Engine House To Daubuz Shaft On South Wheal Frances Sett At Sw 674 390

The engine house to the Daubuz shaft on the South Wheal Frances sett is a derelict pumping and winding engine house from 1879 to 1881, built for the South Frances Mine. It is constructed from uncoursed granite rubble with quoins, featuring a bob wall made of large dressed granite blocks and window arches of brick. The building is now roofless and has a rectangular plan oriented east-west. The bob wall is located to the west, with loadings for pumping and winding gear in front of it, and the remains of a boiler house attached to the south side, along with a chimney at the north-east corner.

The structure has three stages and mostly round-headed openings, including a driver's window in the bob wall, a damaged cylinder door in the rear wall (which is thicker than the bob wall), a pair of small blocked windows above this, and a larger window in the gable. There is a square-headed doorway leading to the former boiler house on the south side, round-headed windows on two levels to the right of this doorway, and a small blocked window to the right of the upper window. The tapered cylindrical chimney stack, which has an unusually large diameter of 4 meters at the base, now ends at gable level.

Prominently, there are double loadings extending approximately 10 meters in front of the bob wall. One loading is aligned with the main axis for the flywheel and flat-rod connections to the pump, while a longer loading runs parallel on the north side of the flywheel recess for the winding drum. The remains of the boiler house are very fragmentary.

Historically, the shaft, located about 60 meters to the west, was sunk at the request of the mineral lords during a period of expansion when mining reached the Great Flat Lode. It was named after J.C. Daubuz, a principal shareholder. The building housed a 30-inch engine, which was unusual for its application to both pumping and winding.