I looked up Greg Drew and Jack Connell's book Cornish Beam Engines in
South Australian Mines (Department of Mines & Energy, Adelaide,
1993) Thirty-three Cornish engine houses were built here between
1848 and 1888, of which eight are still standing.
The names of builders are not recorded consistently, but there is
more about the engineers who installed the engines (Jack Connell was
an engineer). They single out two engineers, John Congdon and
Frederick May, both Cornish-born, as having installed nearly half the
engines in South Australia (p. 62). John Tippett and Richard Watters
seem to have installed several more.
Elsewhere, Jack commented that "The Cornish beam engine differed from
most other major precision machinery in that the masonry of the
building was as much a part of the structure of the engine as was the
ironwork", and described the engine house as "virtually the main
frame of the engine" (p. 60). This implies that the installing
engineers would have been responsible for the detailed design of the
house, but tells us nothing about who the contractors were in each case.
Incidental information in the book names only about six of the engine-
house builders. The practice seems to have been to call tenders
locally. There seems to be little pattern or consistency in the
preferred choice of builder, except for James Cornelius, who erected
three engine-houses in quick succession in the vicinity of Wallaroo
Mines in the early 1860s.
Peter Bell
On 12/03/2010, at 7:12 PM, Robert Waterhouse wrote:
> Dear List,
>
> Given their specialist architecture/need to fit machinery of a
> specialised nature, is there any evidence for beam engine houses
> and their chimneys in Devon & Cornwall (and elsewhere) being built
> by specialist builders? If so, has anyone got any references?
>
> Robert Waterhouse
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Dr Peter Bell
PO Box 574, Goodwood SA 5034
Phone (08) 8373 1900
Mobile 0407 793 652
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