In the steps of forebears?

Today a walk around Caradon Hill with my IWC*.  Just under 5 miles and, hooray, in between showers. Caradon Hill is on the southern edge of Bodmin Moor and, during the 1800s, was the centre of enormous mining (copper and tin mainly) and granite quarrying  activities. Several thousand people were directly involved and many others must have depended upon the revenue flowing from the ground for their livings. The map I've included gives an idea of what went on there but it needs to be seen 'on the ground' to get a true idea of the scale. Red indicates a mining activity, green shows the quarrying, thin red lines are the leats (water courses) and thicker lines in red and black are the tramways and railways. The dotted blue line gives our route. It's a fascinating area to explore, particularly if you go armed with a little knowledge of the processes once followed. Engine houses, buddles, chimney stacks, mine shafts, dressing floors, spoil heaps, adits: all there if you know what to look for.

In the steps of forebears? That refers to the fact that some ancestors of my IWC came from the area and many of them would have worked in the various mines on and around Caradon Hill. Sadly, but not unusual for the times, we know that some of them were as young as seven when they started their toil. From a number of census returns, we 've got an idea of some of the places where they lived and we drove around the lanes to see if we could find them. We were in luck with one - Newton farmhouse - where my IWC's 4x great grandparents, Charles and Dorothy Jay, were living in 1841. I think we were both very impressed with how grand the garden entrance looked. The date carved into the granite was 1661. It would be nice to know more of the history of Charles and Dorothy as, by 1851, they had gone down in the world and were living as agricultural labourers in a cottage nearby. Perhaps we'll find out one day after a little more rooting around some old documents.

(* IWC = Ideal Walking Companion).