Tony Lopez

Wheal Emma and Brookwood are abandoned copper mines whose remains are located near Buckfastleigh, within the Dartmoor National Park, an area with a long history of widespread industrial activity. From this one locality, in the second half of the nineteenth century, more than thirty thousand tons of copper ore were raised, processed, and shipped for smelting. In 1859, in order to stabilize and increase the power supply, Wheal Emma Leat (a fifteen-mile-long channel) was cut across moorland and around woodland valleys to transport water from the River Swincombe and to feed the mines by supplementing the Mardle, a tributary of the Dart. Some of this now empty moorland waterway can be walked today on Dartmoor. I am grateful to Kevin and Donna Cox, owners of the Brook Manor estate, for showing my collaborator, Ignacio Acosta , and me over the remains of mine workings on their land. Widening the plug doorway on the bob wall left no surface evidence. The Mardle has a floodplain fair and wide. Material would have been trammed directly, although blacked ochreous water flows freely from the collapsed portal. Humphrey kept Kevin back when we went into the near horizontal dark adit stooped at the panic shaft. In Brook Wood at the combe head is a small killas quarry predating all three setts. Rent was paid to the Brook Wood adventurers. Three areas of dumping partially covered this crumbled masonry within woodland of varying density just south of the tarmac road. Yet a leat is depicted on the 1886 OS map channeled entirely in a raised wooden aqueduct. Wheal Emma Leat, 2017, by Ignacio Acosta. Engine House, 2017, by Ignacio Acosta. Then buildings fall into decay where ivy and tree growth have taken hold. The silted channel follows the contour round hills and combes using the best-fit method to Wheal Emma sett. Whereas conifer scrub and dense patches of rhododendron are seen quite late in the sequence. All 99 stations were used and having passed over the wheel water may have been diverted. The long wheelhouse sides are not straight but slightly kinked to provide for a dished 60-ft wheel over an arched tailrace exit at floor level. In this same evening were those people engaged to feast on roast beef and strong ale nearby. Within the valley of the holy brook the mines are situated near Buckfastleigh, crushed ores are hauled for the South Wales copper smelters, Alfred Jenkin their agent in Cornwall. Over and over had they been in the heaven of expectation finding the ore ground pitched eastward; those who gambled their lives in swift currents and dark treacherous pools. Granting two properties as one sett at a royalty of 1/24 together with fine machinery, wheels, a beam engine, and water privileges. One hundred and twenty- five workers being then separated only by a small transverse valley. The flat rods moved off so quietly that those not looking were unconscious of their being in motion. Steam was employed only at limited scale. Emma, 116 fathoms below adit, pumping backed-up water for life itself: men cutting lode in fume- and dust-ridden air or crushing with hand tools, spalling, cobbing, came our tramroad to harbor direct in Totnes and thence by sea to Neath — no more windlass or horse-whim turning. What you see here is the dressing floor. Their Phoenician purple dye — their copper with fifteen percent Cornish tin. Remember when a solid solution of metal elements was defined by ecstatic bonding. Water poured over its surface producing hydrogen gas. The new material is stable and ready for use but scaled-up production could fuel cannibal drones. Tailrace, 2017, by Ignacio Acosta. Green Pool, 2017, by Ignacio Acosta. We love the color and the stillness. Nothing would live in this water now at the base of a spoil heap two stories high. Worm casts and broadly scattered pits are laminated onto a non-conductive substrate. This is the green pool: a water soak away made from glass epoxy. They are brown and green like uneven flat loaves and the museum label reads tortas de cobre . Moss grows on anything like black flame retardant mechanically supports and electrically connects — the fenced-off shaft protecting the river from what leaches out between sea-borne traders. At these horizons the levels were extended over 330 fathoms. Small groups of self-employed miners and their families continued to migrate. Here was alluvial gold mixed with sand and gravel, producing more than 14 heads of stamps were capable of crushing. Composed of quartz, peach, and gossan with black and yellow copper letting down a stream of mineralized water. For in much of this section the leat had been cut from solid rock. A stone-lined sluice is just visible. 4,000 shares on the cost book system, streamworks in eluvial ground, 5 shillings each deposit. Nothing but a washing strake such as we use, commodified and priced both minerals since the Bronze Age in West Devon, in Cornwall beneath a layer of black sand. An adit is also brought home to the spot from below: narrow tailings in steep profile cast every shovel full as it rises into a tye. £40,000 worth of copper ore from above the 50-fathom level. Water breaks up the soil, exposing mere threads of land, linear strips cut into channels called races dug across the ground to be worked, removing the overburden.