Dartmoor Gold

"There's gold in them thar hills," but before everybody grabs their picks and pans - there's very little gold in "them thar hills". In 1838, Mrs Bray commented how the old tin miners would collect small gold flakes and put them inside bird quills for safe keeping. Dartmoor legend has it that there is a rich lode of gold in the old 'Roman Mine' which lies in Chaw Gully. But sadly everyone who has tried to find it has mysteriously perished in the process so that possibility will have to stay in the realms of folklore.

What is known is that where it does occur it is associated with rocks of the Late Paleozoic period which is to say they are between 409 - 245 million years old. Gold is considered a heavy metal with a specific gravity of 19.3 which means that along with cassiterite it is usually found in basal gravels which overly the bedrock in river valleys. It therefore is not surprising that during stream tin mining operations the tinners came across small amounts of gold in the alluvial deposits. In 1865 it was reported that an unidentified mine in the Tavistock area was yielding gold at the rate of 14 grams per tonne. In the early 1800's a tinner named Wellington who was streaming in the Sheepstor area found enough gold to get £40 from a Plymouth silversmith named Pearce (Calvert,1853, p.91).

In 1920 Dr. Brammall carried out a detailed assay study of Dartmoor's granite in which he discovered gold occurring at; North Hessary Tor, Headland Vale, Welstor Quarry, Vixen Tor Quarry, and Bittleford Down. Other sites where gold has been found is on Holne Moor, Bagtor Wapsworthy and Crownley Park. The old Holne Chase Mine was recorded as assaying gold at 7.5 grams per tonne, this was found in the auriferous gossan or growan.

In the north of Dartmoor there are several reports of gold namely at Sourton Tors and the Okehampton Consols mine. In 1853 the Drewsteignton Copper, Silver-Lead, Tin and Limestone Mining Company began work on some old quarries to the north of Drewsteignton. By 1855 the company was reporting that gold had been found and it was yielding ½ an ounce per ton of gossan.

On a more personal level I once caught 'gold fever' and spent 3 days splashing around a very cold Dartmoor stream near the river Plym. For my efforts I got a very stiff back, trench foot, wrist ache from sloshing a pan around, to know the local sheep population. Needless to say the BMW is not parked in the drive and I have no villa in Spain but I can say there is gold on Dartmoor.

Reading List

Calvert, J. 1853 The Gold Rocks or Britain & Ireland, Chapman & Hall, London

Camm, S. 1995 Gold in the Counties of Cornwall & Devon, Cornish Hillside Pub., St. Austell.

Hamilton Jenkin, A. K. 2005 Mines of Devon, Landmark Publishing, Ashbourne.