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MORSYLLACORNWALL COTTAGELAMORNA COVENear Penzance Holiday Let Cottage WEST CORNWALL COTTAGE(WEST PENWITH) |
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ContentsView from the front of the cottage Historical Notes of Lamorna
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The Lamorna Granite Quarries West Cornwall
The
Granite Quarries The
history of Cornish granite quarrying is inextricably
linked to the Freeman family. In
the late 1700's John Freeman (Snr), a stone merchant,
had a yard on the Thames Embankment at Millbank
in London. In 1808 John Freeman died leaving the
business to be run by his widow Sarah. His two sons
John and William were born in 1796 and 1800. They
also occupied a wharf at City Rd Canal Basin and by
1841 they had acquired further London sites at
Deptford and Millwall. The
earliest information about the company comes from an
entry in a directory in 1829
where they are listed as Stone and Marble
Merchants at Millbank and Yorkshire Stone Merchants at
City Rd Canal Basin. In
an entry in The Times in 1833, they are reported as
shipping granite from Peterhead, in Northern Scotland,
to their Thameside, Millwall Depot in London. William
who eventually lost his eyesight remained at Millbank
running the company whilst his brother John became
increasingly mobile gaining contacts and sourcing
stone. In
1848 they were reported in The Builder as importing
'considerable quantities of large blocks of stone from
Caen (Normand, France) for some years past'. As
the demand for stone increased they began to operate
quarries themselves. In
1839 they were working a magnesium limestone quarry at
Huddlestone in Yorkshire and by 1856, according to an
entry in Mineral Statistics of the United Kingdom and
Ireland in 1856, they had taken over the operation of
four quarries, for whom they were initially agents for
Portland Limestone, at Castle King, Barrow, Trade and
Vern Street Quarries. Their involvement in these
quarries ceased in about 1861 when William George,
John's son, who had been managing the quarries
moved to the base they had set up at Penryn in
Cornwall near Falmouth. It
is worth mentioning at this point that Freeman &
Co. were either buying or quarrying stone to fulfill
orders. At this time finance does not seem to have
been a problem for quarry operators who took little if
any financial risk. They leased the quarries usually
on payment against stone mined to order. They employed
very few workers directly, paying 'gangers' a rate for
the extraction of stone to then be distributed amongst
his team. The extraction and dressing of stone was a
manual activity with workers providing their own
tools. No pensions or sick benefits to worry about. When
they finished with a quarry they just packed their
bags and left, leaving behind whatever mess they had
created and of course had no redundancy payments to
worry about. During this time, in 1840, Freeman & Co. obtained a contract to obtain and superintend the supply of granite for the new Keyham Steam basin at Devonport Dockyard. The Harbour The
opening of the west quarry did bring one benefit, the
harbour. The intention was apparently to ship the
granite quarried, probably from the West Quarry, from
the stone quay . This avoided dragging the stone
across to the metal pier which was anyhow owned by
Lord St Levan. However
Lamorna had a bad record of ships being unable to load
because of frequent high seas, especially when the
wind blows from the south east, and it seems that
Thomas Paynter also constructed the road so that stone
might travel by land to Penzance dock. Imagine,
however, going down Paul Hill, into Newlyn, with a
wagon drawn by a team of six horses, ‘drag’ chains
through the rear wheels so that they would lock and
drag, and loaded with a massive weight of granite. As
a cubic yard of granite weighs approximately three
tons, the journey must have concentrated the mind of
the driver more than somewhat. It would appear that part of the plan of Thomas Paynter was to develop Lamorna as an active fishing harbour and at the time that the harbour was being built the row of single story cottages were intended for fishermen. In the front would have been the fishing lofts and at the rear the living accomodation. All, it is suggested, were part of the general scheme based on the potentialities of the western quarry. It may be significant or not that in 1892 Captain Thomas Paynter bought the foreshore to the west of the quay around to the stream from HRH. The Prince of Wales, for £75. This might indicate that the quay was built at that time by him or his lessees over the ground that he had acquired. Tom Paynter, his nephew, reported that when Captain Owen died the work was stopped. The granite in all the quarries, except for that at Sheffield, was found to be inferior to that of other quarries further east towards Falmouth. The plans were disguarded and the cottages extended to two stories by Col. Paynter who then rented them off. |