1810. Bakewell writes : " Last summer an attempt was made again to get the ore, and a furnace erected for reducing it. I was there the day after the trial, which had not succeeded, owing to the poorness of the ore and want of skill in the persons employed. Something like a regular vein was opened last summer, its direction nearly vertical, it^ width about three feet, with a flow of cauk interspersed between the ore and the rock on one side. The other was united with the sand rock. The works were suspended at the close of 1810."
A miner who had worked upon the Continent and seen the cobalt ores of Saxony discovered cobalt on the estate of a gentleman in the neighbourhood. The attention of the tenants of the Alderley mine was then directed to the subject, and the cobalt mines were let for ^f 1,000 to Mr. Plowes, of the Pontefract company, in Yorkshire,* by Sir John Thomas Stanley. It was packed in tubs and sent ♦to near Pontefract for making the smelt. Plowes was after a few years released from his bargain, but the com- pany still found cobalt enough to make them think it worth while to establish works at the Wallasey Pool, opposite Liverpool.t Mining operations for copper seem
to have been taken up again thirty years later.
