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Summary

Long narrow industrial building at Left Lake clay works with four settling tanks and a sand or mica drag

Location

Protected Status

• SHINE: Earthwork remains of the early 20th century China Clay works at Redlake Mine and the associated railway, as well as prehistoric remains on Ugborough Moor

Other References/Statuses

• Old DCC SMR Ref: SX66SW/187
• SHINE Candidate (Yes)

Monument Type(s) and Dates

• INDUSTRIAL BUILDING (Constructed, XX - 1901 AD to 2000 AD (Between))

Full description

National Monuments Record, 1969, NMR SX6463, 2 (Aerial Photograph). SDV165976.

Photograph taken on 22nd April 1976.

National Monuments Record, 1976, NMR SX6460, 2 (Aerial Photograph). SDV157244.

Photograph taken on 8th April 1976.

Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England, 1985, Aerial Photograph Project (Dartmoor) - Dartmoor Pre-NMP (Cartographic). SDV319854.

Long building, possibly a settling tank for clayworks visible on aerial photograph. Probably modern.

GeoInformation Group Ltd, 2010, 1:625 2010 Colour (12.5cm resolution) (Aerial Photograph). SDV346026.

Two long narrow buildings with internal divisions visible on aerial photograph.

Newman, P., 2018, Erme Valley Survey data (GIS and Excel spreadsheet) (Cartographic). SDV361913.

Two long narrow adjoining buildings with internal divisions shown on survey.

Newman, P., 2018, The Upper Erme Valley, Dartmoor National Park, Devon: An Archaeological Survey, Appendix 1, Figures 50, 53 & 56 (Report - Survey). SDV362921.

A partly demolished sand or mica drag and four settling tanks at Left Lake clayworks on Harford Moor. Clay was extracted from this site for a short period in the 1850s, but these processes were installed between 1911 and 1932 when operated by the China Clay Corporation. The drags were constructed on a specially prepared piece of level ground using shuttered concrete and some pre-fabricated concrete components. The overall length of the drag is 73 metres and it is up to 6.25 metres wide. At the eastern inflow end, three 1.2 metres wide by 26 metres long strips fed a further ten strips of 37 metres by 0.5 metres. Each strip had four drains outlets spaced 9 metres apart along the length, accommodated in channels running at a right angle across the strips. Waste water from the drains ran away from the drags via ditches down the slope to the north. Each outlet has a brick-built, square inspection shaft just to the north of the drags. After passing through the drags, clay slurry was conducted via a ceramic pipe into four adjoining, rectangular settling tanks, built into artificially lowered ground just to the west of the drags. These tanks were thoroughly demolished after becoming disused, and little detail survives. However, enough of the shuttered concrete walling survives to establish that each tank was 9 metres by 9 metres square and 1.4 metres deep with walls of 0.66 metres thick. The existence of a ceramic buried pipe exiting these tanks at the western end and joining the Redlake pipeline 46 metres to the south-west, confirms that the clay slurry from this installation during the 20th century activity was transported to and finished at the Cantrell works at Bittaford.

Ordnance Survey, 2020, MasterMap 2020 (Cartographic). SDV363413.

Two long adjoining buildings shown on modern mapping.

Sources / Further Reading

Associated Monuments

Associated Finds: none recorded

Associated Events

• EDV8082 - Survey of the Upper Erme Valley

Search results generated by the HBSMR Gateway from exeGesIS SDM Ltd.