Hexworthy, Devon. The mines at Ringleshuttes and Hooten Wheals.
OS Grid Ref: SX670718

This is a circular walk of about 6.5 miles from the car park at Combestone Tor, it does not take in any steep climbs or difficult ground and is mostly dry underfoot. Combestone Tor itself sits on a steep hillside above the River Dart. From on top of the tor there are excellent views of the river valley and there are numerous rock basins up to 0.5m diameter dotted about.

Cross the road heading almost due south following the clear, broad track up the shallow hillside and when this forks after just a few 100m bear to the left towards Horn’s Cross (SX669710), which should be easily visible. After the cross keep on due south across the open moor as this will lead around the top of the marshy ground and springs at the head of one of the streams that drains into Venford Reservoir, which should be coming in to view in the valley below. However, from the springs (SX671704) a well-worn path leads up the far hillside to where it intersects with the gravelled surface of a more substantial track (SX677701).

Ahead and all down the valley are the streaming works, comprising a series of shallow and narrow cuts and rock dumps that fan out slightly as they head up the hillside. At this point, visible on aerial photos is a straight gulley leading downhill to the lower streaming works, which was a tramway bed to the lower dressing floors. However, follow the track to the right and this leads to the ruin of the chimney (SX675698) and the beginning of the mine proper.



Dines spares only a few lines for these extensive works; noting that they follow a series of more or less east-west trending lodes, there is no record of underground works and no record of output. However, the operation must have been sufficiently extensive and long lived to warrant the erection of a chimney and engine house, though all that now remains of this is the base and a long thin finger of grassed over rubble, a victim of gunnery practice during the Second World War. Right beside the chimney is the head of a shaft and just beyond that a level space possibly marking dressing floors.

Of the excavations, a shallow trench climbs the hillside to the east. However this is very much dwarfed by the excavation on main lode that begins at the chimney and cuts the hillside to the west for about 100 metres. It is, in places, maybe 10m deep and 20m wide. Numerous rock dumps amongst which 2 types of cassiterite tin ore can be found top the flanks of the cutting. Some occurs as the black cassiterite crystals typical of Dartmoor, dispersed or as thin veins in either quartz or the dark grey-green peach rock matrix. The second form occurs as reddish coloured microcrystalline deposits mostly interspersed in quartz, sometimes with scattered black crystals and identifiable principally because of the extra weight that it gives pieces of the dump material.

To the south of main lode is a second open work though this is shallower and a little longer than its neighbour. Further south still is another shallow open work that boarders the Sandy Way track.

The excavation on main lode stops abruptly at a shaft collar but the course of the lode is marked at surface by numerous costean pits and shallow mounds around larger pits. The lode is soon exposed again in another extensive trench, wider but less deep than before but similarly of about 100m in length.



From the head of the open works at the top of the hillside continue heading just slightly north of due west along the northern slope of Holne Ridge towards the head of Skir Gut and the spring that is the source of the O Brook (SX649700).

The head of the Skir Gut is streaming works is marked by a flooded pit and banked mounds of spoil that was once the collar of Skir Shaft. This has been flooded by the immediately adjacent spring, which spills out of the pond as a stream and which rapidly builds in volume and heads about due north. Just south of the shaft the open work is crossed at almost 90 degrees by another cutting, the line of which points, possibly coincidentally, to the works at Hooten Wheals a kilometer away northeast. Skir works is initially spread quite widely over the moor but soon narrows to a thin cutting about 15m across and 5m deep and then ends abruptly at a number of rock dumps where the ground levels out slightly.

At the lower end of the openworks the O Brook begins to turn slightly east. It runs on for about ½ a kilometer with sporadic streaming before before looping round southward at Skir Ford. From here along its course down to the Henroost it has been increasingly streamed so that at the Henroost the channel is about 50m wide, scattered with mounds and dry channels flanked by a high bank to the south and the gentle slope of the hillside on the north.

Approached from the open moor the Henroost (SX650710).appears initially only as a number of mounds and shallow trenches. Head downhill, keeping to the right (east) and the works quickly deepen making a trench up to 10m wide and 10m deep and maybe 100m in length with in places solid, vertical rock walls. Where it shallows out is the collar of Air Shaft. The collar of Taylor’s Shaft is about 50m further down the cutting and is fenced off with a large tree growing from it. For a time ore for processing was brought to the Henroost from Hooten Wheals and the bed of the tramway ends right by Air Shaft though there seems to be no remaining evidence of a processing plant.


