West Wheal Basset Stamps and ore processing floors.
I visited very early one morning in 1980, rising before dawn to catch the early light. Walking across a damp, dewy field I was unexpectedly apprehended by this fine pig whose lair appeared to have been built within one of the engine houses, and who thus formed the first, somewhat unusual, composition of the day.
An overview of the site from the side. The chimney served an arsenic calciner, and partially conceals that for the stamps engine house in the background. The engine was a 40" cylinder, which drove 80 heads of Cornish Stamps via a flywheel in front of the house. The crushed ore would then have been processed through the Vanner House on the right, where it was washed on banks of vanning tables to separate the minerals out. Further refinement would then have taken place on the buddles, just below the Vanner House. The buddles refined the fine silt using brushes on sloped cylinders. The whole lot was operated by the beam engine at the top, using a complex system of belts, pulleys and flywheels, and an enormous quantity of water. The commotion within these plants must have been deafening, and the chill during the winter miserable. They were a tough old lot. I have often reflected on the awful conditions which were the norm in industry and agriculture being an explanation as to how the workers from these places were able to endure the trenches in the Great War.
The 40" stamps engine house. The flywheel ran in a slot in the platform in front of the bob wall, and the stamps extended in front of the platform, to each side. The house is quite unusual in that the chimney for the boilers was not integral to the building.
Looking across part of the Arsenic Calciner to the Vanner House. I assume the photo above it depicts part of either a water conduit or a section of horizontal chimney.
The last two photos show the fine Vanner House from across the buddling floor. It was completed in 1906.
West Wheal Basset, Wheal Basset on the opposite hill, South Wheal Frances (subject of my earler posts) and a number of associated workings were incorporated into Wheal Basset Ltd in the early 1890s due to various boundary disputes. Wheal Basset and West Wheal Basset served as the processing areas for the entire company, and were supplied with ore by a pair of tramways running steam locomotives. The tramway bed now forms part of the Great Flat Trail, which runs around Carn Brea, and extends I think to 4 or 5 miles.
Wheal Basset Ltd was wound up in 1918, when the price of tin rendered the workings no longer economically viable.
