Blowing House Cottage

Blowing House Cottage is a cottage that incorporates tin stamps, dating from the 17th century, with most of the cottage built in the 18th century and extended into the stamps in the 20th century. It features painted granite rubble walls, painted roughcast blockwork, slate sills, and a dry slate roof. There is an early 18th-century rubble stack with a slate drip and tapered top on the right-hand gable, and a 20th-century chimney on the left-hand gable.

The cottage has a near-central entrance leading to a lobby and stair between two rooms. The left-hand end has stamps with back and side walls of stone; the front wall was originally open but was built up in the 20th century with rendered blockwork, and the gable and rear walls were raised. A 20th-century extension at the rear left gives the cottage an overall L-shaped plan.

It is two stories tall. The south front has a roughly symmetrical three-window arrangement on the right, with the original front door replaced by a 20th-century window and early 19th-century hornless sashes on the first floor, while the ground floor features 20th-century horned copies. A 20th-century two-window extension is built into the stamps on the left. In front of this is the 'plat' (platform) for stacking tin ore and an ancient stone-lined pit for the overshot waterwheel that powered the stamps, which were in use until the 1920s.

Inside, the right-hand room has a large original quoined fireplace with a 20th-century granite lintel replacing the timber, and an early 18th-century granite-lined oven. This building, despite its alterations, is part of the historically significant Godolphin tin works. Sir Francis Godolphin was an innovator in the tin industry, known for introducing the process of 'wet stamping,' where water ran through the ore under the heads of the stamping mill. The site still contains the storage pond, leat system, and 'buddle pits' (circular tanks for separating ore from other materials by agitation), as well as the 'blowing house' itself. This site is crucial to industrial archaeology, with information provided by John Schofield from S. E. Schofield, who discovered and investigated the site in the 1950s, as well as references to De Re Metalica by Georgius Agricola from 1556 and the Survey of Cornwall by Richard Carew from 1602.