S | Cornish Mine Terms |
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| Term | Definition | Examples |
| Sett
|
The area of a mining lease
. A mine sett is the ground granted to a group of miners or company
of adventurers. The boundaries of the sett mark the limits within which
they could extract minerals.
Or Stone blocks used to carry a rail instead of wooden sleepers. These were often of Granite. |
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| Shaft | Shafts are vertical or slightly
inclined entrance to the underground workings used for access, haulage,
ventilation or pumping.
Shafts are often named after managers, adventurers and captains of the mine. |
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| Shaft Pare | A shaft pare is a group of men used to sink a shaft | |
| Sollar | A sollar is a small platform at the end of a ladder, also the wooden covering of a shaft. | |
| Spalling | An Ore processing term.Spalling is the breaking up of large chunks of rocks into manageable lumps.After spalling the rock is then sent for cobbing. This manual processing of ore was common in copper mines and was usually carried out by Bal Maidens. | |
| Spalling floor | An ore processing area. A spalling floor is a level cobbled area on which the lumps of rocks were manually broken.The area was sometimes covered by a light wooden building. Whilst no remains may exist of the building the cobbles sometimes can still be seen.. | |
| Stamps | A powered device for crushing
ore bearing rock. Cornish stamps consisted of sets of vertically mounted
beams (stems) that were lifted and dropped
onto the prepared rocks by cams on a rotating axle. This axle was turned
by a water wheel or steam engine. Each beam had an iron weight at the bottom
(head) and were fitted in groups of 3 to 6. The rock was contained in Coffers
beneath the heads.
Water wheels powering stamps normally had a diameter of 18-30 feet and Steam engines a maximum diameter of 40" 1493 was the date the date that Stamps were first mentioned in use in Cornwall ,1813 was the first use of steam powered stamps and in 1857 Californian stamps were introduced. |
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| Stannary | A mining district within
which the miners operated within the ancient Stannary system. This had
its own laws,courts, jail and taxation (coinage).
The four Cornish Stannaries were:
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| Stems | Part of a set of Cornish stamps.Stems are large pieces of timber fitted with heavy iron heads.The stems are lifted and dropped by tappets on the stem being pushed up by cams (wipers) on the powered camshaft. | |
| Stockwork | An area of rock containing a large number of veinlets which form a network of fine lodes. Stockwork ore grades are normally low and they are often worked opencast. | |
| Streaming | The Means of obtaining Alluvial
tin from river valleys. Stream Tin was cassiterite
that had been weathered and removed from its parent lode before being deposited
on Valley bottoms. This natural process formed highly concentrated deposits
of easily obtainable Tin that had been worked by similar methods since
the Bronze age.
Streaming utilized the large difference between the Cassiterite (up to RD 7.8) and the waste material (gangue) of a RD of normally up to 3. The alluvial material was dug out of the valley bottom and then sorted by a flow of water through a man made channel (tye). This caused the lighter gangue to be carried away and the waste material was used to back fill the excavated area. |
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| Streamworks | An area worked for the alluvial tin deposits by shallow excavation. Streamwork remains consist of liner dumps, river diversion, scarped valley sides and evidence of reservoirs and leats. | |
| Strike | The direction a lode takes,
normally given as a compass bearing.Lodes in an area tend to run parallel
having very similar direction of strikes.
Within Cornwall the strike for Tin, Copper and Wolfram tends to be WNW-ESE but this becomes nearer E-W Towards the East and around Dartmoor. Lead, Silver and Zinc Lodes are generally running North to South. This strike direction pattern is reversed in the West Penwith area. |
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| Sump | The sump is the bottom of the engine shaft from which water is pumped from the lowest part of the mine. Timber pump rods extended all the way down the shaft to the sump to operate the lowest pumps | |
| Sump Shaft | Sump shaft is another name
for an engine shaft.
The deepest shaft within a mine. |
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| Sumpmen | Sumpmen are the workers who sink the engine shaft, attend to the machinery in the engine shaft and assist the pit man. | |