Category: Articles

  • Tinners on Dartmoor

    Tinners on Dartmoor

    Above are photos show examples of: various tinners’ remains, including “streamworks”, “openworks”, “lodeback workings”. Associated with streamworks are buildings called “tinners’ huts” (also called “lodges”). To crush the ore “stamps” were used. The stamps smashed the tin ore on “mortar” stones, creating a fine ore powder. This was processed, in “buddles”, to separate off the…

  • Bal Mine

    The Dartmoor Tinworking Research Group (DTRG) were asked to survey an area south-east of Norsworthy Bridge at the eastern end of Burrator Reservoir by Southwest Lakes Trust (SWLT). The area is close to the car-park and includes a wheelpit, launder embankment, leat, stream work and many other features. Surveying an area to the south-east, that…

  • Steeperton Mine

    Steeperton Mine

    According to Dines Steeperton Mine (aka Knack Mine) was an unsuccessful trial on the western slopes of Steeperton Tor.Helen Harris in her book the Industrial Archaeology of Dartmoor gives a little more information as follows:At the foot of the western slopes of Steeperton Tor are the remains of Steeperton Tor or Knack Mine which was…

  • Stormsdown Mine

    Stormsdown Mine

    Stormsdown is at the head of Owlacombe a tributary valley of the the Langworthy Brook, which itself is a tributary of the River Lemon. The geology consists of shales, grits and chert otherwise known as killas by the miners. The mines are in the metamorphic aurole zone that surrounds the igneous mass and the lodes…

  • A Napoleonic Venture in the Newleycombe Valley

    A Napoleonic Venture in the Newleycombe Valley

    The Newleycombe Valley, extending more or less west-east from Burrator Reservoir to the Devonport Leat tunnel below Nuns Cross, has some of the most extensive and ancient evidence of tinworking to be found on Dartmoor. At its upper end there is a confluence of two streams, one descending from the north-east from Older Bridge and…