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Summary

A 19th century copper mine known as Arundell, New Victoria, Devon new Copper Mine and Druid Mine, located 1.5kms NW of Ashburton. Recorded activity at the mine lasted just 20 years between 1852 and 1872, when massive investment of cash was made by several companies. The remains consist of three shaft heads, a large spoil heap, a cornish engine house, a wheelpit, an earthwork reservoir to supply water to the wheel and two small buildings.

Location

Protected Status

• SHINE: Earthwork and structural remains of Druid Mine, as well as curving bank in Boro Wood

Other References/Statuses

• National Monuments Record: SX77SW56
• National Monuments Record: SX77SW64
• National Record of the Historic Environment: 1355401
• National Record of the Historic Environment: 1461695
• Old DCC SMR Ref: SX77SW/42
• Old Listed Building Ref (II): 375978

Monument Type(s) and Dates

• COPPER MINE (Constructed, Post Medieval to XIX - 1540 AD (Between) to 1900 AD (Between))
• SPOIL HEAP (Constructed, Post Medieval to Early 20th Century - 1540 AD (Between) to 1901 AD (Between))
• WHEEL PIT (Constructed, Post Medieval to Early 20th Century - 1540 AD (Between) to 1901 AD (Between))
• BOB SETTING (XIX - 1801 AD (Between) to 1900 AD (Between))
• BOILER HOUSE (XIX - 1801 AD (Between) to 1900 AD (Between))
• CRUSHING MILL (XIX - 1801 AD (Between) to 1900 AD (Between))

Full description

Ordnance Survey, 1880-1899, First Edition Ordnance Survey 25 inch map (Cartographic). SDV336179.

Recorded as Druid Copper Mine (Disused). Several buildings are depicted and a chimney and two shafts are marked.

Collins, J. H., 1912, Observations on the West of England Mining Region (Monograph). SDV323594.

Royal Air Force, 1946, RAF/CPE/UK/1890, 2383 (Aerial Photograph). SDV169268.

Ramsden, J. V., 1952, Notes on the Mines of Devonshire, 93, Fig. 1 (Article in Serial). SDV60737.

D 26 Druid's, Ashburton.

Harris, H., 1968, Industrial Archaeology of Dartmoor, 185 (Monograph). SDV149229.

Druid mine was probably worked for copper during the mid-19th century, and had 3 shafts. The ruins of the stack and engine house are visible from the road to the west of Borowood.

Department of Environment, 1973, Ashburton, 5 (List of Blds of Arch or Historic Interest). SDV300597.

Mid 19th century, probably worked for copper. Tall circular chimney remains, and ruins of engine house. Stone, with top of chimney formed in red brick.

Booker, F., 1975, Druid Mine (Photograph). SDV326396.

Photograph of stack and engine house.

The Royal Commission on the Historic Monuments of England Aerial Photograph Unit, 1985, The Royal Commission on the Historic Monuments of England Aerial Photograph Project (Interpretation). SDV340940.

Building visible and recorded.

Laithewate, M., 1990, Druid Mine (Correspondence). SDV351140.

The owner of Druid Copper Mine confirmed that the mine ceased working in late 1888. It never worked in modern times.

Greeves, T. A. P., 1991, An Assessment of Copper Mining in Devon (Copper, Brass, Tin), 8, 15-17 (Report - Assessment). SDV60709.

Hedley, L. and Cranstone, D., 1995, Monuments Protection Programme, Zink, Copper, Minor Metals, Step Three: The Copper Industry, Introduction to Step 3 Assessments, 1, 5, 18, Devon 12 (Report - non-specific). SDV357718.

12. Druid Mine SX 745 716. Definite national importance.
Remains of 19th century copper mine East of Ausewell Common. Fine beam engine house with chimney, bob-setting, loading, and cylinder ramp, the latter a rare survival. There are signs of extensive alterations for the insertion of a replacement engine. To the South is a wheel pit which probably powered an ore-crusher.
Mine; bob setting - This term has replaced bob pit, to include examples where the surviving feature is a pillar for the bearing of the balance or angle-bob rather than a pit. Ore works; crushing mill- no modification.

Nance, R. W. + Nance, R. D., 1996, A Survey of Engine Houses on the Mines of South Devon, 109-122 (Article in Serial). SDV241746.

The original engine house has been extensively modified. Built of dressed granite with some pretensions at appearance, as shown by the granite piers in the south side wall and 4 arched panels at the top of the brick stack.

Nance, R. W. + Nance, R. D., 1996, A Survey of Engine Houses on the Mines of South Devon, 13.2, 109-22 (Article in Serial). SDV241746.

Nance, R. D., 1996, Project Design for a Survey of Engine Houses on the Mines of South Devon (Report - Assessment). SDV222663.

