Portrait of Mary Tavy’s Wheal Friendship Mine: Part 2 – Louis Simonin, 1865

This blog is the second of two parts, using the journals of two ‘outsiders’ visits to Wheal Friendship to develop a portrait of this globally important mine, using their observations to glimpse the mine landscape and the people who worked it. Both accounts barely feature in research published about the mine, yet both have valuable insights and different perspectives to offer. They complement the dominant geological, engineering and financial histories of the mine, providing instead, social, cultural and landscape reportage.

I examined the first of these two Wheal Friendship ‘portraits’ in Part 1, this being the views of local walker and writer Rachel Evans, recounted in her book ‘Home Scenes’, published in 1846, concluding that Evans had more to say about the affective qualities of the mining landscape than its works and workers.

In this second journal, we look at an article published in a French magazine called ‘Le Tour du Monde’ in 1865, based on the account of Louis Simonin and colleagues who visited in 1862. Like Evans, Simonin’s article is not well-known. This is understandable. The article is in French, in a French journal, in an article titled as being about Cornish mines, and which, until relatively recently, would only have only been available in hard copy. Thanks to digital accessibility, it is now possible to discover and translate the remarkable account. What is particularly special about this French ‘portrait’ is that it includes a number of detailed images of the mine, providing an invaluable early visual impression of the mine.

Louis Simonin visit 1862

In July 1862 the French mining engineer, explorer and writer, Louis Simonin, departed from London by the still-infant railway to Plymouth. He was accompanied by the painter Mr D. B. [Monsieur Jean-Baptiste Henri Durand-Brager] and Mr L (Monsieur Auguste André Lançon). After some compliments about the scenery, and less complimentary words about the buffet, they arrived at Plymouth, “one of the most beautiful ports in England“. This was the start of their tour, later to be published in an article for the French travel journal ‘La Tour du Monde’ as ‘A Trip to the Mines of Cornwall’.

Before heading over the Tamar, the French trio first detoured to Tavistock, which they used as a base to explore Wheal Friendship. The geological journalist was keen to visit this Mary Tavy mine as, alongside Devon Great Consuls, he knew it to be ‘first in the country in terms of the extent and importance of the works‘.

Simonin obtained, in London, letters of introduction, to assist in getting access to the mines. This included one to Mr. J. Matthews, the general agent (i.e. mine manager) at Wheal Friendship. Mr Matthews, described as a gallant man, entertained the three foreigners for breakfast with his family at his home in Tavistock. They were introduced to his wife and daughters who enter the dining room in succession ‘in their morning clothes’, kissing their parents before they took their seats at the table and then saying grace.

Simonin is a little disappointed in the food which he says was ‘modest’ and ‘frugal’, being ‘usual in England for this early breakfast’. The men are given ‘inevitable’ tea, butter, milk, an egg cooked on a piece of ham, a ‘microscopic slice of bread stripped of crust and cut into squares’. Quickly over, they soon left for the mines, promising the young misses, they would return that evening to show them their albums, recording what they had observed and sketched of the mine.

Mr. Matthews was unable to accompany the Frenchmen to the works, but he gave them a letter for the captain of the mine, a man called Master Bennett. The Bennett surname is significant, for, as we have seen in Part 1, it is after Captain Bennett that the newest mine shaft and its valuable lodes were named.

I have managed to track down Captain Francis Bennett in the records. He was born in Gwennap in Cornwall in 1790m and married in Mary Tavy in his twenties. By 1841 he had risen to a ‘Mine Agent’, retaining, the role all the way through to the 1871 census, by which time he was 81 years old. When Simonin visited, Bennett was 72, yet Simonin describes him as a six-foot man, ‘colourful like almost all Englishmen, strong, proud, vigorous, a real athlete in short, who in boxing would have killed his man‘. What is quite apparent is that, to Simonin, Bennett’s physicality and presence are noteworthy, not his age.

Bennett received the visitors with ‘open arms‘, proud to show off his construction sites. Simonin respectfully tells us that Bennett had earned his rank in the tough profession: ‘first miner, then corporal, finally captain‘ with the last title equivalent in England to that of engineer or mining director, gained not via exams but through ‘practical work and intelligence’.

Once again Bennett’s pride is commented upon by Simonin as they are shown mine plans made by his son – ‘a good miner always makes good plans‘ he told them. The maps were clearly presented on immense sheets of vellum, on which the underground galleries were drawn in horizontal and vertical projections, narrated as looking like ‘the streets of a city with a thousand twists and turns‘.

Much to Bennett’s disappointment, Simonin and friends contented themselves with touring above ground only, because they were planning on going underground in the Cornish mines. However, Simonin, an expert in mining, notes that the above ground infrastructure is ‘most remarkable’ and deserving of the engineer’s ‘full attention’. As recorded in the mine’s AGM of 1864/65, this had been a period of investment and so there was no doubt a great deal to observe.

