It was an old mine when a new company attempted to rework it in 1862, the "company paradoxically calling itself 'Old Wheal Neptune Mining Co. Ltd.'6 This has caused some confusion with East Wheal Neptune, another old copper mine slightly to the north-east which had the alternative name Old Wheal Neptune. However, since this property was also acquired by the 1862 company, the distinction had vanished by the time the Exmouth & Adams 70 was bought. 43 Top Left. Map showing the engine's four working sites. Top Right. The well-known interior view of Prestongrange 70 taken by George Watkins when the engine had ceased work. The 'bleed' from the perpendicular pipe was apparently led to an exhaust steam turbine. The peculiarities of the gearwork are typical of Hocking & Loam designs of around 1850. Bottom. The separate steam nozzle, the valve being worked from the bottom arbor. 44 Wheal Neptune had last stopped work in 1822 owing, it is said, to a legal dispute. A longitudinal section of that operation accompanying the 1862 prospectus shows a 52­ inch double acting engine? on New Engine shaft. The Exmouth &Adams70, however, was erected near the middle of the sett on Trevelyan's shaft, an enlarged horse-whim shaft.8 Maximum depth was said to be 103fm below adit (30fm). Lack of capital caused the company to be wound up in May 1864, the 70 being left boarded up and greased. The scene now shifts two miles to the east. In May 1869 we learn in a report from the newly-formed Great Western Mines:9 'Thomas' engine shaft has been enlarged, timbered, cased and divided from surface to deep adit ... At surface we have taken out the 70-inch engine from Old Wheal Neptune Mine and removed it with the two boilers to a convenient spot for refixing; also removed a large quantity of stone from there for building the new enginehouse ...' So the house went with the engine. From further reports in MJ that year by the agents at Great Western, captains Edward Thomas and Edmund Thomas, we learn that the engine went to work at Thomas' shaft in September, with efforts being directed at further deepening the shaft in very hard ground. This reworking, too, proved to be somewhat short-lived. The shaft, heavily overgrown, may still be seen. The link with Prestongrange was a fortuitous discovery made whilst scanning through the 1873 Harvey 'out' letter books lO in search of something else. In a letter dated 27 March to Matthew Loam at Liskeard, with whom Harveys were evidently on good terms, William Husband wrote: 'The 70 at Great Western Mine is for sale and should make a good engine ...' Next day he wrote again: 'The 70 at Great Western without boilers stands us in about £1,400. Will you join us in that and sell her in joint account? She is 12ft stroke.
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