Geevor Tin Mine Gallery 5: This series of images looks at the interiors of offices and some of the buildings. I was so fortunate to gain access to these before they were opened to the general public.
Once again Bob Orchard has supplied much of the information.
Geevor Tin Mine Gallery 5.1 – The entrance to the Miner’s Dry, this is adjacent to the Victory Shaft Cages so the miners were close to their place of work.Geevor Tin Mine Gallery 5.2 – Looking up the passageway leading to the admin and dry area. The doorway on the right was the entrance to the detonator store.Geevor Tin Mine Gallery 5.3 – One of my favorite images, looking down the passage from the Dry to Victory Shaft. On a working day this would have been full of miners going underground and returning from shift.Geevor Tin Mine Gallery 5.4 – The doorway into the dry with a message for the miners.Geevor Tin Mine Gallery 5.5 – The area outside the entrance to the dry. On the left is where the miners would clean their boots before entering the clean area.Geevor Tin Mine Gallery 5.6 – A final message to the miners, this graffiti when up after the mine had closed.Geevor Tin Mine Gallery 5.7 – A better view of the boot cleaning area, I have no doubt the miners who forgot to clean off were in trouble with the dry manager.
Enter through the door into the Administration area of the Dry.
Geevor Tin Mine Gallery 5.8 – The doorway leading into the Admin and Shift Boss area.Geevor Tin Mine Gallery 5.9 – The miners clocking in area.Cornish Mine Images 5.10 – This is the “Shift Bosses” admin area.Cornish Mine Images 5.11 – All the cupboards had been cleaned out by souvenir hunters after the mine had closed.Cornish Mine Images 5.12 – A tally board of ore tonnage, the last shift in the old mine.Cornish Mine Images 5.13 – Another closer image of tally board it shows the totals of ore trammed that week. It has now been preserved in the museum and covered with perspex.Cornish Mine Images 5.14 – This is the Mine Captains Office in the Dry, the oven was just as it was left when the mine closed.Cornish Mine Images 5.15 – This is the office of the senior Forman Donald Harris, in the “top Fitting Shop”. This is after the mine closed, & it had been “rummaged” by the scrapmen.
Donald Harris was one of the group kept on till the final closure of the mine. The care and maintenance engineering crew consisted of Bob Orchard (Chief Eng.), Donald Harris (Foreman fitter), Roy Angove (Fitter), Don Lockwood (Foreman Electrician) but he left for a more secure job, Steve Warren (Electrician).
There were also John France, Maurice Trembath, David Trembath, Collin Williams & Eddie Harris as winder drivers for the Victory, Treweeks, head of decline & 19 level winders. These men when not driving assisted the care and maintenance team.
Others were Eric Gale (Shaft master), Norman Barnicoat (Assistant shaft man), Robin Boon (Surveyor), Collin Denis (Accountant), Pam Hocking(Office administrator), Kevin Clark (Mine Manager from Geevor PLC head office).
All of these people were finally laid off in Aug/Sept 1991, except for Pam Hocking, Bob Orchard & Kevin Clark. I (Bob Orchard) finally finished on 18/5/92. Some of these later returned as Geevor volunteers.
Cornish Mine Images 5.16 – This is in a lean-to the Slimes Plant, it is the Mintech on stream analyser data logger/processor, plus some spare electronic modules & components. By the state of the room it had already been ransacked and rummaged for anything with a re-sale value.Cornish Mine Images 5.17 – This is in the mine garage, a forlorn carcass of an Eimco 12B mucker (minus base) sitting on a dolly, to the far right are banks of new loco battery lead / acid “cells”. Prior to being the mine garage this was a storage bay for sulphide residue from the batch froth flotation cells. This contained copper, pyrite and many other mineralsCornish Mine Images 5.18 – Benches in a corner of the “Top Fitting Shop”.
