On the north side of Kit Hill, remnants of last night’s hail lie beside the steep road leading to the old mining settlement of Luckett. A solitary stack in a field above Deer Park Farm used to vent poisonous arsenic fumes from works in the valley below; down there, beside abandoned mine workings, dilapidated single-storey dwellings have been mooted as a mining museum.
In the late 1940s, following years of dereliction, the New Consols mine was briefly reworked; flooded levels were pumped out to a depth of 700 feet, and tin and wolfram produced until closure in 1952; a hydroelectric scheme augmented power from diesel-driven electric motors, and hopeful Cornish miners returned here for work. Contemporary photos show the derelict 19th-century pumping engine house beside the newly installed pithead winding gear, topped with the traditional broomstick to ward off evil spirits. As a child, my brother-in-law, passing through the village with his father, saw miners in black oilskins and helmets emerging from underground. Since then, the shop, post office and chapels have closed, but renovated and extended cottages provide homes in a peaceful rural area. Vegetation encroaches on and hides the extensive burrows (spoil heaps) and dressing floors (for processing ores), and ivy engulfs the ruins.
Today, midday sun gilds catkins on sprawling hazels and shadows darken high land to the south. Scaffolding encases Broadgate engine house, which is being converted into a house; steep coniferous woodland upstream blocks sunlight from Sheba Bottoms, where there is frogspawn in an ice-skimmed puddle. Above this tributary of the Tamar, along narrow lanes, tall snowdrops naturalise on banks adjoining old farmsteads and, in the most sheltered hedges, primroses flower. Vacated pastures predominate on the top land, but fields of maize stumps and bare rain-flattened earth need dry weather for cultivation.
Stoke Climsland church tower looms before the western darkening sky, but we head away eastwards, in sight of Dartmoor, and back to the village. Past the expensively renovated farmhouse of Lower Hampt a boggy way continues beside the Great Meadow with its little riverside beaches, once popular for summer picnics and used for baptismal services by the Plymouth Brethren of Hampt chapel.
