[7] The mine suffered badly from underground water and in order to pump it out, one of the first Newcomen engines in Cornwall was installed by Joseph Hornblower in 1727.

Watched by crowds, a thousand people marched through the village to the mine where the cornerstone for a large new engine house was laid.

There was an excursion train on the West Cornwall Railway, a church service, a dinner was provided for 400 poor people, and at night there was a firework display.

[10] Although large quantities of copper and tin ore were produced in the following ten years, no overall profit was made and the adventurers lost more than £150,000 in the mine.

[11] In 1866 there was a wave of sabotage by some of the miners against the adventurers when in an attempt to reduce the mounting losses, a new mine captain imposed what amounted to a tax on their earnings.

[16] In the 1920s a set of Californian stamps was installed to rework the waste dumps for ore.[4] During the Second World War, 2,500 American GIs were billeted on the site and were said to have restarted the 85 inch pumping engine.

Natural England's Higher Level Stewardship agreed to fund work on the engine house and associated buildings in 2014,[2] and the project was completed in the summer of 2015.