Eylesbarrow Blowing House

This photograph is dated 17 March 1888. It shows evidence of the tin mining industry which operated on Dartmoor until around 1939. Blowing houses (sometimes called blowing mills) contained small blast furnaces into which a forced draught of air was blown using waterwheel-powered bellows. Cassiterite (tin oxide) ore was smelted in the blast furnace and cast into ingots using a mould stone. Burnard comments on the photograph that Eylesburrow was 'the last worked of the Dartmoor Blowing Houses. It was at work in 1820 and for a few years after'.