South Caradon Mine, map of the Floor area

A View of

South Caradon Mine

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Valley Floor Plan

Home page The walk History Views Main map Information sources Dressing floor interpretation Dressing floor operation Dressing floor tramway

This plan may help to interpret the complex area of remains on the valley floor. The map only shows only the main features and is based on visits in 1999 and information from maps published in Shambrook, Brown and Action , CAU and Ordnance survey.
The bottom plan is an interpretation of the dressing floor operation.

For views of this area

Down the valley

Yard area

Stamps area

Lower floors area

19th Century view

For information and pictures of features

Wheel pit

Main adit

Yard

Spalling floors

Large shed

Stamp engine

Jopes adit

Railway siding

Tramway

Other Maps

Footpath map

Dressing floor tramway

LCR at South Caradon

South Caradon map

Lode Map

Jopes shaft area

Sump Shaft Area

The Dressing floor operation at South Caradon Mine
A possible interpretation

The diagram on the right is a possible flow of ore through the dressing floors. I have taken the suggestions of publications listed above, combined them with the photograph in Michael Measurer's book and applied a simplified Copper dressing model to arrive at this suggestion.
Since the production of this diagram I have produced a map of the tramway network that supports and expands on this interpretation of the remains.

Two main flows of raw material are shown in this diagram. Drage processing is in red and Halvan in white, some material is shown returning back from Jigging for re-bucking or stamping
Hand sorting, ragging, spalling, cobbing and possibly jigging were most likely carried out on the cobbled floor area and within the large shed. Bucking was probably a powered process using the crushing mill and jigging was also powered (see the accident in the jigging shed). I have therefore suggested that the lower shed was used for jigging, this being supported by the tramway layout.
The lower Seaton Valley area is described by CAU as being used for waste treatment. This is undoubtedly the Halvan floors and OS maps show what is probably buddles and tanks (trunks) in this area. The fines for this area would have been produced from by the stamps and again the tramway layout supports this suggestion.
This lower floor area has disappeared under tipped landfill and alluvial mud leaving little evidence.

Click to see a diagram of the copper dressing process

A summary of the Dressing floor operation

The Seaton Valley housed the central dressing floors of South Caradon Mine, a complex of structures and buildings that has left a confusing legacy of terraces, low walls and rubble. No definitive description of the function of the structures exist but it is possible to attempt an interpretation of the remains that will give an insight into the traditional processes involved in preparing copper ore for sale.
Copper processing
The layout of a copper mines dressing floors was greatly influenced by the properties of its main ore Charcopyrite. This ore tended to be hard and brittle with the unwanted property of easily breaking into a very fine powder. Tin mines traditionally operated by stamping all the ore and then classifying and concentrating the crushed rock through a series of physical processes using water. Such an approach applied to Copper ore would lead to large amounts of the ore being carried through the system as fine waste. Instead series of manual processing, sorting and picking operations were utilised leaving stamping for only the most hardest of rocks.
Sorting the Ore
Hand sorting was fundamental in reducing the amount or rock to be processed and it was started even before the ore was brought to the surface, much of the waste being left underground. At the dressing floors the rock was sorted in four main types.

Deads: Containing no ore and was tipped in burrows
Prills: Pure ore that required no further processing
Drage: Ore mixed with gangue that required hand processing
Halvans: Low value ore that needed stamping before treatment

Processing the Drage
It was this processing that gave a copper dressing floor its distinctive properties. Drage was dressed by a series of manually intensive tasks that took place in assorted lightly built structures crowded in valley bottoms. South Caradon used hundreds of employees to undertake this work, the majority of which were females called Bal Maidens. The large shed and area around it was the focal point for this work and its foundation area and adjacent cobbled spalling floors can still be seen.
At the time of the photograph the tasks of Bucking and Jigging had been mechanized using a steam powered crusher and jigging machines in one of the sheds. The bucking mill was mounted powered by the stamps steam engine and was located in the building to the north of its flywheel. On the day of the photograph this engine was hard at work with the sweep rod disappearing into a blur of motion. Today only a pile of rubble remains.

Processing the Halvans
Halvans were treated like tin ore and the Halvans floor resembled a smaller version of a tin mines dressing floor. The rock was first crushed in the set of Cornish stamps before passing through a set of tanks and buddles to separate the denser ore from the gangue. Little remains of South Caradon’s 24 head of stamps, or its engine apart from the bank upon which it stood, some fragments of wood and the flywheel loadings.
Of the dressing floors only a small parts of some of the tanks remain exposed, the rest has been buried beneath landfill of alluvial deposits.

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On many mine sites in Cornwall dangers may still exist, many hidden. This web site is published as a resource to those using the public rights of way.

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