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Summary

China clay working took place at Redlake between 1910 and 1932 and the remains of the site comprise the water filled pits, massive spoil heap, and ruined remains of buildings and some machinery, as well as the route of the railway that carried workers and supplies to the site. Medieval or later openworkings and channels associated with tin works reported at Red Lake. An archaeological field survey in 1994 recorded no associated features.

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

• National Monuments Record: SX66NW122
• National Monuments Record: SX66NW124
• National Record of the Historic Environment: 1063781
• National Record of the Historic Environment: 1063790

Monument Type(s) and Dates

• EXTRACTIVE PIT (Early Medieval to Early 20th Century - 1066 AD (Between) to 1901 AD (Between))
• LEAT (Early Medieval to Early 20th Century - 1066 AD (Between) to 1901 AD (Between))
• TIN WORKS (Early Medieval to Early 20th Century - 1066 AD (Between) to 1901 AD (Between))
• CHINA CLAY WORKS (Edwardian to Early 20th Century - 1908 AD (Between) to 1932 AD (Between))

Full description

Worth, R. H., 1914, Stray notes on Dartmoor tin-working. Part 1, 284-9 (Article in Serial). SDV243139.

Worth reports that, prior to the removal of the overburdon from the china clay deposits at Red Lake (SX 66 NW 122), extensive tin workings were visible. He records a channel and several openworks. During the course of clay extraction an iron pick was found. Worth suggests that, due to the nature of the tin deposits at Red Lake, this may be the "Armed Pit" described by Thomas Creber in the 17th century.

Harris, H., 1968, Industrial Archaeology of Dartmoor, 95-97 (Monograph). SDV149229.

The China Clay workings at Redlake were started in 1910, in spite of local opposition, on land leased from the Duchy of Cornwall. R Handsford Worth was the appointed engineer. In the following year the Redlake Mineral Railway was completed to carry men, coal, iron and general supplies to the site. About one hundred men were employed in the industry, many of whom stayed on site for weeks on end during the summer months. In a few years the clay has been worked out and the enterprise came to an end in 1932, and the following year the railway was dismantled and equipment and engines blown up or sold off as scrap.

Wade, E. A, 1982, The Redlake Tramway and China Clay Works (Monograph). SDV166649.

A lease was granted to the China Clay Corporation from the Duchy of Cornwall for the exploitation of china clay at Red Lake, in 1908; the tramway was completed in 1912 and production began at the end of 1913. Production ceased after the first world war; the works were taken over by the Ivybridge China Clay Company, and reopened in 1922. The company prospered for a time but collapsed in 1932, when the works were finally closed and demolition began.
A certain amount of tin was produced from the china clay works between 1915 and 1919.

Griffith, F., 1988, Devon's Past. An Aerial View, 112-3 (Monograph). SDV64198.

Leftlake and Redlake clay workings shown (1987/8 aerial photographs).

Royal Commission for the Historical Monuments of England, 1993-1998, Dartmoor Royal Forest Project, H. Riley (Report - Survey). SDV346608.

(10/11/1994) The remains of the Red Lake China Clay works lie at SX 6462 6689, some 500m north of Red Lake Mire, a tributary of the River Erme. The remains consist of two large spoil heaps, a water-filled pit and several ruined buildings. Other related features include two reservoirs served by leats (see SX 66 NW 123) and the tracks of two disused tramways (see SX 65 NE 67 and SX 65 NE 128).
The larger of the two spoil heaps, the sky tip, lies at SX 6466 6698 and is a very prominent landscape feature. The sky tip is conical, measures 150m in diameter at the base, and has very steep sides. It comprises the course sand and rocks, which were removed from the clay slurry in the pit and transported to the tip by wagons which ran on an incline railway up the southwestern side of the tip. The smaller spoil heap, the burden tip, at SX 6428 6669, measures some 150m long and 50m wide, and comprises the overburden of peat. It was served by a temporary railway track which ran around the northern side of the pit (Wade, 1982). The clay pit itself is roughly triangular in shape and measures 180m long and 120m wide (max). It is now water-filled and the banks drop away very sharply indeed. The pit was never bottomed, the main shaft, which contained two fixed pumps, was 130 feet (some 40m) deep. The clay was extracted from the pit by washing down the sides with high pressure hoses, called monitors, which were supplied with water from the two reservoirs (SX 66 NW 123). The resulting slurry was then pumped from the shaft through a pipeline to the settling tanks, the Greenhill Micas, some 140m south of the pit. The clay was sent down a further pipeline to the main processing works or dries at Cantrel, some 10kms to the south (SX 6580 5652) (Wade, 1982).
There were a number of buildings to the southeast of the clay pit, at the terminal of the railway line. These included an engine and boiler house, drying room and stores, workshops and a hostel for the workers (Wade). Shortly after the second world war, the Dartmoor National Park gave the military permission to blow up the buildings. They were reduced to rubble, consequently it is now difficult to precisely identify their functions. The remains to the east of the disused tramway, at SX 6462 6682, are probably the site of the engine and boiler house; those to the west of the disused tramway, at SX 6459 6684 and SX 6459 6679, are most likely to be the remains of stores and workshops. The foundations to the south of these ruined buildings, at SX 6462 6670, are the remains of the workers hostel.
(10/11/1994) Extensive streamworks are visible in the valley of Red Lake, some 500m to the S.

