Eylesbarrow Blowing House

This photograph is dated 19 January 1889. It shows evidence of the tin mining industry which operated on Dartmoor until around 1939. According to Helen Harris's Industrial Archaeology of Dartmoor, Eylesbarrow was the last place where tin was smelted on Dartmoor. 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.