London Hotel

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The London Hotel was the chief repository for the dead and wounded after the Eureka Stockade. [1]


In the News

The Eureka lead has assumed a little of its olden activity upon the surface, as one or two golden holes have been discovered lately in the vicinity of the London Hotel, and many claims are marked out in anticipation of the line heading towards the Red Streak, which latter is creeping up the flat, towards the Eureka. One or two claim's lately bottomed are paying satisfactorily.[2]
Samuel Thomas Gill, First Quartz crushing Battery, Base of Black Hill, Ballaarat. 1855, colour lithograph.
Art Gallery of Ballarat, gift of Dr. Philip Moulton, 2004.
The Eureka Cement Company, whose works are situated near the old London Hotel and the site of the Stockade ground, afford another instance of the utilisation of stuff that, in the prime days of the "ould Eureka," was thrown away as worthless. This stuff is the oxydised conglomerate or "cement" or burnt quartz" which lies scattered about the ground where the original workers of the Eureka line thereabouts used to wash up and leave their tailings. Attention was first drawn to the stuff by the gold which was seen to adhere to it after a smart shower, and experiments made with the battery soon demonstrated the value of the castaway of the older workers. The Black Hill Company had carted and crushed a considerable quantity of the stuff and obtained a paying yield, and since the Eureka Company have taken up the ground they have had several hundred tons crushed at Chisholm's works, Black Hill, the yield from which reached to near ½ oz. per ton, whereupon the company took steps to get a reducing plant of their own. They soon organised measures, and having arranged with Messrs Jenner & Davey for the supply of machinery, the company are furnished with an engine and two batteries of four each revolving stamps, which appear to be doing their work well. The batteries were got into play on Monday last for the first time. The crushing plant is snugly housed, and the general arrangements are good. Instead of shaking tables, the company have a series of ripple boxes, the first being of wood and the rest of silvered copper. The fineness of the debris shows that the stampers do their work effectually, but how the ripples act has yet of course to be proved. A dam, a little way up the gully, is connected by a race and tunnel with the pump shaft, and the water from the sand pits being returned to the dam, the water is made the most of, and the works are not likely to be at a stand-still for want of that necessary part of the quartz crasher's outfit. At present, and 'for a long time' to come most likely, the company will be employed in carting to the batteries the " burnt" tailings that lie about all over the surface of the claim nearly, and which have been proved to to pay for the reduction. But besides this source, so easily available, the company have accepted a contract for raising stuff from a layer of cement which lies at a depth of a little over 100 feet, the thickness of which varies from four to eight feet, and which seems in width to reach as far as the limits of the company's ground, if not farther. So that, practically, the supply of stone would seem exhaustless, and if the yield keeps up, the speculation must prove a capital one, and one that will soon be followed no doubt by other companies along the line-the returns from samples crushed reaching as high as 14 dwts. to the ton. Indeed, another company are already sinking alongside the Eureka Company's boundary, and the existence of the same kind of stuff may be inferred in other places along the line by the similarity in the appearance here and there of the tailings left by the original miners. There are twelve shares in the Eureka Cement Company, two of which are given for the supply of machinery, including two additional batteries of four, should the venture prove profitable.[3]

Also See

References

  1. The Argus, 4 December 1854.
  2. Bendigo Advertiser, 5 September 1855
  3. Ballarat Star, 16 November 1860.