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

Remains of the industry can be seen on the aerial photograph, including the clay pits, which are now filled up as artificially lakes, the massive spoil tip comprising the material removed from the pits, remains of some buildings and the tramway.

Knights, R., 2014, Dartmoor Walks (Website). SDV356909.

Red Lake China Clay works. Clay was hosed out from a deep pit and the slurry was transported via pumps to settling beds at Greenhill about a mile away. After a week or so of settling the sluices were opened and the clay in suspension flowed down pipes some 7 miles to the clay processing works near Ivybridge. The unwanted sand and gravel was loaded into trucks at Red Lake which were then tipped onto the waste tip that can be seen today.

Ordnance Survey, 2014, MasterMap (Cartographic). SDV355681.

Lakes, spoil heap and route of the railway are depicted on the modern mapping.

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

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

Redlake China Clay pits were active between 1910 and 1932, operated by the China Clay Corporation Ltd and later by the Ivybridge Clay Company. The extractive site and the processing works are at several different locations, all served by the Redlake Railway which runs from Cantrell at Bittaford, to the Redlake pits, a distance of 12.7 kilometres. The primary processing plant (MDV5159) was on Ugborough Moor, while the drying sheds and distribution facility was at Bittaford. Clay was transported between the two via a twin ceramic pipeline (MDV5167) running approximately parallel with the railway. The clay pit is located on flattish ground at the head of Red Lake, an eastern tributary of the River Erme, from which the name of the clay works was derived, and which had previously been heavily worked for tin using streamworking methods. The clayworking remains comprise a very deep pit, though this is now completely water filled with a surface area of 1.4 hectares. A large overburden heap (MDV122909) in the form of finger dumps is 120 metres south-west of the pit, where the waste was delivered via a tramway. The earthwork cutting through which the tramway passed survives though now disguised by rushes. The main, cone-shaped waste heap (MDV 26060) is adjacent to the north-east side of the pit. This was a sky tip of 20 metres high, which in later years of operation was fed by an inclined tramway leading directly from the bottom of the pit to the summit of the cone. The ridge on which the incline travelled survives running up the south-west arc of the heap. Evidence of flat-topped finger dumps on thesouth-east slope of the mound suggest that an earlier phase of dumping used horizontal trams to distribute the waste. Two shallow reservoirs (MDV 25059) are sited to the south-east of the sky tip covering an area totalling 0.5 hectares. These probably supplied water to the monitors to wash the clay out of the pit, as well as the boilers in the engine house. Both still retain water. The remains of several buildings survive as either stone foundations or demolished rubble. A number of timber-framed buildings, described by E. A. Wade (1982), including a peat store, locomotive shed and others, have left no trace other than the levelled ground on which they once stood. The engine/boiler house (see MDV 24806) was the most substantial building at the clay works, constructed from stone, brick and re-enforced concrete. Remains of the winding house (see MDV122901) sit on the pit edge and occupied an area of approximately 9.7 metres by 7.6 metres. Of the range of buildings to the south depicted by E A Wade, fragments of only the two masonry structures survive (MDV122902), built from stone and brick and totally demolished, leaving a few short lengths of in-situ wall bases and a section of a chimney breast to the south. The northern of these was probably the Blacksmith’s shop which has the concrete base of an anvil with fixing studs in situ. The southernmost building at Redlake was the barracks (MDV25061). This was a rectangular, timber and corrugated iron structure built onto shuttered concrete foundation walls. Only the foundations survive, which have overall dimensions of 19.3 by 12.5 metres, standing to a maximum of 0.4 metres high.

Sources / Further Reading

Associated Monuments

Associated Finds: none recorded

Associated Events

• EDV8082 - Survey of the Upper Erme Valley
• EDV8409 - Dartmoor Royal Forest Project

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