Visit to Cornwall Records office

I was advised to speak to Sarah Jane the university's archivist, so that she could inform me of any information that the Camborne School of Mines might have on Engine houses.  Unfortunately, Sarah informed me that the archive didn't contain any actual drawings of engine house, but she pointed me in the direction of the Cornwall records office.  It took me two weeks to get an appointment, because the archivist there told me that I would need to book a map table, as some of the drawing very quite large.

My visit to the Cornwall record office was was very useful, although I didn't actually find a drawing of what I was looking for (a Cornish engine house) I did manage to find several copies of mining maps from the St Agnes mining district (the area of interest for site locations), of which a lot fo them are over 100 years old .  The drawings have given me a really usuful insight as to the extent to which the mine shafts spread across the village, its almost like looking a plate of spagghetti!  We have recently had to get a mining survey conducted for a small extension we are doing on the house, at the time this seemed rather uneccessary, as it was such a small area we looking at, but now having seem these plans of the mine shaft I can see why!


Even though I didn't find any actually plans or elevations etc of engine houses, my visit to the records office meant that I was able to stumble across other drawings of famous buildings across cornwall, such as the headland hotel in Newquay, which again is almost 100 years old.  See below:

One of the main reasons I beleive this visit didn't produce any of the documents I was looking for was part to do with the way in which the records office orgainises and stores their documents.  Firstly, the drawings are in fact huge. I had to book a map table (which insidentally, took wo weeks to get a booking for), the drawings were stored and rolled up with several other drawings, meaning that each one had to be individiually rolled out, making this process very time consuming and tedious.  Secondly, rather than keeping the documents stored seprately, they were bundled together, sometimes with a least 100 other drawings, that were nothing to do with cornish engine houses, which also added to frustration and tedium of the task.


I still however beleive that this was an invaluable experience as it would be impossible to duplicate the drawings by looking at books, on a screen.  By doing primary research I was able to look at the drawings first hand myself and make up my own mind about them, as opposed to making my mind up about what someone else thinks about them.

Requested Documents list:
MDA/12 Mine Plans
CMDA/12/1 Plan, Wheal Friendly and West Kitty Mine
GP/7/11/1 Plan of Wheal Friendly
GP/7/11/2 Transverse section of Wheal Friendly
HB/A41/1/2 Plan, Wheal Friendly
HB/A41/1/6 Plan, Polberro and Wheal Friendly
HB/A41/2/1 Plan, Polberro and Wheal Friendly
HB/A41/2/2 Plan, West Kitty and Wheal Friendly
HB/A41/2/3 Trabsverse Section, Wheal Friendly
HB/A41/2/7 Surface and Underground Plan, Wheal Friendly
HB/A41/3/4 Plan and Section, West Kitty and Wheal Friendly
HB/A41/3/6 Plan, Polberro and Wheal Friendly
HB/A41/3/7 Transverse Section, Wheal Friendly
HB/A41/3/8 Transverse Section, Wheal Friendly
HB/D16/5 Surface and Underground Plan (Wheal Friendly)
HB/D16/8 Plan (West Kitty and Wheal Friendly)
HB/S9/2 Section (Wheal Friendly)
HB/S9/4 Transverse Section (West Kitty and Wheal Friendly)
M/90 Plan, modification of engine house, Wheal Friendly mine
M/146 Plan, longitudinal Section, West Kitty and Wheal Friendly mines
MRO/11194/2 Underground Section of Friendly Shaft