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From the 1850-1856 cost book for Pentire Glaze and Pentire United Mines (at St Minver). A cost book is a book made up every 16 weeks containing the names of the shareholders and the number of shares held by each partner and particulars of all transactions in a partnership formed for working a mine. With thanks to the Archives and Cornish Studies Service who hold this document in Cornwall's new archive centre, in Redruth. Home to 1.5 million documents covering 850 years of history.
Elizabeth 1's favorite cosmetic was Venetian ceruse, a mixture of white lead and vinegar. The queen powdered her face and neck with the substance, transforming her skin into a porcelain canvas and hiding the smallpox marks she got when she was taken ill at the age of 29.
Perhaps the Old Lead Mine at Pentireglaze should be renamed : The Old White Lead Mine?
White lead, or more precisely: Cerussite (also known as lead carbonate) is a mineral consisting of lead carbonate (PbCO3), and is an important ore of lead. The name comes from the Latin cerussa, white lead.
It's a common mineral but few examples as good as those from Pentireglaze, Cornwall, are to be found anywhere in the world now except perhaps from Broken Hill in Australia.
"White lead" is the key ingredient in (now thankfully discontinued) lead paints which were banned from sale to the general public in 1992. Ingestion of lead-based paint chips being the most common cause of lead poisoning in children and not too great for the environment either.
Although Queen Elizabeth 1st would not have had her makeup made from the white lead from Pentireglaze, as the mines here were not operating in her time, it is likely that members of Queen Victoria's empire probably were using it from here as a cosmetic without realising how poisonous it was. Lead poisoning was certainly a common killer in Victorian children.
Elizabeth 1's favorite cosmetic was Venetian ceruse, a mixture of white lead and vinegar. The queen powdered her face and neck with the substance, transforming her skin into a porcelain canvas and hiding the smallpox marks she got when she was taken ill at the age of 29.
White lead contains dangerous poisons that Elizabeth and other wearers absorbed through their skin and would account for her loosing her teeth and hair. Perhaps also her death in 1603 at the age of 69 after a reign of 45 years!
The information and photos here have come from the excellent website https://www.mindat.org/ and of course Wikipedia
https://osmaps.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/.../Flat-Rod-Route...
How to transmit power without electricity? Flat Rods! This was the amazing route for the flat rods that transmitted the power from the engine house to the mine shaft across the valley in Pentireglaze! If you look at aerial view you can see the line in the grass when the photo was taken in a dry summer about 7 years ago.
This was the way of the flat rods transmitting power across the valley from the engine house (where the photo is taken) down and across the valley via a direction-changing (to uphill) shed at the bottom of the valley to the mine shaft just above Pentireglaze Haven, which is often called by New Polzeath locals "Baby Bay" (as compared to the bigger bay at Polzeath, formerly Hell's Bay).
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