A HISTORY OF CORNWALL 



in this hatch, and finding none in the next 

 ascending, we have overshot our load. The 

 remedie is easie, which is to sink nigher the 

 hatch wherein we last found shoad.' ' 



The first form assumed by the ancient mines 

 was that of pits open to the sky, the mineral at 

 this early stage cropping out at the surface, and 

 requiring only to be shovelled out like gravel, or 

 else hewn in blocks. 2 This method has been 

 followed where suitable almost continuously 

 ever since the date of its adoption, examples 

 being at hand in Carclase, near St. Austell, 3 and 

 the Gwennap pit at the present day. 4 



Another form of ' daylight mining ' is that 

 of following the course of lodes, by trenches 

 known as 'coffins.' A good instance of the 

 survival of this method is still to be found in the 

 Goonbarrow lode, a little to the north of Rock 

 Hill, near St. Austell. 6 



' Costeaning ' was still another mode of pro- 

 cedure adopted by the early miners, much as it 

 was used, centuries later, by the tinners of Banca, 

 in the East Indies. 6 A succession of small pits 

 was sunk, from 6 to 12 feet deep, and drifts 

 carried from one to the other across the direction 

 of the veins or tin layers. 7 



Probably subsequent to the introduction of 

 these methods came that of the ' shammel,' 8 

 which seems to have been a mode of transition 

 from open workings to' mining proper, and was 

 carried on both in the open pits and under- 

 ground, in stream works or in lodes. It is, 

 perhaps, best described by the anonymous writer 

 previously quoted. The lode found, 



' we sink down about a fathom, and then leave a 

 little long square place called a shamble, and so 

 continue sinking from cast to cast (i.e. as high 

 as a man can conveniently throw up the ore 

 with a shovel), till we find the lode grow too 

 small, or degenerate into some kind of weed. 

 . . . Then we begin to drive either west or 

 east as the goodness of the lode, or convenience 

 of the hill invite, which we term a shift, 3 foot 

 over and 7 foot high, so a man may stand 

 upright and work, but in case the loade be not 

 broad enough of itself, as some are scarce J foot, 



1 ' Mineral Observations on the Mines of Cornwall 

 and Devon,' Philosoph. Trans, vi, 2097-2100. 



3 This seems to have been the case in Derbyshire 

 (Farey, General View of the Agriculture and Minerals 

 of Derbyshire, \, 358. See also Galloway, Annals of 

 Coal Mining and the Coal Trade, 19, 191). 



3 Hunt, British Mining, 418. 



4 Worth, Historical Notes on the Origin and Progress 

 of Mining Skill, 10. 



4 Ibid. II. 



6 Le Neve Foster, Banca and its Tin Stream Works, 57. 



1 Worth, Historical Notes on the Origin and Progress 

 of Mining Skill, 7 ; Borlase, Natural History of Cornwall, 

 1 66 ; Pryce, Minerahgia Cornubiensis, 124, 1 66 ; 

 Polwhele, History of Cornwall, \, Supplement 63. 



8 This method was known to the lead miners of 

 Derbyshire (Farey, General View of the Agriculture and 

 Minerals of Derbyshire, i, 359 . 



then we usually break down the deads, first on 

 the north side of the loade . . . and then we 

 begin to rip up the loade itself." 9 



The shaft was thus divided into a series of step- 

 like stages, each so high that a man could con- 

 veniently heave stuff from one to the next above 

 with a shovel. 



All of these processes proving useless for th'e 

 discovery and raising of any tin beyond a certain 

 shallow depth, it became necessary to contrive 

 some other way to follow downward the tin- 

 stone. Thereupon they sunk shafts down upon 

 the lode, to cut it at some depth, and then to 

 drive and stope, east and west, along its course. 

 Thus, by a process of gradual transition, there 

 crept in the system of lode mining such as exists 

 to-day in Cornwall, to the exclusion of almost 

 every other method. 10 



Shaft mining of some sort is probably of great 

 antiquity in Cornwall, although Pryce did not 

 think it had been introduced earlier than the 

 year I45O. 10 But although we may, perhaps, 

 admit the existence in Cornwall in early times 

 of examples of mining in the modern sense, the 

 tin was probably for the most part still obtained 

 from alluvial deposits, and the shafts were no 

 deeper than was necessary to reach the layer of 

 stanniferous gravel. The transitional period, 

 during which the approaching exhaustion of the 

 stream works rendered necessary the tapping of 

 the lode itself, occurred probably in the sixteenth 

 and seventeenth centuries. 11 At about this period 

 we find unmistakable signs that mining was 

 being pursued at depths which taxed to their 

 utmost the rude machines for drainage. Stream 

 works were all of limited depth, 12 it being a ques- 

 tion merely of digging to the bed rock through the 

 substratum, a distance varying according to the 

 locality, but which could not well be greater 

 than 50 or 60 feet. Thirty-six feet is the depth 

 to which the miners had driven a tin stream 

 work exhumed about half a century ago, 13 and, 



9 ' Mineral Observations on the Mines of Cornwall 

 and Devon,' Philosoph. Trans, vi, 2102 ; Pryce, 

 Mineralogia Cornubiensis, p. 141. For examples of 

 old shammel works, see Polwhele, History of Cornwall, 

 bk. 2, p. 10, note ; bk. I, p. 175. 



10 Pryce, Mineralogia Cornubiensis, 141. Shaft mining 

 was surely employed somewhere in England as early 

 as 1366, for Bartholomaeus Anglicus, who wrote in 

 that year, has described it in terms which show that it 

 had already passed its infancy (Bartholomaeus Anglicus, 

 De Proprietatibus Rerum (ed. 1582), p. 212). 



11 Thomas Beare (Harl. MS. 6380) speaks only of 

 stream tinning in 1586; Carew, in 1602, refers to both 

 methods ; and Merrest and the anonymous writer 

 already cited refer only to lode mining (Philosoph. 

 Trans, vi, 2107 ; xii, 949). 



11 'The Antiquity of Mining in the West of Eng- 

 land,' by R. N. Worth, Journ. Plymouth Inst. v, 131- 

 134. 



18 ' Description of the Stream Work at Drift Moor, 

 near Penzance,' by Jos. Carne, Trans. Roy. Geol. Soc. 

 Cornw. iv, 4756. 



544 



