SURFERS AND INDUSTRIAL archaeologists will be familiar with the small village of Porthtowan on the north facing coast of Cornwall. It has a magnificent beach from which one can watch or immerse oneself in the glorious foam crested rollers. The name of the village derives from the Cornish ‘Porthtewyn’, which means ‘landing place at the sand dunes’. The road from the major A30 highway to Porthtowan passes through a wild landscape that resulted from intensive mining activity in the distant past.
An engine house
The terrain through which the road winds its way is dotted with the ruined remains of industrial buildings: engine houses for mines and chimneys of the former foundries and other processing plants. Most of these relics are recognisable but in a dilapidated state. However, we passed on of them, which has been beautifully restored, and converted into guest accommodation.
Tin mining in Cornwall ‘took off’ in earnest in the 16th century. During the 18th and 19th centuries, deep mining for tin and copper was a major activity in the county. Mining of arsenic was added to this, and for a while in the late 19th century, Cornwall was a major supplier of this for the world. The engine houses that dotted the landscape housed steam operated pumping engines that allowed mines to be dug deeper than before.
Today, mining in Cornwall has declined. However, it might pick up now that valuable deposits of lithium containing ore are beginning to be found. The landscape through which we drove to Porthtowan is now protected from development by having become part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2006.
METHODISM BECAME SUCCESSFUL in the county of Cornwall. Although I do not pretend to understand this branch of Christianity in any detail, I was curious to know why it had such a great appeal for the Cornish people. Apart from the great number of Methodist chapels one passes when travelling through Cornwall, there were several places associated with Methodism that sparked my interest. I will write about these after discussing why the branch of Christianity, founded by John Wesley (1703-1791), his brother Charles Wesley (1707-1788), and George Whitefield (1714-1770), was so widely accepted by the Cornish.
Most Methodists believe that Jesus Christ died for all of humanity, and that salvation can be achieved by everyone. This is in contrast to the Calvinist belief that God has pre-ordained the salvation of only a select group of people. Whitefield held the Calvinist position, but the Wesley brothers believed that all could be saved. Part of the appeal of Wesleyan Methodism in Cornwall was that it did not select those who could be saved from those who could not – everybody was eligible for salvation.
“The 18th century Anglican Church had greater concern for ensuring the support of wealthy and influential families rather than the poor agricultural labourers and miners that made up the vast majority of the Cornish population.”
Furthermore:
“The running of parishes were often ‘subcontracted out’ to curates and churchwardens with the clergy occupied in the major parishes and centres of religious influence. Some parishes were very large with the people spread thinly, only limited numbers living in the historic churchtowns surrounding the medieval churches. During the 18th century growth in mining, settlements gradually grew up around the sites of major mining activities leading to new villages and small, towns.”
These new settlements were often distant from the established Anglican churches, and travelling about the county was far from easy back in the 18th century. The rise in industrial activity along with the corruption of the Anglican church in Cornwall, and the economic uncertainties caused by the fluctuations in the world’s prices for what was being mined by impoverished Cornish workers with large families, left a spiritual void that preachers like John Wesley helped to fill.
But what did John Wesley and Methodism have to offer the Cornish, and to gain them as followers? To start with, Methodism as practised by Wesley did not exclude anyone from gaining salvation. A reasonable sounding explanation for the appeal of Methodism to the Cornish miners and their families was provided by the historian David Luker:
“According to Luker, for the poor Methodism did not principally legitimate ‘respectable’ or middle class values; it legitimated the morality and structures of ‘traditional’ Cornish society. It upheld and validated the cottage as a socio-economic unit in the face of the changes being wreaked by an external modernity. This role is perhaps underlined by the fact that the majority of those who joined early Methodist societies in Cornwall were women. Overall, Methodism appealed to a conservatism of the commons, seemingly justifying a way of life increasingly under pressure from economic change, just as the rituals of the Anglican church appealed to the conservatism of the propertied classes. This is why Methodism grew earliest and fastest in those districts where mining was present, in large parishes, in areas of dispersed settlement out of the reach of a socially enfeebled gentry, and in ‘unimproved’ agricultural districts.” (https://bernarddeacon.com/cornish-methodism-or-methodism-in-cornwall/the-causes-of-methodist-growth/).
Cornwall was one of the counties of England that gave Methodism its greatest acceptance.
John Wesley discovered that the Cornish enjoyed hearing him (and other preachers) in the open-air. I am not sure the reason for this. During a visit to the small Cornish town of Indian Queens, we came across a ‘preaching pit’ (see https://adam-yamey-writes.com/2024/07/03/indian-queens-in-the-heart-of-cornwall/). Because mining activity undermined the land above it, occasionally the surface would collapse causing depressions, rather like quarries, in the landscape. At Indian Queens, one such hollow was remodelled to make it into an outdoor amphitheatre with tiered rows upon which people could stand or sit whilst they listened to a preacher speaking from a stone pulpit. While we were visiting this ‘pit’, a local historian told us about other surviving pits in Cornwall, at: St Newlyn East, Whitemoor, Tregonnig Hill, and Gwennap.
