Wheal - Cornish for work
Bal - Cornish for mine
Sett - more widely used for descriptions than just in Cornwall - possibly same etymology as badger's sett??? But Sett is also employed when describiing tartans. And in Old Norse, SETT has rather a complicated etymology but in general simply meaning "place". It can also mean a settlement or an extended farmstead.
And another from a seventeenth century will:
"Provided that my futher mynde and will is concerning all and the severall lands to my sonnes John, Ezeckiel, and Edmund aforesaid bequeathed that if theis my three sonnes John, Ezekiel, and Edmund or anie of them shall lett sett over or sell their lands to them given as aforesaid that then they and every one of them shall lett sett over and sell their lands to them given as aforesd to Henry Shearman my sonne if he will at a reasonable rate and price as shall be thought by two men chosen by my cousin Edmund Galloway."
from http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~bowers/henry2.htm
You might find this interesting
http://www.infoplease.com/ipd/A0647755.html
what precise meaning this has in mining I don't know.
http://www.hyperdictionary.com/dictionary/sett gives several references - maybe the most applicable are those referring to stakes.
Tin bounds in Cornwall could be set by piling turves up together.
Which all goes to show that I would like the definitive answer as well.
Regards
John
> from: Dick Gilbert <[log in to unmask]>
> date: Tue, 07 May 2002 12:45:17
> to: [log in to unmask]
> subject: Re: 'Wheal', 'Bal' & 'Set'
>
> I wonder if any of the members could help me clarify the relationship
> between 'Wheal', 'Bal' and 'Sett'.
>
> Historians of the non-mining variety (myself included!) have generally
> tended to accept the following view:
>
> 1. 'Bal' relates to surface workings and more particularly to groups of
> surface workings. The word appears to be a relatively modern addition to
> the mining vocabulary since it is not documented much earlier than 1570.
>
> 2. Use of the word 'Wheal', on the other hand, relates specifically to a
> single mine and may be slightly older than 'Bal' in its useage.
>
> First, I note that in some earlier group correspondence, mines with names
> prefixed by 'Wheal' are referred to as being part of a 'Sett'. Apparently
> then, the laymans view, that 'Wheal' is used in reference to single mines
> only, is erroneous. Was 'Wheal' always capable of being used to prefix a
> mine that formed part of a 'Sett' or is this usage a comparatively recent
> event?
>
> Second, I remember reading somewhere that the term 'Sett' could also be
> applied to the group of workings within a Bal. Tonkin (see JRIC n.s. 7
> [1973-77], 200) certainly appears to have understood something of the kind
> since he refers to "Ball" (sic) as the word given to "a large parcell of
> tin works". Am I therefore correct in assuming that the terms 'Bal'
> and 'Sett' are, to some extent, capable of the same meaning or does 'Bal'
> relate specifically to surface workings?
>
> My current area of interest is the few Cornish place-names beginning
> with 'Bal', particularly where these are found in association with
> relatively deep mining. Although these place-names are first documented in
> relation to mid-to-late eighteenth-century mines, might the use of the
> word 'Bal' suggest that these mines were sunk on the sites of earlier
> surface workings?
>
> Dick Gilbert.
> Brisbane
|