Beam engines in the United Kingdom

The Newcomen engine at the Elsecar Colliery in Yorkshire is on its original site. Others are to be found in the Science Museum, London, and in Dartmouth, the Devon birthplace of Thomas Newcomen. Later mine engines are to be found in situ at Hodbarrow Iron Mine, Cumbria (built by the Perran Foundry), Dorothea Slate Quarry, Caernarvon (built by Holman Brothers of Camborne) and Prestongrange Colliery. Kew Steam Museum, near London, was a pumping station that pumped water for public utilities. It contains important Cornish engines. Similar sites such as Crofton (where water was pumped to upper levels of the Kennet and Avon Canal) have other examples of beam engines, some of which were made in Cornish foundries. Beamish and Blist’s Hill at Ironbridge (Shropshire) and the Science Museum in London have important examples of ex situ beam engines.

The atmospheric engine invented by Devon-born Thomas Newcomen and installed at Dudley Colliery (West Midlands) in 1712 triggered changes in the Cornish mining industry that were to take it from an enterprise limited by what could be achieved using manpower, horse power and water power to a mechanised industry capable of large-scale and increasingly reliable production.

The engine at Great Wheal Vor (Breage), probably installed between 1710 and 1714, was the first such engine on a metal mine and can be taken as the beginning of the industrial revolution in Cornwall. This was not industrialisation in its economic and social sense but rather the establishment of the means to achieve industrialisation.

Added to this was the high consumption of coal necessary to keep the engines running continuously (a large engine might consume as much as 12 tons of coal per day - 80 mule loads - and worked at an incredibly low efficiency of 1%). Even on the larger mines these running costs were often so high that the engines would be taken out of service after only a short period of use, to be replaced with the water-wheel pumps which had preceded them.

Nevertheless by the time of Newcomen's death in 1729, his engines were helping to drain mines in Hungary, Sweden, France, Germany, Belgium and Spain. One had even been delivered to the port of Vera Cruz in Mexico but had never made it to the silver mines for which it was intended. In 1753-55 Josiah Hornblower erected the first beam engine in North America (New Jersey).

Despite work by the Yorkshire engineer John Smeaton which resulted in the doubling of the efficiency of the Newcomen engine, it was proving too fuel-hungry for most Cornish mines.

In 1778 however there were still over 70 Newcomen engines at work when Pryce stated Mr. Newcomen's invention of the fire engine enabled us to sink our mines to twice the depth we could formerly do by any other machinery. A

James Watt (1736-1819) invented the separate condenser in 1769 and in doing so created the first economic steam-powered engine. Not only were the new engines far more powerful than the old Newcomen engines but also their consumption of fuel was less than a third of the atmospheric engines.

In a region without its own coal, the invention was a breakthrough of immeasurable consequence. Boulton & Watt’s first engine in Cornwall was at the Chacewater Mine (later part of Wheal Busy, Chacewater) in 1778. Over the next four years 40% of the Boulton & Watt engines built were destined for Cornish mines.

What later became Consolidated Mines in Gwennap operated seven Newcomen engines in 1779 to keep the mine workings drained but had to cease working due to the crippling cost of firing them. The mines were subsequently acquired by another group of adventurers who erected five Boulton & Watt engines in 1780. These operated at a full third of the pumping cost in coal.

By 1783, 21 of the new engines were at work in the county with only one Newcomen engine still operating. By 1790 the number of Boulton & Watt engines working in the county had increased to 45 and by 1800 mines were able to attain depths of around 300m below adit. The era of the Newcomen engine was over. James Watt and Matthew Boulton were not slow to recognise that Cornwall in particular stood to benefit enormously from these efficient pumping engines.

Protected by Watt’s patent from 1776 they could profit from a market in engines that they controlled and encouraged. Boulton & Watt invested in a number of Cornish mines to encourage the adoption of their engines. Under the terms of the licensing agreement with the owner, mines could only use this new technology under an arrangement which returned to Boulton & Watt one third of the saving in coal gained by using their engine rather than an atmospheric of equivalent power – an equation which was prone to dispute and interpretation.

Richard Trevithick (1771-1833) of Camborne, is Cornwall’s most famous engineer. He is accredited with the introduction of high-pressure steam and a series of historic innovations. James Watt distrusted high-pressure steam. He recognised the potential both for wear and tear due to harder working, and for catastrophic explosions in poorly-maintained boilers and engines. Trevithick, by contrast, recognised it as the way ahead; the key to the development of much faster, more powerful, and portable engines.

The Cornish engine was adopted not only by Cornish and overseas mines but, from 1837, by the new waterworks being constructed to service Britain’s rapidly-growing towns and cities. Cornwall and West Devon foundries expanded to meet the growing demand. They benefited from being in close contact with their market and rapidly became leaders in engine-building technology, supply and the erection on site wherever in the world the topography and depth of workings required them.

Trevithick’s first high-pressure engine was erected at Stray Park (latterly a section of Dolcoath Mine) in 1800 and incorporated a series of radical improvements. It worked perfectly from the beginning, clearly implying that the engine had been under development for some time. Trevithick’s influence on mine engines was considerable, particularly following the introduction of his high-pressure ‘Cornish’ boiler which allowed safe, high working pressures. An important legacy however lay in the potential for small, powerful, self-contained engines, particularly in the field of self-propelled transport.

Trevithick’s work laid the foundation for the development of the steam locomotive, the steam ship, the portable engine, the traction engine and the steam car and lorry, for many of which he built prototypes. The development of efficient