Gomm Archives - Explore Cornwall https://explorecornwall.org/tag/gomm/ & The Cornish Abroad Sat, 21 Nov 2020 09:33:05 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://explorecornwall.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/cropped-Explore-Cornwall-Colourless-32x32.png Gomm Archives - Explore Cornwall https://explorecornwall.org/tag/gomm/ 32 32 164779662 Gomm China Clay Works https://explorecornwall.org/gomm-china-clay-works/ Wed, 12 Aug 2020 17:22:05 +0000 https://explorecornwall.org/?p=3965 Hidden in the woodland surrounding the Wheal Martyn site sits the engine house belonging to the former Gomm China Clay Works.  Little information remains about […]

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Hidden in the woodland surrounding the Wheal Martyn site sits the engine house belonging to the former Gomm China Clay Works. 

Little information remains about this site, being one of the least successful of the Martyn Brothers ventures. They got their lease from the Mount Edgecombe Estate in 1878. The Gomm China Clay pit opened in the same year. 

Work stopped work in the 1920’s with the pit closure, which was flooded in 1934. The area is now incorporated in the Wheal Martyn Museum site and partly by Imery’s China Clay Works. 

There are several features from the original mine still hanging around, although many have been incorporated into the Wheal Martyn cafe and shop. The front entrance of the museum was once the mines workshops, kin pan, linhay, settling tanks, furnace room and its chimney still stands. The only engine house was built in 1878 for a 22 or 24″ rotative engine which would have pumped slurry. Its former boiler house and chimney haven’t survived. Closer to the museum is the scant remains of a whim engine; this would have been a wooden building with a galvanised roof, with only the machinery scattered around the site remaining today. 

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