A HISTORY OF CORNWALL 



lowered them ; later came the horse-whim, 1 and 

 perhaps the water-wheel as well, just as we have 

 seen to have been the case with drainage. 



In some tin mines also similar devices served 

 for the descent and ascent of the workmen. No 

 difficulty would be likely to arise with regard to 

 this matter as long as the works were shallow 

 stream-tin affairs. In shammel workings, too, 

 the shammels or terraces themselves furnished a 

 means for men to go up and down. Lode 

 works, however, required the adoption of special 

 facilities. In Carew's day the workmen were let 

 up and down in a stirrup operated by two men 

 who turned a windlass at the top, 2 for a long time 

 the only system in use besides ladders, but 

 employable only in perpendicular shafts. Lad- 

 ders in the small single-shaft concerns of early 

 times would have taken up too much space, 3 

 but when levels and winzes became developed, 

 they grew to be indispensable, and in time all 

 but universal. 4 Among the chief advantages 

 which their use entailed was the economizing 

 of lifting power and the avoidance of the me- 

 chanical difficulties of stopping cages or buckets 

 at the entrance of different levels ; but it must 

 be added that the use of ladders as the shafts 

 deepened brought with it a terrible increase in 

 the miners' toil, although it was not until the 

 eighteenth century that this drawback became 

 very apparent. 



The ventilation of tin works was probably not 

 a pressing question until the sixteenth or seven- 

 teenth century, when galleries began to be driven 

 far and shafts extended in depth.' The old lode 

 workers were much troubled by foul air, and 

 went as far only from the shaft as the air would 

 yield them breath. When it failed they sank 

 another shaft, and as time went on this practice 

 led to the establishment at regular intervals of 

 air-shafts in the mines, leading up to the sur- 

 face. With a few trifling exceptions, such as, 

 perhaps, the use of large ventilating bellows at 

 St. Agnes in 1696, after the manner in which 

 Bushell had purified his Cardigan mines some fifty 

 years before, 7 these few words sum up the subject 

 of mine ventilation in the stannaries until a com- 

 paratively modern date. 8 



The primitive nature of early Cornish mining 



1 Cf. Galloway, Annals of Coal Mining and the Coal 

 Trade, 74, 168. Pettus, Fleta Minor, 307. 



1 Carew, Sarr. ofCornw. (ed. 1811), 36. 



3 Cf. Galloway, Annals of Coal Mining and the Coal 

 Trade, 185. Phihsoph. Trans, iii, 770. 



* Worth, Historical Notes on the Progress of Mining 

 Skill, 26. 



5 Carew (Surf, of Cornw. ed. 1 8 1 1 , 37) speaks 

 of ' unsavourie damps which here and there distemper 

 their heads.' 



6 Worth, Historical 'Notes on the Progress of Mining 

 Skill, 33. 



7 Bushell, Tracts on Mines, ' The Case of Thomas 

 Bushell truly Stated.' 



8 Cf. Childrey, Britannia, 8. 



is shown by a list of the tools of the ancient 

 'streamer,' 9 which consisted simply of a pick and 

 shovel, with perhaps a bowl for bailing. 10 A 

 working tinner of the Middle Ages was one of 

 the poorest of men, and his poverty was so well 

 recognized that it became proverbial, and was 

 handed down in such local sayings as ' A tinner 

 has nothing to lose,' ' A tinner is never broke 

 until his neck's broke.' Discoveries in old stream 

 works n show that as late as the sixteenth century 

 wooden implements were not uncommon, al- 

 though in Carew's time the pick was usually of 

 iron and the shovel iron-shod. 12 



In the lode works, before the invention of 

 blasting, the sole additional tools were gads and 

 wedges to split the rocks, the miner's pick being 

 flat at one end to serve as a hammer. A few 

 stone hammers have been found in Cornwall. 

 In most other mining districts they abound, but 

 in tin streaming they were not needed, and in 

 lode-mining the poll-pick answered all purposes 

 until the utilization of gunpowder for blasting, 

 when hammers were required to beat the drills. 

 Until then rock-splitting was done by wedges. 

 Into holes bored in the same way as at present, 

 except that the bit ended in a quadrangular point 

 instead of in a single edge, were put two semi- 

 cylindrical rods of iron or steel, called ' feathers,' 

 of the same length as the hole itself. A steel 

 wedge was then driven between them, and the 

 rock broken off piecemeal. Sometimes also 

 wooden wedges were driven into clefts, and then 

 soaked with water to cause the wood to swell. 

 When the ground was more than usually hard 

 the miners wore away the face of the rock in the 

 same manner as that in which masons cut stone 

 for building. 13 



From the work of actual excavation let us turn 

 to the treatment which the ore received upon 

 the surface. The process spoken of as smelting 

 comprises two distinct operations the prepara- 

 tion of the ore, and its conversion into white tin. 



* For those used in a mediaeval Devonshire silver 

 mine, see 'An Indenture and Ordinance respecting 

 the Working of Silver Mines in Devon and Cornwall,' 

 by E. Smirke, Arch. Journ. xxvii, 314-322. Cf. also 

 Galloway, Annals of Coal Mining and the CoalTrade, 53. 



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

 land,' by R. N. Worth, Journ. Plymouth Inst. v, 127. 



11 Harl. MS. 6380, fol. I. Carew, Surv. of 

 Cornw. 8. 



11 These shovels were rude but elaborate. The 

 handle was stuck slantingwise into a hole in the face, 

 or, in the case of another specimen, in the Truro 

 Museum, the entire shovel was of one piece, and 

 shaped like a huge wooden spoon (' The Antiquity 

 of Mining in the West of England,' by R. N. Worth, 

 Journ. Plymouth Inst. v, 121). 



13 'The State of the Tin Mines at Different Periods,' 

 by John Hawkins, Trans. Roy. Geol. Sac. Cornw. iv, 85. 

 Fire was used in the Mendip mines to break the 

 rocks (Philosoph. Trans, iii, 769), and also, at an early 

 period, in Derbyshire (Houghton, The Compleat Miner, 

 20, art. xl). 



546 



