Cornish engine in Wales - Glyn Pits, near Pontypool
This is how the Cornish engine looks today In a book on the industrial archaeology of the South Wales coalfields, I discovered the intriguing Glyn Pits engines. One of these is a Cornish style beam engine built by the Neath Abbey Ironworks that's been in its engine house since 1845. We have plenty of engine houses in Cornwall but very few contain their engines. When the mines were worked out (or knacked, as we say down here) the engines were often moved to new locations and could almost be said to be portable - but only with a lot of effort involving teams of horses, oxen and latterly traction engines. Anyone wishing to know more about this should Jack Trounson's Cornish Engines and the Men Who Handled Them . After the coal mine closed in 1932, the engines at Glyn Pits remained in situ for maintaining neighbouring mines by the National Coal Board, albeit electric pumps were in operation by the time the site was finally abandoned in 1966. They are now a little out off th...