The Puffin' Devil on Camborne Hill

On Christmas Eve of 1801 the streets of Camborne in Cornwall, like any other in the country, prepared for the upcoming festivities.

What made the town unique in Cornwall, in Britain and around the world was what happened between Tehidy Street and Union Street where it joins Trellowarren Street. The rhythmic sounds of the town suffered a massive tsunami disturbance. Nothing like the civil, or not so civil as it turned out as the police were involved and many were injured, disturbance in 1873. It made the ground vibrate and the air to shake with new and unfamiliar noises that had never been felt, heard or seen anywhere before.

Richard Trevithick (1771 - 1833), a local mining engineer had designed and built the world's first steam driven, independently powered, passenger carrying contraption that could travel under its own steam (no apologies for not warehousing this one) along a public highway.

This momentous event preceded Robert Stephenson's "Rocket" steam engine and train by twenty four years and it never quite seems to attract the same level of celebratory attention. I can only assume it is because steam driven road transport never acquired the same kudos and momentum as rail transport did. Or, as road transport powered by the internal combustion engine.

There is a video online of a replica of Trevithick's original contraption. Having watched it, it is not surprising that it acquired the nickname of the "Puffin' Devil".

Trevithick designed his vehicle with a single cylinder engine to drive the wheels on the road. The connection between the piston and the wheels on the road were connecting rods. By designing the engine to work under high pressure Trevithick was able to build a more compact and powerful engine than used in similar static power units. And for further efficiency exhaust was sent up a chimney which was connected to the onboard furnace so it would draw air through the fire to increase the intensity of the heat it generated.

During a recent visit to Camborne (October 2025) I walked most of the route that the "Puffin' Devil would have followed during its first road test. from Tehidy Road, near where the Holman Park estate wall is, up a slight incline during which the road becomes Union Street and then on to where it joins Trellowarren Street which is the main street of the town. That short walk involved a climb over the distance in excess of ten metres.

Yours truly will confess to an underlying lack of fitness and stamina but not of honesty in that I did feel teh effects of that incline by the time I reached Trellowarren Street. So, the "Puffin Devil" must have put in some effort, made some loud huffs and puffs as it worked its way up what is signposted as "Camborne Hill".

The statistics for the "Puffin' Devil " which were generously supplied by the Trevithick Society in Camborne along with the header picture are that its weight was four and a half tons. It was twelve feet long, six feet wide and with the belching chimney in place, when fired up, nearly eleven feet tall.

There is a folksong about the inaugural passage of the "Puffin' Devil".

I have complete faith in the integrity of the first two lines of lyrics of this song. As for the reference to "The horses stood still" I do have very serious doubts.

For anyone who knows horses they will know exactly what the most likely outcome from horses bearing witness to their first sighting of the "Puffin' Devil". Even before any horse saw it the ground must have been rumbling underneath their hooves causing them to adapt their full alert posture and awareness. Heads up, muscles rigid and eyes out on organ stops of an organ like one playing a Bach overture. Then when it appeared puffing smoke, wheels churning travelling at full steam towards them the second stage of flight from fear would kick. No rider, handler or driver would have a hope in hell of controlling their steeds as the thought "WTF is that? I'm out of here". And hey ho there would be equines heading off in any direction away from the engine quicker than a three year old leaving the stalls in a five furlong sprint.

Camborne has an awful lot to be proud of. Its connection with globalised metal trading dating back three thousand years. Once being described as the most expensive square mile in the world and once having the deepest mine shaft in the world in the nineteenth century. And quite rightly the place where the first ever steam powered road transport vehicle trundled along its streets.