An artistic Compass Rose on the 'Washing Floors' in the village of Laxey.The Compass Rose is close to the restored waterwheel 'The Lady Evelyn'.
The Lady Evelyn Waterwheel is a fifty feet diameter restored Lead Mine Waterwheel built originally for The Snaefell Mine.
The Wheel was built originally in 1865 by Leigh and Gilbert Howell of Hawarden Iron Works in North Wales and was used to pump water out of The Snaefell Mine.
The Snaefell Mines was situated at the head of the Laxey Valley and was the most successful of a number of small mines in the Laxey area.
In May 1897 The Snaefell Mine was the site of the Isle of Man's worst mining disaster when 20 miners died from carbon monoxide poisoning.
The Mine closed in 1908 and Wheel was dismantled and rebuilt at Blisland in Cornwall where it was used to pump slurry from a china clay pit. The Wheel fell into disuse in the 1950's but in 1971 it was acquired by the Cornish Wheel Preservation Society who dismantled it and put the components in to storage.
The Preservation Society subsequently merged with the Trevithick Society and the Wheel was loaned to the Lywernog Mining Museum in Wales.
Then on 15th March 2003, the Trevithick Society agreed that the components could be moved to the Isle of Man for re-assembly and restoration.
The Laxey and Lonan Heritage Trust agreed to act as a management and fund raising body for the Laxey Mines Research Group whose volunteers carried out the restoration work.
The site of The Snaefell Mine is remote and inaccessible so it was agreed to install the restored Wheel at the former Washing Floors site in Laxey Valley Gardens.
At the Valley Gardens site there was already stonework and a pit for a 42 feet diameter waterwheel which had worked on the Washing Floors and was largely intact. It was quickly established that with some modifications, the slightly larger wheel could be reconstructed there.
They Valley Gardens are owned by the local Commissioners and the wheel pit is lease by them to the Trust.
"And so began one of the most unusual restoration projects which the Isle of Man has witnessed. Over the next couple of years, the Heritage Trust raised over £100,000 which funded the clearing and restoration of the wheel pit; the restoration of the metal work; purchase of the new woodwork; reconstruction of the water supply and wooden aqueduct and the construction of a new footbridge over the river. "
Volunteers spent many, many hours on Sundays and weekday evenings carrying out the restoration work over the next three years. On Sunday 20th August 2006 several thousand people came to Laxey to witness the formal "first turning" of the restored waterwheel which was christened "Lady Evelyn".
The name 'Lady Evelyn' was in recognition of the extensive work that Evelyn Jones did in support of the Laxey Mines Research Team.
"Following the restoration, the waterwheel was presented by the Trevithick Society to the Laxey and Lonan Heritage Trust who are now the formal owners. Peter Geddes, the Project Leader, was later presented with an MBE in recognition of the success of the restoration project."
The progress of the restoration through its various stage can be followed in the pictures at the following website:
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'The Washing Floors were built in 1848, in the days of mining in Laxey and to serve the mine: on the Washing Floors the mixed deposits of metal ore fresh from the mine would have the waste material separated and the valuable ores sorted in the process known as "dressing". Nearly three hundred people worked on the Washing Floors in the 1870s, including a number of women and children.
While the mine operated, trains laden with ore arrived at the top of the washing floors through the tunnel beneath the main road (and later the Manx Electric Railway line) at the top of the storage bunkers. The tramway wagons were uncoupled and the contents tipped down the "teams" to the bunkers below. The sloping stonework of the "teams" still survives and the wear on the stone from the ore falling from the tramway wagons is still apparent.
On the Floors, waste stone was first sorted by hand and the ore placed in a crusher, which was followed by numerous mechanised operations powered by waterwheels to separated the ore. Beneath the Washing Floors, a horse-drawn tramway carried the ore down the Glen Road to Laxey Harbour from where it was shipped away to smelting works in Glamorgan.
The machinery on the Washing Floors was finally scrapped in 1935.'
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