| EAST
WHEAL ROSE
ENGINE HOUSE
In
1846 over 1,200 men, women and children were employed in the mine at East Wheal
Rose. In those days the valley would have been filled with the sounds of ore being
dressed (broken up), wagons rolling in and out, steam engines hissing and whistling,
and the general hubbub of so many people at work. In an age before television,
this scene was the wonder of the neighbourhood and a favourite place for Sunday
excursions.
| | By
today's standards, Cornish mines of the last century were neglectful of any concern
for safety. In 1842, a foolhardy young miner fell thirty fathoms (180 feet or
fifty-five metres) to his death down a shaft at Wheal Towan. A local newspaper
the West Briton, noted that there had been 'two men working a few fathoms below
the mouth of the same shaft on single planks, and how the deceased passed them
in his fall (without knocking them off) is most extraordinary'. |
