Consolidated: "I don't go much on these museums..."
(Elderly St Just resident)
Steel construction with bedding plants and water piped from adjacent stream (fed by gravity)
Buddle: a cornish term for part of a mine processing site
The ore was sent to the centre of the pit and gravity graded it leaving the heavier ore at the centre. The brushes spread the ore to avoid channels being formed by the flowing water.
The buddles at Porthmear are of the convex type, which were introduced in the 1850s, which
corresponds to an increase in wealth from mining locally as shown by the rather grand (comparatively) new farmhouse at Porthmear up the Church Path above this valley. These buddles had circular pits with rotating brushes. This was the most common type of buddle, the earlier examples had wooden decking in the pit and later built ones left with a cement faced on concrete. The brushes were often made of heather, which was close to hand.
Porthmear Stamps was built on the site of two separate grist mills. The grist mills had a separate small holding associated with them, carved out from the main Bosigran field system. This had its own hamlet, the now derelict Mill Farm, made up of two fine pre-19th century single-story houses and outbuildings.
When the stamps were built here, most of the mine processing activity was moved from Porthmoina stamps, in the parallel valley leading down from Carn Galva on the other side of Bosigran tenement. The stream at Porthmoina is far less powerful and could not drive the heavy stamping mills needed.
The fountain in the buddle, placed at the stamps in 2008, is fed by gravity feed. 250m of water pipe extends from the buddle over the steep drop in the wheel pit, under the bridge and up stream to the second mill.
The buddle was ‘consolidated’ as part of the Objective One (European) funded St Just Area Heritage Regeneration Project.