East Wheal basset lay on the north side of the road east of Carnkie on the rising ground east of the stream. It would appear that there was mine here during the 1830s and then later formed part of Wheal Buller but became separated and worked as separate set in 1851. (Morrison 1983: 323). It was a relatively short lived mine 1857-77 and even then only a few of those years were productive. Between 1859 and 1864 9756 tons of copper were produced, some of it very high quality.
The main shaft was engine shaft, to be joined later by New shaft, and by 1859 the former was sinking below the 90 fm level and was active at the 60, 70 80 and 90 levels. At the same time New shaft was sinking below the 70fm level. These were heady times when high grade copper ore was being extracted but, even for this area, the optimism was short lived as the quantity and grades rapidly declined when the headings became poor.
By 1866 New shaft was down to the 120 fm level and three years later to 140, the deepest in the mine as the sinking of Engine shaft stopped at the 110fm level, but significantly no fresh ore was found at the bottom workings and the mine began suffering some serious financial problems. These were compounded in 1871 when New shaft collapsed between the 60-70 levels seriously effecting production, which wasn’t great to start with.
There were further set backs after this with the mine suffering a series of floodings and most work was carried out in the shallower levels. In fact the mine never recovered from the collapse in the New shaft. The bottom levels were never reopened and given the results found in development, there didn’t seem much point in doing so. (Morrison 1983: 326-7). The mine stagnated with scattered exploration among old workings but in 1885 the company was eventually wound up.
The total production of East Wheal Basset was 13,132 tons of copper ore, 40 tons of black tin and roughly 18,000 tons of tinstone