Blowing House and Attached Walls at Approximately 10 Metres North East of Blowing House Cottage

Details

SW 63 SW BREAGE GODOLPHIN

4/64 Blowing house and attached walls at approx 10m north east of Blowing 14.9.84 House Cottage GV I

Blowing house (building where tin was smelted with a forced draught) and attached remains of another ruinous blowing house. C16 and C17 with some C19 alterations. The key buildings of the Godolphin family tin works. The earlier walls are of coursed granite rubble, the later of random rubble; granite lintels, that in the north gable end (to the furnace) finely dressed and above it an early C19 brick stack. Scantle slate roof with gable ends. Adjoining to the north, walls 1-2m high of another building, open to the east. The earlier and larger building to the north is rectangular on plan and roofless. Its north gable end contains an upright hearth and locker arrangement similar to Dartmoor blowing houses. This gable end was subsumed by the later and smaller blowing house built onto it to the north; this building is also rectangular. Its doorway is at the south end of the east wall which is possibly of late C18 or early C19 construction re-using several inscribed (bound?) stones. The back (ancient) wall aligns with the corresponding wall of the earlier blowing house and thus the leat (existing in part) only needed a short extension. However, it is the north gable end which is of exceptional interest. On the outside is a large granite lintel whose lower edge is shaped to a double undulation in order to receive the barrels of two bellows. The opening below is splayed and has a granite sill. The inner opening is very small and retains a piece of iron grill. Two bellows would have stood in a frame outside and immediately north of the building operated by a small water wheel via a cam shaft and counterweights. Within the building a temporary furnace (called the 'castle') was built and in this the black tin (powdered ore) was melted by charcoal fire raised to temperature by the alternating mechanical bellows. These structures are part of the Godolphin tin works, a site which includes remains of the stamps, leat system, buddles etc. Richard Carew records that Sir Francis Godolphin (1534 - 1608) innovated the processes of tin production, including blowing, with the assistance of a German mineral expert. Here two blowing houses survive, the earlier with a Dartmoor type hearth and, built onto it, a later blowing house with a more sophisticated hearth similar to those illustrated in 'De Re Metalica'. Whether or not the second is substantially Sir Francis's blowing house (as is likely) the two illustrate his profitable improvement. No other substantial remains of blowing houses are known to survive in Cornwall and none of the Dartmoor ones is so complete. This must be a building of the greater value to industrial archaeology. Sources: De Re Metalica by Georgius Agricola 1556; Survey of Cornwall by Richard Carew 1602; Natural History of Cornwall by William Borlase 1758; Transaction of the Devonshire Assoc. (Worth); S. E. and J. Schofield.

Listing NGR: SW6033632058

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

65762

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Carew, R, The Survey of Cornwall, (1602)
Agricola, G, De Re Metalica, (1556)
Borlase, W, Antiquities and Natural History of Cornwall, (1754)

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