240 TRANSACTIONS OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
mould for tin, cut in a large block of granite, caused him to make 
enquiries which resulted in the establishment of this place as the 
site of an old smelting-house. Jonas Coaker, the Dartmoor poet, 
now in his 89th year, recollects that when very young this spot 
was by tradition regarded as the remains of a blowing-house ; and 
George French, of Post Bridge, has also heard the same. The 
latter says it was regarded in his younger days as a former central 
smelting-place for the neighbourhood, and that the tinners all over 
this part of the Moor used to bring their black tin here to be 
blown. 
The Eev. John Shattock, who resides close by, discovered 
another mould a few yards south of the first. It is close under 
the wall of a small ruined outhouse. The moulds are almost 
of exactly the same dimensions, being at the top two feet long, 
fourteen inches wide, and nine inches deep. They are bevelled, 
so that the bottom length is sixteen inches, with a width of eight 
to nine inches. They are therefore intended to turn out ingots 
of about the same weight. These moulds are symmetrical, and 
well and carefully wrought in large solid blocks of granite, sunk 
into the earth so that the top of the mould is nearly flush with 
the surface of the ground. They are the largest and best-made 
moulds of any of the numerous examples previously described. 
The ingots made from such moulds would correspond in shape 
and weight with the tin imported into Italy from Devon and 
Cornwall during the fourteenth century, and also with the blocks 
described by Carew in the seventeenth century. As we are told by 
Chappie, in his Revieio of Risdon, 1770, that Devonshire mining 
had then sunk into insignificance, and as this was a traditional 
smelting-place a century since, it is probable that we must go 
back to the seventeenth century, at least, for the time when 
this site was occupied by a working blowing -house. From 
Furnum Regis to this there is a blank of many centuries. Thus 
far no intermediate remains, between these periods, have been 
found in this locality. It is mostly by comparison that any idea 
at present can be formed of the age of the blowing-houses already 
described. We know that in the sixteenth century streaming 
was very active on Dartmoor, and it is highly probable that some 
of them date from about this period. 
At Week Ford, the oak trees growing in the lower ruin prove 
that this place has been in a ruinous condition for a lengthened 
