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By 1800 the Cornish mining and quarrying industries
were consuming some 4000 barrels of gunpowder per annum, all of
which was manufactured outside Cornwall. The first gunpowder mill
within Cornwall was at Cosawes Wood, Ponsanooth, set up by
Nicholls and Gill in 1809; although small, its evident commercial
success was enough to encourage the Agent of the Foxes & Perran
Iron Founders, Benjamin Sampson, to establish a rival gunpowder
business at nearby Kennall Vale. Licences for gunpowder
manufacture were granted to Sampson in 1811 and the company
appears to have been very successful and soon expanded.
In 1844 its capacity was more than doubled when a
complete new works was built higher up the valley in
Roches Wood. The Kennall
Company had by this time taken over the Cosawes mills, and for
some time ran them alongside its own works; by 1870 they were in
use only for storage. Another addition to the factory in the 1850s
was a saltpetre refinery south of the main site. At its peak
c1875, the Kennall Gunpowder Company consisted of the original
works in Kennall Wood, including the Manager’s house, Sulphur
Mill, and workshops; the ‘new’ works in Roches Wood, higher up the
valley but continuous with the original; the farm below the main
works; the Saltpetre Refinery; the Magazines adjacent to the farm;
and the Charcoal Mill in Ponsanooth. In addition, the Company also
owned several cottages in the village.
Modification and elaboration of the factory to suit
changing demand and new processes continued through the latter
part of the nineteenth century, although by this time the demand
for gunpowder was in steep decline, owing to the collapse of
Cornish mining and the development of the new nitro-glycerine
based high explosives such as dynamite and gelignite. The
directors of the Kennall Company were all too aware of these
changed circumstances, and in 1889 established a new company to
manufacture high explosives at Hayle - the National Explosives
Company. The Kennall powder mills, now operating at greatly
reduced production levels, were sold in 1898 to the biggest
explosives making group in Britain, Curtis’s and Harvey. The new
owners appear to have used the works at Kennall for some time to
manufacture specialised types of cartridge and fuse powder, until
production ceased c1910. The site was leased by Cornwall Wildlife
Trust in 1985 for development as a nature reserve.
Kennall Vale represents the best-preserved
gunpowder works in south-west Britain. The quality of survival of
the site is excellent, the buildings having in the main been of
sturdy construction and the site not subjected to other uses
following its abandonment. The site is a scheduled monument and is
managed by Cornwall Wildlife Trust. |
