page_title: Wheal Martyn
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Wheal Martyn / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Preserved buildings of the Wheal Martyn clay works, part of the museum in Cornwall, England. On the right are the open-air settling tanks; the adjacent long building is the pan kiln, or "dry".
context_page_description: The Wheal Martyn China Clay Museum is a museum of china clay mining, at Carthew, on the B3274 road about 2 miles north of St Austell in Cornwall, England. A Victorian clay works has been preserved, and there is an exhibition building.
context_section_description: In 1790 Richard Martyn bought the Carthew Estate, and his son Elias started the Wheal Martyn china clay works there in the 1820s. By the 1840s there were five pits, and by 1869 Wheal Martyn  was producing 2000 tons of clay a year. After Elias's death in 1872, his son Richard closed or leased works to other operators.
  John Lovering took on the lease of Wheal Martyn in the 1880s, and made many modifications to the works. The pit at Wheal Martyn closed in 1931, but the pan kiln, for drying clay, was used for clay from nearby pits until 1969. The Gomm china clay works, which is also part of the site, was leased by the Martyn brothers from the Mount Edgcumbe Estate about 1878, and was worked until the 1920s.
  Wheal Martyn pit reopened in 1971 and is now worked by Imerys Minerals Ltd.
caption: The settling tanks (on the right) and the adjacent pan kiln (the long building)
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