25/08/2025
Wendron Forge - Greensplat Engine Move
The engineer in charge was John Treloar who has just passed away. These photographs are posted in his memory.
John Gorniak, one of our kind followers has recently sent us this message and copies of photographs taken in 1972 of the McSalvors crane moving parts of the Greensplat Engine to what was then Wendron Forge.
John Treloar features in several of these images.
Wendron Forge started making etched steel and copper pictures in the 1960s and opened to the public a few years later in 1970.
The place was later to become Wheal Roots Mine when the mine was first rediscovered in the early 1970s.
In 1972 the Bunney Tin Mine Engine at Greensplat China Clay Mine was acquired and moved to Wendron Forge. A team of volunteers from the Trevithick Society did much of the work.
In just a few more years, following the BBC Television Poldark Series, Wendron Forge & Wheal Roots Mine became “The Poldark Mine” when officially renamed in 1976 by the author of the Poldark Books, the late Winston Graham.
Here is what Mr. Gorniak said…..
“ My father worked for Macsalvors Crane hire . I am not sure if it was them that took the pictures . I only came across them in recent years . There was also a film of it that was on local television .
My father and I moved the parts from Greensplat. Mcsalvors’s used one of the photographs on their calendar.”
We are grateful to John Gorniak annd to the family of John Treloar and it’s amazing to realise that this move was over 50 years ago.