As well as described in words, the thriving extractive scene, Simonin’s artist companions provided five images of the mine landscape where ‘everything is life, everything is movement‘, as well as two portraits of mine workers. It is therefore very valuable to be able to consider these alongside the written descriptions.

We get then, Simonin describing:

‘Here and there stand the frames of the wells covered with poor quality planks which at the same time protect the opening of the gaping pit. From a distance, it looks like a type of Dutch mill.

Whilst it is important to acknowledge that the drawings will contain a certain amount of artistic license, there will nonetheless be much that is accurate. In this first image then, we can see, mirroring Simonin’s words, a ramshackle building atop an extraction shaft, which does indeed look like a Dutch windmill.

Other, even more a-kilter buildings are recorded (below), topping the ventilation shafts. Here, in the background we glimpse a wire cable pulley.

‘Wire cables rolling on pulleys, and set in motion by water wheels, extend long distances.’

Shown in both images so far introduced is a large straight-sided chimney, which may be that known as Brenton’s Stack. Here we also see elevated tracks, which appear to be aerial walkways, with people shown walking to and fro. Presumably these were built to assist the movement of people and barrows around the site, minimising transport over inclines and avoiding a chaotic surface of waste and mud.

Returning to the wire cables Simonin says:

‘They are linked to pumps which are used to exhaust internal waters. This is how we dry out the underground works. The driving wheels, which, by means of a crank, gave the cables their back and forth movement, transmitted by them to the pistons of the pump bodies, are the largest that can be seen.’

We get a sense of this in the image above in which a cat’s cradle of wires can be seen linking to cranks and beams. A second chimney makes an appearance here; this one squatter and tapering, with metal hoops to bolster its strength.

Although they did not record the underground scene below the pump house at Wheal Friendship, they did draw an equivalent view at Providence Mine in Cornwall. This gives some idea of the huge, cast, sectioned pipe that would have plunged to the very bottom of the mine to suck out its flooding fluid.

Then Monsieur Simonin turns his eye to the ore processing parts of the works.

‘here wagons roll on railways to the depots; carts and transport to sorting and breaking workshops; finally it is taken on wheelbarrows to the washing and mechanical preparation workshops.’

The artist, Durand-Brager once again obliges, to illustrate this scene. Here we observe the wagon railway, presumably emerging from one of the mines ‘inclined planes’, and the numerous workshops, all single story and made of timber.

It is at this point that we are introduced to the Bal Maidens, one of whom is poignantly depicted on the stoney earth in bare feet.

‘In the breaking workshops established in the open air, the work is carried out by young girls. We found them all equipped with the sacramental hood which covers their heads and protects their complexion, which they seem to value very much, because it is fresh and pink like that of all young English girls. Armed with a hammer, they break the ore’

Continuing in his functionally descriptive style we are offered an explanation of the stamping mill

‘… the ore is pulverized under vertical pestles, stamps, whose arrows are made of wood and the shoes are made of cast iron. Aligned like organ pipes and ten or twelve at a time, these pestles rise alternately and fall heavily with all their weight on the material to be crushed. It’s a dizzying noise.’

Following this crushing, the ore is sorted, with the French journalist paying attention to the regional names given for this mining kit.

‘The pulverized ore, its separation into parts of equal sizes is done in ad hoc screens, then its division into parts of equal density or the same weight in other devices that we cannot describe here, and which are called in Devonshire and Cornwall: jigging machines, sleeping tables, round buddle revolving tables, etc.’

Methodically following the mining process in his narrative, Simonin finishes by observing the separation, bagging and export of the ore from the site. He explains that the mechanical preparation is necessary to separate from the gangue the ‘more or less rich copper shot and sand, now good for fusion‘; the gangue being the worthless rock in which the valuable mineral veins were found.

Then:

‘These shot, these metallic sands are bagged with the rich ore already separated by hand, and all together take the road to the large copper factories of Wales”

Here we seem to learn that the ore was exported in various size grades – as ‘shot’ (assuming the French term has been appropriately translated) and as sands. Simonin correctly identifies that Wales is the destination of these minerals but their road journey by wagon is only as far as Tavistock ,where they are loaded onto canal barges and head to Morwellham. In this final general view of the landscape we see one of the wagons; a four wheeler, drawn by a team of four horses.

Remarks

As we might expect, Simonin, provides us with a different type of account to Evans (see Part 1). With his considerable experience in mining engineering, and as a journalist of this industry, touring the worlds mines, his description of Wheal Friendship puts focus on the infrastructure and processes of the works. Both writers are observant, it is just their attention is on different things. I felt aware, when reading Simonin’s magazine journal, of his entertainingly observed cultural eye for detail outside of the mine setting, which switched to an engineer’s response when on the site.

