 However it was in private ownership, as was the harbour at Portreath, and was not made available to the proprietors of competing mines.In 1819, the dynamic entrepreneur John Taylor took a lease on the dormant Consolidated Mines (usually referred to as "Consols").These were a group of five mines that had been abandoned in 1811 and flooded, and Taylor installed two 90 inch pumping engines — then the largest of their kind in the world — and within a year opened a long copper lode, itself the largest in the world.