Name: DRAKEWALLS - ALBASTON
Council: Caradon District Council
Main period of  industrial  settlement growth: Albaston : 1809-1842;  Drakewalls : 1905-47
Study Area: Tamar Valley
NGR: SX 42356 70739 (centre)
Main industry: Mining and railways

Industrial history and significance
The cottage rows, chapel, shops, post office, brewery and smithy in Albaston all developed in response to the close connection with Drakewalls mine. Drakewalls also provided some miners’ accommodation, but the real impetus for development in the village came from the railway. The settlement became a busy and thriving depot for the quarries, brickworks and market gardeners who brought their freight to the station, and the early twentieth century villas and terraces were built on the new commercial wealth. The two communities are thus significant first as examples of how separate, but neighbouring settlements, not only shared the same economic and employment driving forces, but shared facilities, in effect creating a poly-focal settlement – and these are only two of a wide scatter of such settlements on and just off the A390 as it runs along the fringes of Hingston Down. Secondly, Drakewalls in particular is an example of the late flowering of an industrial settlement in the early 20th century – at a time, it would seem, of local industrial decline, but made prosperous, and made indeed into a recognisable settlement, by the importance of its railway station.

This settlement forms part of the proposed Cornwall & west Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage Site Bid, and is considered an important part of the context for the Bid.

Downloads:

The downloads offered below represent the different elements of the CISI Drakewalls - Albaston Report including the core text and the seven illustrative map figures.
 

Title	Description	Format	Size
CISI Drakewalls - Albaston report	Report text.		955kb
Figure 1	Location map		219kb
Figure 2a	Historical development map		264kb
Figure 2b			253kb
Figure 3a	Surviving historical components map		261kb
Figure 3b			243kb
Figure 4a	Gazetteer sites, existing designations and recommendations map		325kb
Figure 4b			209kb

Last Updated: 16/12/2004. © Cornwall County Council, Historic Environment Service.