Wheal Drea

Overview

A St Just copper and tin mine worked independently from the 1790s before joining the Wheal Owles group, whose own long-flooded old workings caused the catastrophic 1893 Wheal Owles disaster when neighbouring miners broke into them by mistake.

History

Wheal Drea worked copper and tin independently for some years in the earlier part of the 19th century before being incorporated into the neighbouring Wheal Owles group around 1859. Its engine shaft was being deepened in 1871 when it was found to intersect three lodes at the 160-fathom level, and it was probably at Wheal Drea, in 1881, that Wheal Owles first introduced the Champion rock drill to its mines, the compressor powered by an old waterwheel on the Boscean side of the stream. By this point Wheal Drea's own earlier workings, abandoned and flooded, lay directly alongside ground still being worked from Wheal Owles' Cargodna section. On the morning of 10 January 1893, Cargodna's miners, working from a survey that failed to show how close they had come, broke straight through into Wheal Drea's flooded old workings; the inrush of water and the blast of air it drove ahead of it killed nineteen men and a boy in the darkness, in what became one of Cornwall's best-remembered mining disasters. Wheal Owles as a whole worked on until 1884.

Workings

Worked independently before 1859, then as part of the Wheal Owles group; its engine shaft intersected three lodes at 160 fathoms when deepened in 1871.

What remains

Its dumps in the Kenidjack Valley remain a locality for amethyst and nail-head siderite specimens; its underground workings, long flooded, still hold the remains of the men killed in the 1893 Wheal Owles disaster.

Abandoned workings can be dangerous — unstable ground, uncapped shafts, flooding and bad air are common even where a site looks safe from the surface. This entry describes history and general location only; it is not an access guide.

Disasters & major incidents

• Wheal Owles flooding disaster
  10 January 1893 · Flooding / Inundation · 20 fatalities
  Miners broke through into the flooded, long-abandoned workings of Wheal Drea, trapping and drowning twenty men and boys underground.

Recorded claims

Individual factual claims, each attached to the source(s) that support it below. Where sources disagree, both are kept.

• Wheal Drea worked independently for some years in the earlier 19th century before being incorporated into the Wheal Owles group around 1859; its engine shaft, deepened in 1871, was found to intersect three lodes at 160 fathoms. ¹
• Wheal Drea's own long-abandoned and flooded old workings were the ones Wheal Owles' Cargodna miners broke into by mistake on 10 January 1893, the inrush of water and air killing nineteen men and a boy. ²

Sources

1. (secondary) Wheal Drea (Buddlepit Mine Database) — Buddlepit Mine Database
2. (secondary) Wheal Drea, Cornwall (Cornwall Calling) — Cornwall Calling

Record created: 31 August 2026 · Last researched: 31 August 2026