When Cornwall’s major home-grown shipping owner, St Ives born, Sir Edward Hain was negotiating the development of the land above Wheal Margery - then known as Drysacks - he knew what he was doing. He commissioned the most Prominent Cornish Architect, Silvanus Trevail - who designed numerous loved Heritage buildings, that still stand all over Cornwall - to design his manor. Silvanus Trevail has national significance.

 

Edward Hain deliberately had his house built on Wheal Margery’s Dressing Grounds, knowing this to be the solid & stable area of the mine workings. He knew what he was doing when designing the grounds by planting trees over the many mine shafts & mining spoils in-between the two main lodes on the southern part of Treloyhan. Now destined to be sold as plots for large houses & urbanised.

 

F W Meyer was commisioned to create the gardens & it is recorded that he lanscaped the mine spoil by the Engine Shaft into his famous rockery. Interestingly, he regularly wrote a column called 'The RockGarden' for 'The Garden: An Illustrated Weekly Journal of Gardening in All Its Branches' where he talked about "using natural rock formations for inspiration" - wonder if that's why Hain hired him? his land being full of rocky mine spoils!

 

At the records office in Truro:

1. There is extensive correspondence in Edward Hain’s own hand discussing his purchase of ‘Drysacks’ & how he wished to use the land.

2. There are also an extensive amount of Silvanus Trevail's architects drawings, including details of interiors - quite frankly, too much to go through in one sitting. 

3. There are beautiful hand drawn maps as well as fascinating correspondence about Wheal Margery - who knows what interesting heritage lies beneath the mine heaps at Treloyhan (see the recent dig at King Edward Mine).