Blowing house

[1] From the beginning of the 18th century, this method was gradually superseded by reverberatory furnace smelting, which used higher temperatures and powdered anthracite as fuel and had the advantage of not requiring a forced draught of air.

The pipe or nose of each bellows is fixed ten inches (254 mm) high from the bottom of the castle, in a large piece of wrought iron, called the Hearth-eye.

[4] Archaeological investigation of blowing houses started in 1866 when John Kelly examined the lower mill at Yealm Steps.

Robert Burnard cleared the interior of the lower mill at Week Ford in the 1880s, but the most notable researcher of the remains on Dartmoor was R. Hansford Worth who made detailed records of over 40 sites.

[1] Since then, research on the tin industry in the south west has continued, for instance The Dartmoor Tinworking Interest Group was formed in 1991.

[1] The accompanying photograph shows the two side slabs of the furnace at the Lower Merrivale blowing house, with the somewhat displaced float stone between them.

The mouldstone is the best field evidence for a blowing house; they are large blocks of granite with a flat top containing a rectangular hollow recess into which the molten tin was poured to be cast into ingots.