It is difficult to imagine what a Brendon Hill iron mine complex would have looked like. No photographs have survived from the 1870s phase of mining. The Project commissioned a virtual reconstruction from Timothy Dawson to provide such a picture.
The site chosen is Raleighs Cross mine as it might have appeared in about 1876 in the time of Morgan Morgans as general manager. He was responsible for sinking the original Engine Drift from 1858 to 1865 and building the surface complex including the winding house and the pumping engine. An inscribed stone on the chimney stack of the pumping engine house bore the date 1865. The mine stood to the south of the Bampton road and was served by a single-track branch off the Mineral Line at the top of the Incline. This mine complex was developed further after 1877.
The reconstruction is based on photographs of the ruins surviving in 1901, on large-scale editions of the Ordnance Survey mapping, on the results of excavations by the Exmoor Mines Research Group and on the extensive research of Mike Jones.
The distinctive profile of the ruined end wall of the engine house is the basis of the logo of the West Somerset Mineral Railway Project.
