Wheal Exmouth is located about 5 minutes off the A38 expressway at Chudleigh and is found by following the brown tourist signs to Canonteign House and Falls, however, do not take the side road to the house but carry on the main road for a further ½ km. The tips straddle the B3193 road just before the golf course and cannot easily be missed. There is parking beside the road and a public footpath runs from the road to the engine house, no more than ½ km, making this an ideal spot for a quick stop.



Mining at Wheal Exmouth clearly date back to before 1853 when it incorporated Wheal Adams which had itself been in operation since 1810. Exmouth worked 2 N-S lodes underlying 10 E, 15 fathoms apart at surface but converging at depth, extensions of the lodes were worked independently as Frankmills mine. The lodes were worked to 84 fathoms below adit (river level) and 275 fathoms north and 100 fathoms south of Canonteign Shaft, almost 700m in all. The eastern lode was more productive yielding galena and sphalerite along with uneconomic quantities of other metal sulphides and barite below the 40 fathom level. 2 grades of argentiferous ore were produced on the basis of their lead content, both said to yield approximately 10oz per ton of silver. Closed around 1875 the production ran to 11 500 tons of lead ore and 120 000 ounces of silver.

In the present day a fairly substantial grey-white tip of crushed killas is deposited between the road and the Teign River. The killas is for the most part very soft metamorphosed culm shale and breaks easily into thin, pliable flakes. The tips on the uphill side of the road are held back by a low wall and can be seen stretching back up the shallow rise to a brake of trees approximately 50m distant. These tips it should be noted are oriented east to west, so do not follow the lodes and further they are too far to the east to straddle the lodes. They were presumably given this arrangement to exploit the small stream that runs through the tips and to facilitate easy removal of ore along the riverside road. The stream and has now been channeled off to the left in a concrete sluice to a culvert under the road. Beside the culvert there is a wooden farm gate and the start of the public footpath.



These tips are again made up of the same soft grey crushed killas though there are harder pieces too and strewn liberally over the surface are flat blades and rough pieces of creamy white barite along with rough white rock forming quartz. The stream has a distinct green colouration, paritularly obvious where it flows in the concrete channel, reminiscent of the copper laden streams at Brookwood Mine near Buckfastleigh or at Gawton near Morwellham. However, testing the water reveals only a trace of copper but a larger quantity of dissolved arsenic. Looking back towards the road the bottom of the pairs of wooden posts that supported an aerial ropeway, leaning slightly towards each other, can be seen on both sides of the road.



Above this first stretch of tips it is necessary to pass a marshy area by leaving the footpath and walking for a few paces in the woods to the side. The next middle section of tips is made up of a couple of mounds of crush rock heaped to one side between wooden planking as though in storage bins. There is then another marshy section which must be skirted on the left-hand side but this has the good fortune of revealing the ruined walls of a small building and a slightly sunken open area that may well be a shaft collar.

The final upper section of tips is much more substantial. On the left is a modest tip of orange coloured sand and on the right a much higher tip which stretches away up the hillside. The line of the workings continues in a shallow valley between the tips and opens onto a level space backed by an earth bank. On top the bank is another level area, now part of a garden but backed by a wall of massive granite blocks. The footpath skirts the right-hand tip following the line of a fence before climbing through trees to the top of the tip. This tip contains the lead ore galena, sphalertite (zinc ore), arsenopyrite (iron-arsenic ore) iron pyrite and very small traces of copper minerals such as linarite; a lead-copper sulphate. Tests on clean galena samples show they are contaminated with readily detectable quantities of copper but are without silver.



At the top of the tip the footpath emerges onto the gravel drive for a run of mine cottages right besides a disconcerting sign warning against the arsenic content of the tips. The engine house stands in the garden on the left where the footpath joins the small road and must surely mark the collar of Canonteign Shaft.

Visiting Wheal Exmouth is worthwhile for no other reason than to see this magnificently restored, 3 storey engine house, now a private home. From the footpath the bob wall can be seen. The opening where the arm of the beam engine would have projected has been filled with a window and a wooden balcony added. The road curves around the building passing a small chimney with ornate corbels. The front of the house is equally magnificent with large windows in the granite façade. But beside the house stands a unique chimney. It is octagonal, the corner stones shaped in faced granite, the faces in rough hewn stone to mimic the build of the engine house. Sadly the top has been lost but it still an impressive piece.




Refs: Dines H.G. (1956) The Matalliferous Mining Region of South-West England. HMSO.
Stafford Clark (1995) Mining & Quarrying in the Teign Valley. Orchard Publications.