KELLY MINE
Tony Brooks' book (190 pages with many illustrations, A5 soft cover) includes details of most of the MIO mines in the area around Kelly, with historical photographs, and transcripts of conversations with miners and others that worked there in the 1920s and 1930s.
It is available at Kelly mine, price £12 (cash only), or by post from the KMPS secretary,
(or phone on 01626853127)
KMPS members have rescued items from other mines and quarries, including, from Great Rock mine, the Holman drill sharpener, a Hardinge ball mill body, and the winch that was used on the Incline to the mill. The winch has been restored to a runnable condition, and the drill sharpener is now in working order.
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The Climax drill sharpener from Great Rock mine under restoration. Great Rock mine obtained the sharpener from Bridford Mine in about 1949, and it was rescued from Great Rock after it closed down.
The winch from Great Rock mine powered by compressed air, after repair work to demonstrate it running. The winch was rescued from Great Rock mine after closure, and had a complicated and difficult life before arriving at Kelly.
The mill at Shuttamoor mine in about 1908. Apart from using the turbine or oil engine rather than a waterwheel, the basic working of the stamps at Kelly mine was more or less like this until final closure.
There are old adit workings above the three main adits at Kelly mine, mainly working the same vein. The entrance of a run-in adit above top adit has been cleared, to show an ore sorting area about 2 m square. A partly worn horse shoe was buried on the working floor, indicating the probable use of a borrowed farm horse, with a sled, to get ore down to the mill. This would have been possible in the 19th century, before the top adit entrance and its extensive tip was developed.
In clearing the entrance to a short probably mid 19th century adit a little below the turbine pond remains of likely early medieval iron working have been found, along with a rock cut channel that would have carried water from the adit into the stream that feeds the now disused mill water wheel pond.
The 19th century miners had cut through the very old remains, so that pieces of slag and furnace structure were scattered.
The expert view is that a low shaft charcoal non-tapping furnace had been used to produce iron using the ore that is easily obtained from the surface around the local veins.
No firm date for the working has been obtained; it could be 2000 years ago, perhaps earlier or 500 years later.
Other early iron working sites exist around the present borders of Dartmoor. At the Kelly mine site the source of the raw materials seems clear.
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A piece of furnace structure, and a lump of slag, probably mainly fayalite (ferrous silicate) with some ferrous oxide (wurtzite). (click/tap to enlarge)