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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