Below Taylor’s Shaft the Henroost widens out into a series of rock mounds and channels typical of streaming before fanning out into the O Brook. From this point on down to Hooten Wheals the O Brook has been extensively streamed. There is however little to see so it is more interesting to follow the bed of the tramway, as it strikes due east from Air Shaft and steeply down towards Hooten Wheals.

The tramway is initially dry, about 2m wide and set between banks about 1m high. It then crossed a small stream running in a culvert formed from 5 or 6 large granite blocks, however this culvert is now blocked and the stream runs down the tramway to a second larger granite block bridge. From here a leat about 1m wide and 1.5m deep cuts off to the right (southeast) of the tramway following the contour of the hill all the way to Hooten Wheals. It ends on the edge of one of the open works where the open works meets the tram track. It is probable that from this point the leat was carried by a launder across the tram track to the water wheel that once stood beside the track on the downslope side. The wheelpit is fenced off and overgrown but the point at which the tailrace exited can still be seen.

Meanwhile, from the beginning of the leat the tramway levels off somewhat and follows the south side of the valley below the leat. There is a fork to the north, which crosses the brook on a clapper bridge, and leads to the lower works of which more later.



At the point where the leat took to the afore mentioned launder the tramway crosses the outflow from a drainage adit which is blocked by a large slab of granite, and leads directly on to the lowest level of the Hooten Wheals processing plant (SX657706) just beyond another dry culvert. The processing plant is on 3 levels, each level being about 1.5m above the previous. The lowest level was partly in and part out of a large shed, now gone, of which, there is a line drawing in Richardson’s book. Within the shed area are 2 circular buddles with concrete pans probably dating only to the period when there was an attempt to restart the works prior to the First World War. The buddles still contain a layer of light grey stamps sand, which yields small quantities of fine orange-gold cassiterite when panned, though this is made difficult by the abundant flakes of shrapnel from the time when the works was demolished by gunnery practice in advance of the D-Day landings in 1944. Outside, the level runs out from the shed area in a stepped, grassed over dump.



The middle level is an open flat concrete space between walls. The floor is set with a number of ½ inch thick bolts which once anchored jigging tables. The upper level is similarly set but with 1 inch thick bolts to anchor heads of stamps. Only ½ this level ever housed stamps the remainder was provided as space for additional heads should they be required but is now heavily overgrown with reeds.

Above the processing plant are 3 finger dumps. Between the eastern 2 dumps is a wider space, through which flat rods once ran, enclosing a shallow rock dump leading back to Low’s shaft. Besides Low’s shaft collar is a bob pit and behind it the ruined engine house and offices. From Low’s shaft running outside the westernmost dump back to the tramway and drainage adit is an open gunnis. In the other direction from Low’s shaft this gunnis continues for about 400m up the hillside with at about 50m another shaft and at about 100m it is cut at 90 degrees by another short gunnis.

Cassiterite can occasionally be found in the dumps as black crystals disseminated in the grey peach rock matrix.




To complete the walk, retrace the tramway to the bridge across the O Brook and follow the track. This passes a demolished office building behind which, at a distance, was the powder house. Take the track that forks downhill to the right. This crosses a leat, which opens out on the left of the track into a reservoir. From this reservoir a launder ran along the high bank ahead, onto a raised launder and on to the waterwheel off to the right. Richardson mentions the existence of ring bolts set into granite blocks to hold guy ropes for the launder but these have now disappeared under the grass. Similarly the wheelpit is now overgrown with trees (though a rotting wooden notice says that it was restored in 1989). A second launder bank and wheelpit to the right are also heavily overgrown.

Beside the main wheelpit is a level area surrounded in part by a ruined wall, which once enclosed buddles and a dressing floor. Between this and the brook a pine tree marks a large dump and on the far side of the brook streaming works run high up onto the ridge.

Cross over to the right-hand bank of the brook and follow it downstream avoiding the much wetter ground on the other bank. After a short distance the Wheal Emma leat discharges from the brook and from here it is a pleasant, flat and slightly downhill walk back to the road. Turn up the hill and within a few 100m is Combestone Tor.

Refs:
1. Dines, H.G., 1956, The Metalliferous Mining Region of South-West England, 1994 reprint.
2. Richardson, P.H.G., 1992, Mines of Dartmoor and the Tamar Valley after 1913, British Mining vol 44.

© Chris Popham, Aug, 2007.