Details
SW 64 SE CARN BREA STATION ROAD
(West side, off)
501/5/10011
Compressor House, Chimney,
Whim Engine House and
Electricity sub-station at
Robinson's Shaft, South
Crofty Mine
GV II*
Whim engine house (1908), and compressor house, chimney and electricity sub-station (1909). Killas rubble with granite and brick dressings, and corrugated sheet roofs.
PLAN: Pumping shaft has single-depth engine house (qv) and boiler house(qv) to the E, whim engine house, compressor house, chimney and electricity sub-station to the N, and long carpenters' shop and workshops (qv) closing a yard to the W.
EXTERIOR: Whim engine house has four raised windows to E side with timber lintels, including blocked one above inserted garage door to the left, S gable rebuilt in concrete block, N gable in two parts, that to the right narrower, with a single window, W wall windowless with an entrance to the left facing ruins of former boiler house.
Compressor house has granite quoins and brick upper section to side walls, round-arched sash to E side and S gable, gable with oculi to top; W side has round-arched doorway and flanking windows, without joinery. Matching construction to sub-station, which has round-arched openings to N and W sides. free-standing chimney, truncated, of coursed rubble.
INTERIOR: Compressor house has a softwood roof with iron tension rods and diagonal wood struts, and evidence of a traveller crane.
HISTORY: This part of the South Crofty Mine was re-organised between 1900 and 1908, and the current buildings represent the mine as it was by 1914, with the loss of the 1903-6 miners' dry to the S side. The steam engine was moved here from Tregurtha Downs. It includes the paired engine houses for pumping and winding, the compressor house and its chimney, and the extensive workshop provision for the mine.
The persistence of mining into the C20 in the Camborne/Redruth area has resulted in a number of extraordinarily well-preserved complexes such as Taylor's Shaft at East Pool, King Edward mine and the Tolgus tailings works. This is the most complete surviving part of the South Crofty workings, the last working tin mine in Europe which closed in 1998, remarkable for its degree of preservation in a national context and with a range of buildings including the engine house and boiler house (qqv) which are strongly representative of C19 and early C20 mine workings.
(Trounson, J, Mining in Cornwall, Vol.1, 1985)
Listing NGR: SW6674641280