There are many accounts which, pieced together, provide a detailed picture of the 19th Century copper mining boom in Cornwall and Devon. A student of this industrial history would have a better idea than me, but I don’t think Simonin’s words tell us many new things than could already be known or supposed. Where I think the real value of this article lies are in its images.

These drawings, made by Durand-Brager, provide the earliest comprehensive depiction of the Wheal Friendship mining landscape. The only exception to these visuals is the close-quarters image of the entrance to an inclined plane (a diagonal, railed shaft that plumbed the depths), published in 1835 in the Saturday Magazine. Whilst we must acknowledge that in detail the images may be subject to some creative freedom, there is much in them that rings true.

For me, the biggest thing that stood out was the ubiquity of timber. People who know a lot about mining landscapes will appreciate the use of wood. However, because the timber structures have gone, and what is left is the archaeology of decaying walls and rusting ironwork, this means that our material perception of mines is dominated by that of masonry buildings and wrought machinery.

What with the numerous workshops, the houses over the extraction mine shafts and the aeration shafts, the overhead structures for the cabling, and the elevated walkways, the overall scene is one in which timber dominates over stone. This is reminiscent of makeshift gold-rush type panoramas, a reminder that new-world mining towns were very much manned by the skilled labour from the Cornish and Devonshire diaspora.

Apparent also are inequalities in the timber. The workshops look to be regularly constructed, and the wooden wheal house of an extraction shaft is neat. The aeration shafts, on the other hand, are haphazard and described as being made of poor-quality planks. Unlike the open frame designs of timber and later of metal, these shaft houses were completely boxed in and described as being like Dutch Windmills, akin to these examples shown below.

A last visual value provided, is again one we know intellectually, but perhaps not emotionally. Even though it is Evans who discloses her antipathy to the brutal landscape, the Wheal Friendship artworks, with a power the eye cannot deny, confess the ruination. Not a shrub, let alone a tree are evident. The whole terrain is clearly rock and mud and turmoil. No wonder it seemed necessary to construct aerial footways, as the site must have presented huge challenges, particularly in wet weather. Plants bind earth together and in their absence soil and spoil erode. The nature-free instability of the place presented in these drawings is sobering, particularly when one considers the men, women and children inhabiting it.

This brings us nicely back to the mining people. Evans did not mention any in her account. Simonin did a little better, but not much, noticing the fresh pink-faced bal maidens. He also gives us a rewarding vignette of Master Bennett. Other than this, the miners are invisible. To be fair to Simonin, in the full body of his work (e.g. in Undergriund Life, 1869), he is attentive to the workers; just not in what was recorded about Wheal Friendship.

‘… in every part of this country, at Saint Just, Saint Ives, Redruth, and Camborne, and at Tavistock, in Devonshire, the miner deserves the reputation which he has acquired of being one of the best miners in the world. Like his German brother he adheres to old opinions; he has his legends, and believes with no less sincerity than his Teutonic brethren in subterranean gnomes, the genii of the lodes, and eternal guardians of the mines’

Simonin, in Underground Life, 1869, p460

Conclusions

This blog, in two parts, has examined under-reported accounts of Wheal Friendship by two ‘outsider’ authors – local walker-writer Rachel Evans (c. 1843, published in 1846) and French mining journalist Louis Simonin (1862, published in 1865). Evans’s writing focuses on the awe-inspiring yet ultimately antipathetic affective qualities of the mine. Simonin focuses more on mining structures and process. What is of the greatest value in his piece, contained in the journal La Tour du Monde, are the many detailed drawings of the mine and some of its workers, made by his companion, artist Durand-Brager. Neither narrative does a good job recognising the workers of the mine but where they do excel is in providing a more experiential and emotional sense of the Wheal Friendship landscape.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Andrew Thompson with whom I shared discussions of the Simonin article including the dominance of timber in the mining landscape. It was Andrew who noticed the bare-footed bal maiden.

References

Brown, M. 1995. The Rise and Demise of a Dartmoor Mine – The Wheal Friendship Minute Books & Ledgers 1816-1875. Transcripts & Guides for Dartmoor Researchers, Volume 9. Dartmoor Press.

Evans, R. 1846. Home Scenes or Tavistock and its Vicinity. Simpkins and Marshall, London and J.L. Commins, Tavistock.

Simonin, L. 1865. A Trip to the Cornish Mines. La Tour du Monde, first semester, pp 353-400.

Simonin, L. 1869. Undergound Life; or Mines and Miners. Translated, Adapeted to the Present State of British Mining and Edited by H.W. Bristow, F.R.S. Chapman and Hall, London.