At the beginning of the nineteenth century Cornwall was remote by land from the rest of Britain and the fastest way to travel to London was by ship. Copper mining was once again expanding with the demands of the Napoleonic wars and output of copper ore was rapidly increasing as the more efficient steam engines of Trevithick were introduced to dewater the mines and raise the ore. Copper ore needed to be shipped to the copper smelters of South Wales and coal and other materials brought back to feed the mine engines.
The nearest port to the booming copper mines of North Downs, Treskerby and Poldice was the small North coast port of Portreath, four miles away along narrow, poorly surfaced tracks bogged down with mud and often impassable in winter. Along these 1000 mule loads of copper ore were carried every day to the detriment of the tracks and the costly frustration of all concerned. In addition the mules needed feeding and valuable arable land was being used to feed mules rather than people. The same situation was repeated throughout the mining areas of Cornwall.
Clearly something had to be done. Although horse drawn railways had been in operation for nearly a hundred years in the north, these ideas had not penetrated to Cornwall or indeed anywhere in the South West. South Wales, on the other hand, began building horse drawn mineral plateways at the end of the eighteenth century and these ideas were brought back by the big local mining families, the Williams and Foxes. They had major interests in the booming copper mines, shipping and both copper and iron smelters in South Wales. They leased land from the Basset family of Tehidy to build the Portreath Tramway which terminated at his port of Portreath, which they also leased and expanded. The first plate was laid on October 25th 1807 by Lord de Dunstanville to a volley of canon and was operational to North Downs coal yard by 1811-12.
The tramway was an immediate success and was extended to Poldice mine in 1918. and its three ton carrying horse drawn wagons were soon carrying most of the 25,000tons of copper ore that went out through Portreath annually.
Undoubtedly its success influenced John Taylor’s plan to link the rich copper mines of Redruth and his fabulous United Downs- Consols mines to Devoran, a plan which materialised as the horse drawn, later converted to steam, Redruth and Chasewater Railway. This was closely followed by the steam operated Hayle Railway which later became the West Cornwall railway which opened its first passenger service to the capital in 1859.
Although these later railways put the Portreath tramway out of business they owed their very existence to it, as did the many other mineral lines and later passenger lines in Cornwall. It enabled the great copper boom of the first half of the nineteenth century through the development of mineral lines and later Cornwall’s important tourist industry when passenger travel was linked to London in 1859.
