Mining on the Brendon Hills
[1] The Brendon Hills are largely formed from the Morte Slates, a thick faulted and folded sequence of Devonian age sedimentary rocks.
[10] At an altitude of over 1,000 feet (300 m) and remote from usable roads, the company needed a form of transport to get the ore to South Wales.
The West Somerset Mineral Railway, which included a 0.75 miles (1.21 km) long gravity worked incline on a gradient of 1 in 4, was built to take the ore to Watchet Harbour where it was loaded onto ships to be sent to Ebbw Vale for smelting.
[30][31] Mines on the tops of hills are usually sunk from above, with adits for drainage or access driven laterally to the hillside from the ore, coal or other target mineral.
In 1907 a Withypool mining company started transporting ore by traction engine to Minehead to be shipped north, but this ended in October.
The Somerset Mineral Syndicate added this to their portfolio of Colton and Timwood and built a rope worked incline powered by a stationary engine to lower ore to the road.
There is evidence of ancient mining at Colton,[58][59][60] with the main site visible on maps just over 3 km ENE of Brendon Hill.
In desperation the Syndicate erected plant at Washford to turn the poor ore into briquettes,[70] thereby reducing volume, mass and impurities, but the undercapitalised venture failed in 1909 and all mining ceased, including Colton.
The WSMR took the first steps towards seeking powers to extend their line from Gupworthy (where at least some Eisen Hill output was transferred to their rails)[75] to Joyce's Cleeve to tap their product, but its poor prospects and their financial straits led them to back off.
[27] In 1863–4, the WSMR built is western extension through this iron mine's pit yard, which rivalled that at Raleigh Cross in size.
It had been taken over and revived in 1852 and was said in the mid-1850s to have "good ore in workable quantities"[85] which significantly exceeded pre-railway haulage capacity, leading to stockpiles.
[86] Closing the mine gave the WSMR an additional problem, as the only water crane south of the incline was fed from Gupworthy Old pit.
[92] With others it closed in 1879, but reopened later in the year, eventually reaching a depth of 257 feet (78 m) with four levels and two shallow secondary drifts, known as Richard's Pit.
[106] Its state, however, was "parlous", so the Forestry Commission blew it up on 7 March 1978, leaving only the pumping engine's granite base as a memorial, albeit at some distance from the site of the mine.
In 1878–9 the machinery and its engine house were dismantled, moved to Burrow Farm mine and re-erected, leaving bare foundations at Langham Hill.
When the mines closed the Ebbw Vale Company not only had to bear considerable losses [116] but it also became liable for duties and charges it had entered into in the heady early days when the Brendon Hills seemed like Klondyke.
In the midst of this the Ebbw Vale company covered the Langham Hill engine house foundations with the pit tip, landscaping the site to appease Insole.
[118] Remarkably, this had a beneficial outcome, as it "preserved" the foundations so that when the Exmoor National Park Authority excavated them in 1995–8 they were found to be in good order.
Mining in the area before this time had been sufficiently small scale for horse-drawn cartage of ore to be sufficient, but "the mines at Gupworthy and Raleigh's Cross .. proved the existence of good ore in workable quantities"[85] making industrial-scale transport necessary, this in turn led to the formation the WSMR company (royal assent was granted on 16 July 1855) and construction of the railway itself, which was in full operation to Raleigh's Cross by March 1861.
This involved extensive trialling of a tunnel boring machine which proved "greatly underpowered and in danger of knocking itself to pieces".
The engine which wound ore to the surface was mounted in the first floor of the substantial pithead buildings, it pulled the mine's narrow gauge tramway wagons along the sloping drift out of the ground and onto a platform above a standard gauge siding so the ore could be tipped directly into wagons beneath.
At Raleigh's Cross in 1856 two men, both until recently agricultural labourers, attempted to tamp a black powder explosive charge with an iron instead of wooden rod.
[125] Raleigh's Cross and its neighbours were wet mines, necessitating extensive works, plant, interconnections and flood countermeasures.
[86] The mine buildings were blown up by the Syndicate to provide ballast to gravity work the incline and, in 1909, hardcore infill for the timber jetty at Watchet.
It was the brainchild of the Somerset Mineral Syndicate Ltd which was formed on 11 March 1907 to work mines and lease the WSMR to carry output to Watchet harbour.
[134] It sought to reduce the cost and effort involved in pumping water and raising ore to the surface only to lower it down again using the incline to Comberow.
Apart from small amounts discovered while pursuing their main target, this method of working remained an aspiration, because the Syndicate ran out of money in 1909, it had many costs and almost no income.
It voted to be wound up on 24 March 1910 and its assets were auctioned off on 28 June that year, with Timwood's tunnel 1,600 feet (490 m) long "but still well short of ore-bearing ground".
[141] Unlike mine buildings at the hill top, those at Timwood were small and appeared temporary, none being built of stone or brick.
The Robey steam engine from the incline winding house[142] was installed to drive the compressor which powered the drills used to create holes for explosive charges.