Homer, R., 1996, The Whiddon Tin Mine, Ashburton, 155-171 (Article in Serial). SDV340417.

Situated a mile north of Ashburton and shown on Donn’s 1765 map of Devon where it is marked as Whiddon Smelting House Tin and Copper Mine. The mine comprised of a shallow deep adit, three shafts, a cross-cut and a number of winzes. Small-scale workings were carried out from 1485 until the 1870’s, with mining equipment being brought from Wheal Betsy Mine in 1846.

Nance, R. W. + Nance, R. D., 1996, Wheal Druid and the Engine Houses of Dartmoor, 4-6 (Article in Serial). SDV340907.

The mine was opened in 1853 as Arundel mine with Victoria shaft started in 1854 and a 30 inch cylinder pumping beam engine was installed. In 1856 the mine was restarted as the Arundel Copper Mining Company and after a further stoppage was reopened in 1860 as the Devon New Copper Mine and in 1866 as the Druid Mining Company. In 1869 as the new Victoria (South Devon) Mine the original engine was replaced and the engine house modified to accommodate a 56 inch cylinder pumping engine. The final workings in 1872 were under the name the Ashburton Tin & Copper Mining Co Ltd.

Newman, P., 2002, Boro Wood, Ashburton, Devon, 5 (Report - Survey). SDV351138.

Documentation survives for Arundell or Druid Mine from 1852 until the 1870s.

Fletcher, M. + Newman, P., 2002, Druid Mine, Ashburton: An archaeological and historical survey by English Heritage (Report - Survey). SDV359638.

Mine typical of 19th century ventures, The engine house from 1854 survives.

Fletcher, M. + Newman, P., 2002, Druid Mine, Ashburton: An archaeological and historical survey by English Heritage (Report - Survey). SDV359638.

