Consols

A shortened form of 'Consolidated Mines': several adjoining setts, often already worked so close together that their underground workings had run into one another, brought together and worked as a single company under one management.

Historical usage

The practice takes its name from Consolidated Mines itself, formed in 1782 near Gwennap, Cornwall, by merging Wheal Virgin, West Wheal Virgin, Wheal Girl, Wheal Maid, Wheal Fortune and Carharrack Mine -- all of which had been struggling separately with the same flooding problem and had closed by 1779 rather than keep paying for seven individual Newcomen pumping engines. Under a single management the mines replaced those seven old engines with five new Boulton & Watt engines, saving an estimated £11,000 a year in fuel, and in 1784 the company installed Cornwall's first steam-powered whim. Revived by John Taylor from 1819, Consolidated Mines became the largest single producer of copper ore in Cornwall, raising 442,493 tons of ore between 1819 and 1858 and paying shareholders £480,156 in dividends between 1819 and 1840. It amalgamated with the neighbouring United Mines in 1857 to form Clifford Amalgamated Mines, which itself closed in 1870. The success of the original Consolidated Mines made 'Consols' a fashionable suffix, and it went on to appear in dozens of Devon and Cornish mine names, including the already-published Devon Great Consols near Tavistock and the operator Tankerville Great Consols in Shropshire.

How it worked

A consolidation combined the setts, workforce and, most importantly, the expensive infrastructure of several adjoining mines under one company, still typically financed the same way as any other mine of the period: adventurers bought shares under the cost book system, and were called on for further capital or paid a dividend at periodic meetings depending on how the combined operation was faring. Consolidation made most sense where the individual setts' underground workings had already grown close enough to share the same drainage problem, since one large pumping and winding operation could then serve ground that would otherwise have needed several separate, smaller and less efficient engines.

Why it was used

The main saving was capital: a single set of large, efficient engines -- pumping, winding, sometimes crushing -- could serve ground that had previously needed a duplicated engine at every small mine, and the combined company could raise the far larger sums a 19th-century deep mine required more readily than any one of its constituent setts could alone.

Risks & limitations

The word's later reputation undercut its own early promise: because the original Consolidated Mines succeeded so spectacularly, 'Consols' became a suffix used to promise size, wealth and stability when raising new share capital, whether or not a genuine merger of adjoining setts stood behind it -- a mine could be renamed with 'Consols' attached purely to make its shares more attractive, and such renamings often failed to deliver on the name's implication.

Regional variation

Overwhelmingly a Devon and Cornish naming convention, tied to the cost book system those counties' mines were financed under. The same underlying practice appears elsewhere in Britain under the alternative wording 'United Mines' -- as at the already-published Halkyn District United Mines in Flintshire, an amalgamation of nine former companies -- without borrowing the Cornish 'Consols' name for it.

Mines associated with this term

5 examples chosen from 8 linked records — the term page is not an index.

• Great County Adit — Cornwall (well documented example)
  Named in this record’s history: “…to Wheal Peevor by 1778, and gained a further westward branch, the Consols Adit, through the 1770s and 80s to drain the Consolidated and United…”
• Pennerley Mine — Shropshire (well documented example)
  Named 5 times in this record, first in the summary: “…Pit — combined in 1879 into the short-lived Tankerville Great Consols, whose collapse just five years later left Pennerley's later history…”
• Poldark Mine — Cornwall (well documented example)
  Named in this record’s history: “…'old men's workings' on a surface plan of the neighbouring Wendron Consols mine. The site also preserves the Trenear Mortar Stone, a block with…”
• Potter's Pit — Shropshire (well documented example)
  Named 6 times in this record, first in the summary: “A Stiperstones-orefield lead mine folded into the Tankerville Great Consols combine in 1879-80 alongside Tankerville, Pennerley and Bog Mine,…”
• Ratgoed Quarry — Gwynedd (well documented example)
  Named in this record’s history: “…Hughes went bankrupt; the quarry reopened in 1851 under the Alltgoed Consols partnership, managed by John Rowlands under proprietor Horatio…”

Sources

1. (secondary) Consolidated Mines — Wikipedia
2. (secondary) Consolidated Mines — Graces Guide
3. (secondary) Some Cornish Mining Terms — navsbooks

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