New Consols (New Great Consols; New Wheal Martha; Great Wheal Martha; Wheal Martha), Luckett, Callington, Stokeclimsland, Cornwall, England, UKi

Regional Level Types
New Consols (New Great Consols; New Wheal Martha; Great Wheal Martha; Wheal Martha)	Mine
Luckett	- not defined -
Callington	- not defined -
Stokeclimsland	Village
Cornwall	County
England	Constituent Country
UK	Country

Worked a complex lode carrying copper, arsenic, silver, wolfram, tin, and pyrite, intermittently over many years and under a variety of names. Wheal Martha (1836), Great Wheal Martha (1844-49), New Wheal Martha (1861), and in combination with other adjoining properties, New Great Consols (1867) and finally New Consols.

Kingsbury, A.W.G. (1966) Sir Arthur Russell. Mineralogical Magazine, vol. 35, n° 273, 673-677:

"In 1946, just after the end of the Second World War, an attempt was made to re-open the old mine of Wheal Martha, later known as New Consols, Luckett, near Callington, Cornwall. The mine suffered many setbacks after the reopening, and though, at one stage, Russell was called in to advise and became associated with it for a short time, the venture, as he himself had feared, proved abortive, and the mine was abandoned in 1952."

The site is roughly square in plan with a row of at least 7 calciners occupying an horizontal along the slope about 1/3 of the way up from the river to the top off the site. The lower part of the site is a large crushed (and burnt?) dump of sand. A smaller sand dump lies at the eastern end of the run of calciners and upslope of that is a building that was either a crusher or a winding house for what may be a shaft. To the east of the 'crusher' is a bank of ore and remnants of what were no doubt ore bins.

The woodland above the calciners hides a maze of flues and at the top of the site a chimney stack is tucked amongst the trees beside the public footpath (though all the site seems to be open access). A further area of woodland extends up the hillside and the signs imply there must be shafts or open works but it is very heavily overgrown.

In the middle of the site is a large 'barn', tall enough to be 2 stories, but it is firmly boarded shut, with one high window in a rather unstable looking wall showing the rafters. Despite its dereliction it has a seemingly modern roof of profiled metal sheets. April 2023.

Geochronology

Geologic Time				Rocks, Minerals and Events
Phanerozoic
	Paleozoic
		Permian
			Guadalupian	ⓘ Major polymetallic mineralization ~270 Ma Cornwall, England, UK
			Cisuralian	ⓘ Porphyry dikes intruded (latest age) ~275 Ma Cornwall, England, UK ⓘ Greisenization (latest age) ~280 Ma Cornwall, England, UK ⓘ Porphyry dikes intruded (earliest age) ~280 Ma Cornwall, England, UK ⓘ Formation of metallized pegmatites ~285 Ma Cornwall, England, UK ⓘ Greisenization (earliest age) ~285 Ma Cornwall, England, UK ⓘ Emplacement of major plutons ~295 Ma Cornwall, England, UK

Localities in this Region

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References