Cornish tin, copper and lead miners

By Kay McMeekin

Miners from Cornwall

(Compare with Staffordshire miners)  https://langscotsmilecumnock.blogspot.com/2023/09/1870s-influx-of-miners.html

Cornish miners first came to Ayrshire around 1866 - 1867

 3rd Statistical account of Scotland: Ayrshire by John Strawhorn and William Boyd 1951 page 523

"In the 1860s there arrived in Galston a group of Cornish tin-miners as strikebreakers including Chynoweths, Burleys and Lukes, who still figure among the local families. Some of these were Methodists and held meetings which attracted some following. The original Methodist groups has not survived but a group which hived off from them formed themselves in 1871 into a company of Open Brethren whose present day successors number about 60."

I haven't found any other evidence of strike breaking. 

But I did find an article in the Glasgow Herald 12th November 1866 that  Baird of Gartsherrie  was recruiting miners from Cornwall to come to work in mines in Ayrshire and Lanarkshire. There was a local shortage of miners and many had gone (to West Lothian) to be shale miners, whereas in Cornwall there were many out of work (tin and copper) miners. They were offered an engagement of 12 months and accommodation. But for every married couple, they had take two single men as lodgers as accommodation was in short supply. The wages were favourable compared to Cornwall and some 6-700 men had arrived in the last fortnight.  Hurlford Colliery was the only Ayrshire place mentioned in the article. It does mention that they were Wesleyans and most had brought a large family bible with them. (Were these same conditions offered to to West Midlands miners?)

In Ayrshire,  the first of the Cornish miners were in Loudoun and Galston  parishes. 

Examples:

James Phillips a lead miner from Illogan and his wife  Catherine Bunney were in Loudoun (Galston) Ayrshire by March 1867 but in 1881 census they had returned to Cornwall where he was working as a tin miner with 6 children aged 1 to 14. What a journey that must have been. They weren't there for long as James was born in Ayrshire about 1882. In 1888 they were in Skares Row, Cumnock. James was mining coal. He remained in Skares until his death in 1924.

Burley siblings in Loudoun rows, Galston by the early 1870s. Some of these families moved on to Cumnock.  eg Arthur Burley 

Hancocks from Cornwall arrived in Cumnock 1872/3

The parents James Hancock and Eleanor Deeble were in Glengyron Row by August 1873 (death of their youngest daughter Jane).

They had been married in 1848 in Callington, Cornwall and they were in Caldbeck, Cumberland in the 1871 census. 

Some of the Cornish miners stopped off in the north of England or moved back and forth as can be seen by the birthplaces of their children. 

eg Richard Penrose and his family were in Durham in 1880, New Cumnock in 1882,  Durham in 1884,  Cumnock in 1886 and 1888, Durham 1890, Northumberland  in 1895 and 1897, Cumnock in 1899 - 1905. He died in 1918 in Durham and his wife Kate Jose in Cumnock  in 1926. What a lot of upheaval and with kids in tow!

Other Cornish names in Ayrshire include: Folley, Luke, Moyle, Pooley, Sheer, Smetherhem, Trembath