(20/02/2002) A 19th century copper mine known as Arundell, New Victoria, Devon new Copper Mine and Druid Mine, located 1.5kms NW of Ashburton. Recorded activity at the mine lasted just 20 years between 1852 and 1872, when massive investment of cash was made by several companies. The remains consist of three shaft heads, a large spoil heap, a Cornish engine house, a wheelpit, an earthwork reservoir to supply water to the wheel and two small buildings.
Arundell Shaft
Probably the first shaft to be sunk, the surface evidence consists only of a stony depression in the ground adjacent to the boundary wall by the road. The shaft has been capped and covered with soil probably quite recently.
Victoria Shaft
This was the engine shaft and has the engine house and pumping equipment at surface. The upper, visible section of the shaft is rectangular in plan and has evidence of timber shoring still in place. A section of the wooden pump rod with several iron tie bands is still in situ and the engine house hotwell is more or less intact. This shaft is recorded as having been sunk to 96 fathoms.
Watson's Shaft
The remains are approximately 183m west of the engine house and consist of a narrow diameter (1-2m) open shaft collar.
Much of the engine house survives; the central section which contained the bob wall and cylinder loading, together with the stack are in exceptionally good condition though they are in an unstable state. The original building, built to house a 30-inch cylinder pumping engine in 1853-4, consisted of the central structure, housing the bob wall and cylinder, and the sunken rectangular lean-to structure on the north side which contained two boilers. The former is constructed from granite and survives to almost its full original height on the south side. The bob wall on the west is also intact, as probably is the eastern wall which has an intact, brick-arched cylinder opening of 1.5m wide by 4m high, approached on its exterior by an earth ramp. The northern wall has partially collapsed and is in danger of collapsing even further. The building was consolidated by two steel tie-rods passing between the north and south walls - one of which survives in situ, the other has been bent by the collapse of the north wall - and two passing through the east and west walls. The southern wall has decorative vertical raised piers running the full height of the masonry and four arched window openings; one of these has been blocked while another has an intact iron window frame. The boiler house on the north side survives only as a rectangular hollow of 14m by 5.5m by 1.5m deep with a stone revetment on the two long sides. On the west end is a slightly more substantial, upstanding wall while to the east no wall is now visible.
On the eastern exterior is the stack which still stands almost to its full original height, as depicted in plate 2. It has a base of 3m. It is gently tapered, the lower section is made from small pieces of mortared granite and the top section is of red brick decorated with shallow arched niches and a protruding collar at the base of the brick section. There are two small openings at the base of the stack for fumes to pass into it from the boilers.
According to Nance (1996) several alterations were made to the building in 1869, when the larger engine was installed. This included thickening of the bob wall by 0.46m and extending the back of the house by 0.9m. The major addition however was a second boiler house on the south side of the building. This was not sunken as was the other boiler house and only part of the western wall now survives.
The balance bob and counterweight were housed in a sunken structure attached to the north side of the shaft. The channel in which the balance beam sat is incomplete but the beam could have been 12m long, including the bob. The area which housed the weight or bob is 2.9m by 3.9m and the whole structure survives to 3m deep. Vestiges of timber beams with vertical iron bolts survive on the surface of the revetment where the bearings of the fulcrum were fastened.
To the north of the bob pit is a sunken structure believed to have housed a winding device or steam whim for raising and lowering material in the shaft. It comprises two parallel stone-revetted pits, the longest of which is between 6 and 7m long by 1m wide, each of which contained a vertically set wheel. Threaded iron studs are visible on the upper surfaces of the walls.
The wheelpit is sited in a field just south of the mine and now surrounded by trees. The wheelpit survives intact. It is built into the slope of the hillside and is constructed in granite. It measures internally 19.1m long and 1.5m wide and 7m deep. The walling at the upper north end is flush with the ground surface but at the lower end the structure stands proud by 2.5m. It could have housed a backshot waterwheel of approximately 60ft (18.5m) diameter by a maximum of 4ft 6inches (1.4m) breast. The launder was raised on a set of piers (Pl.5) and conducted water from a leat which ran across the top of the spoil heaps and probably originated from the large rectangular earthwork reservoir to the north site (below). Fifteen metres south of the wheelpit was the portal of the tailrace. This is now blocked but an earthwork channel survives which conducted the used water down to the field boundary below. It then followed the field wall west before being released into the field below through a gap in the wall.
Attached to the east side of the wheelpit is a ruined building measuring 5.2m by 4.6m and standing in places to 4m high. This building almost certainly contained crushing rollers powered by the c.60ft wheel. Adjacent to the south side of the building is much evidence of dressing waste and some in-situ timber remains, probably associated with the processing apparatus.
North of the engine house are the low wall remains of a building. The building appears to have comprised two compartments though earthwork remains of the eastern end could represent a third. The most visible section measures 5.2m by 5.8m with a probable entrance on the south side. The secondary section on the west end is approximately 5.3m by 3.8m. An apparent revetted alleyway of 1.7m wide runs along the northern exterior of the building.
The hollowed interior and traces of walling from a building are built into the corner of an earthwork bank. The interior measurements are approximately 3.7m by 2.8m.
On the higher, flatter, northernmost sector of the site is a roughly rectangular earthwork. Although, like the wheelpit and crushing house, this feature receives little mention in any of the documentation, it was almost certainly constructed as reservoir to provide water for the c.60ft waterwheel. The earthwork measures 98m east to west by 50m. On the higher northern side and the east and west ends the capacity has been created by removing earth to create a hollow of 2.3m deep with a level base, but along the lower southern edge a bank or dam has been raised to a height of only 1.5m (see section). The surplus material has been dumped around the peripheries of the hollow and in four separate heaps on the south side. This bank has incorporated a former field boundary, masonry from which survives along some of the outer face. In the centre of the reservoir a circular portion of the ground has been left untouched and had a revetment placed around its diameter effectively creating an island. For what purpose this was intended is not known. The reservoir covers an area of approximately 4211m sq (excluding the island). The probable outlet was on the south-east corner where a gap in the bank is visible, which could have accommodated a sluice gate. Below this opening and attached to the exterior of the reservoir is a second, smaller earthwork with an area of 627m sq, which would also have been capable of holding water though whether that is for what it was intended is not known. The larger reservoir was breached in two places when a track was constructed through it after abandonment in 1872, but before 1885 when the track is depicted on the OS first edition 25" map.
Considering the mine has a recorded working period of around 20 years, the total quantity of dumped spoil is minimal. Although the main spoil dump, south of the engine house is impressive standing to a maximum height of approximately 5m and covering an area of approximately 1740m sq, it does not appear to represent great productivity at the mine, although some waste could have been disposed of in dead areas below ground. The dump, which has a level upper surface, consists of a solid concretion of blackish, shaley material. Weathering has caused the dump to begin breaking up at the southern end and some undermining on the south-east side leaving unstable overhanging edges.
A further large dump of waste material is to the far south of the site below the wheelpit. It measures 35m by 15m by 2m high and apparently consists of finer material which is likely to be the waste product from the crushing and refining processes housed in the building just above.
[Also cites Von Arx, Rolf 1995 'Vignette on Druid Mine in Devon' British Mining 55].

Ordnance Survey, 2013, MasterMap (Cartographic). SDV350786.

Druid Mine (disused) marked.

Historic England, 2024, Druid Mine, Ashburton application reference 1489734 (Correspondence). SDV365883.

Application to consider amending the list entry to include the ancillary structures remaining from the mine rejected at first assessment in February 2024. The additional structures are either late additions to the site or too ruinous to be considered for listing; original function not clear and architectural interest cannot be determined.

Sources / Further Reading

Associated Monuments

Associated Finds: none recorded

Associated Events

• EDV8596 - Druid Mine Survey (Ref: AI/8/2002)

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