Trevithick Day

A very happy Trevithick Day to all my friends and family in and around Camborne and Redruth.

As I'm sure most of you know, Cornishman Richard Trevithick was the man who had the idea to take one of the steam engines that drove the pumps in local tin mines and use it to drive a set of wheels. This was, in some ways, the first automobile. A number of people suggested that his idea was nonsense and that machines could never replace horses. 

And so Trevithick built a full-size steam road locomotive called Puffing Devil and, on Christmas Eve 1801, he demonstrated it by successfully carrying six passengers up Fore Street and then continuing on up Camborne Hill, from Camborne Cross, to the nearby village of Beacon. It inspired the popular Cornish folk song Camborne Hill.

   

This wasn't Trevithick's only achievement. He was a big, burly, and extremely strong man and became a champion Cornish wrestler. He was also a pioneer in the development of high pressure steam engines and the world's first locomotive-hauled railway journey took place on 21st February 1804, when one of Trevithick's unnamed steam locomotives hauled a train along the tramway of the Penydarren Ironworks, in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales. 

During the prime of his career he was a well-known and highly respected figure in mining and engineering, but near the end of his life he fell out of the public eye - he was somehow eclipsed by Stephenson and his Rocket. He also suffered from ill-health towards the end of his life and, following a series of poor investments, died of pneumonia on 22nd April 1833 while working in Dartford in Kent. His colleagues at Hall's Ironworks made a collection for his funeral expenses and acted as bearers. They also paid a night watchman to guard his grave at night to deter grave robbers, as body snatching was common at that time. Trevithick was buried in an unmarked grave in St Edmund's Burial Ground, East Hill, Dartford. The burial ground closed in 1857, with the gravestones being removed in 1956–57. A plaque marks the approximate spot believed to be the site of the grave. 

But the Cornish never forgot him. 

There's a fine statue of him outside Camborne public library.

(Photos: Sean Murphy)

And every year in Camborne, there's a big celebration of his life and a replica of Puffing Devil chuffs its noisy way through the streets and replicates Trevithick's extraordinary first trip up Camborne Hill.