Golden Dagger Mine

• Grid reference: SX 68213 80351 (the adit level)
• Mineral: tin
• Closed: 12 November 1930
• Remains: adit, miners' dry, wheelpit and stamps wheelhouse, dressing floor, tramway, leat

Golden Dagger lies about 800 metres south of Birch Tor and Vitifer, down the Redwater valley at the edge of Soussons Down plantation. It is probably medieval in origin; the name is first recorded in the mid 19th century. Moses Bawden of Tavistock worked it from 1879, at times with 30 to 40 miners. Underground work stopped about the time of the First World War, but the waste heaps were worked on until the mine closed on 12 November 1930, which makes it the last commercially worked tin mine on Dartmoor.

The mine was worked by an adit driven west into the hill, with levels linked to the surface by shafts. Water still flows from the south-east adit. The miners' dry has three rooms, there is a wheelpit and the wheelhouse for 16 Cornish stamps, and nearby stands Dinah's House, a 19th-century cottage. A dressing floor with three round buddles was built about 1927 and lies within a scheduled monument on Challacombe Down.

Dartmoor Explorations has the fullest account; Crossing (Guide to Dartmoor, 1914, vol. 1, p. 366) names Moses Bawden as the 1879 owner.

Sources: Dartmoor Explorations, Golden Dagger Mine and miners; W. Crossing, Guide to Dartmoor (1914) vol. 1 p. 366; Weir, Dartmoor and Exmoor p. 118; Dartmoor: A New Study (1977) p. 114.