The pit at Gwennap (near Redruth) is one of the most interesting places we have visited in Cornwall. It is an inverted cone with circular tiers of seating cut into its side. Grass grows on the seating and the surface surrounding the pit. Almost perfectly geometrical, it rivals some of the stone stepwells I have seen in India. The present pit was constructed in early 1807, and is still used to hold Methodist services occasionally. What exists today is a remodelling of an earlier depression in the ground which John Wesley described (in September 1766) as being:
“… a round, green hollow, gently shelving down, about fifty feet deep; but I suppose it is two hundred one way, and near three hundred the other.”
He added that he considered it to be the finest natural amphitheatre in England. People gathered within it and around its edges, and because of its shape and acoustics, Wesley’s voice could be heard by the multitudes (often thousands of people) who had come to hear him. John Wesley made 18 visits to Gwennap Pit between 1762 and 1789. He used to stand just below the outer rim of the pit, and could be heard clearly by those within the pit and those around it, even some distance away. In his diary, he noted that on the 27th of August 1780:
“It was supposed twenty thousand people were assembled at the amphitheatre at Gwennap. And yet all, I was informed, could hear me distinctly, in the fair, calm evening”
Although the size of the congregations might not have been estimated accurately, there is no doubt that they were large and because of the acoustics of the pit, they were able to hear Wesley even if they were quite a distance from him.
WIGAN PIER WAS made famous by the author George Orwell, who published his “The Road to Wigan Pier” in 1936. Recently, we were staying in Widnes (Cheshire), which is not far from Wigan, a town that was in Lancashire when Orwell wrote his book. So, we decided to see Wigan Pier for ourselves.
A quick glance at a map reveals that Wigan is not on the sea, which is where most piers are to be found. The town is inland, and the so-called Wigan Pier is neither a pier nor on the seaside. It is on a part of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal in central Wigan. It was originally a landing stage where locally mined coal was loaded onto barges.
“…not long after leaving Wallgate Station, an excursion train from Wigan to Southport, was delayed on the outskirts of Wigan and passengers saw a long wooden structure that reminded them of Southport Pier. This structure would have been the 1,050 yard long wooden gantry … It was built in the late 1880s and carried a double line of rails from Lamb and Moore’s Newtown Colliery high across the River Douglas, the canal and the Wigan to Southport Railway line, to Meadows Colliery by Frog Lane … It certainly would have been easy to see this wooden gantry from a train heading towards Southport.”
I cannot say whether or not this is the true origin of the name, but it is a good story.
We took a road to Wigan Pier and after going around the town’s one-way system and several roundabouts, passing a huge Asda store a couple of times, we arrived at a series of old warehouses labelled Wigan Pier, and parked next to the canal. The Orwell visitor centre, which we were led to believe existed, is no more. A passer-by, with whom we chatted, told us that any memorials to Orwell and his book had disappeared a few years ago. Likewise, the collieries: these have been closed down long ago. Where they were there are housing estates, factories, and shops.
The warehouses close to where the coal used to be loaded many years ago, were inaccessible. They are being redeveloped to create a leisure ‘hub’. This will include (according to hoardings surrounding the old buildings): a beer tap house; conferences; live music; canal tours; festivals; a food hall; and an ‘artisan deli’. I am not sure what is meant by an artisan deli, but whatever it is, I am sure that should George Orwell ever make his way back along the road to Wigan Pier, he would be truly astonished by it.
A SOLITARY CHIMNEY stands in the middle of East Harptree Woods in the Mendip Hills of Somerset, not far from Bristol and Bath. This tall, not quite vertical, chimney and the surrounding uneven landscape is all that remains of the local tin and zinc mining activities in the area. Known as Smitham Chimney, this was built in the 19th century and was the exhaust for the toxic fumes created by the furnaces smelting lead-bearing materials. The unevenness of the surrounding area, now richly populated with a variety of trees, was caused by the pits and spoil heaps created during the era of mining activity. The chimney was built in 1867 and by 1870, the East Harptree Lead Works Co Ltd were producing about 1000 tons of lead per year (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smitham_Chimney,_East_Harptree).
Smitham Chimney
Today, the chimney stands amongst a fine collection of trees including conifers and birches, all growing in a sea of ferns and other bushes. Much of the woodland is mossy. Maintained by Forestry England, the Mendip Society, and Somerset County Council, the woodland has good, fairly level paths, easy on the feet. The place and its industrial archaeological feature make for a pleasant and interesting short excursion.
yamey 