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The preparation, smelting and refining required to process the silver-bearing ores were an integrated part of Crown operations at Bere Ferrers. During the first few years of operations in the late 13th century production was based on the wood fired, wind blown 'bole' smelting technique brought from the lead mining areas of northern England. However the bole was not capable of efficiently smelting all the ore mined and was soon augmented by charcoal fired, bellows blown furnaces developed through a period of experimentation. Transport by horse and by river played an important part in the processing operations. Ore was moved from the mines to washing sites where waste was removed by simple gravitational separation. From there it was taken to one of a number of smelting sites. Bole smelting sites were located as far afield as Milton to the east of the Tavy. Residues from smelting were removed for crushing and washing to separate the waste. Those parts still rich in lead and silver were then re-smelted in the furnace.

Until 1301 the lead produced was refined at a mill near Martinstowe (Maristow), on the Tavy estuary.4 Refining, furnace smelting and most of the bole smelting operations were then moved to Calstock, on the Cornish bank of the Tamar. Remaining there until circa 1318 when they were returned to Martinstowe. The smelting / refining operations consumed large amounts of fuel drawn from woods at Warleigh, Bickham, Halsere (in Bere Ferrers) and Morwellham. When the mines were granted wood from the manor of Calstock it was easier to move the ore to the fuel and centre activity around the church there, although some smelting was carried out in outlying parts of the manor as far north as Greenscombe.

Working during the early modern period appears to have been concentrated at Buttspill, on the crosscourse north of the medieval workings, where a 'silver mine' was active in the 1690s. However, much of the ground worked during the medieval period was re-examined during the late 18th and 19th centuries when, with the advent of powerful steam pumping engines, workers were able to get to new ground below the medieval workings. A testament to the drainage skills of the earlier miners. As a consequence later activity was concentrated on certain deep shafts leaving much of the old surface workings untouched.

Walking north from Weirquay along the public footpath, which follows the line of the crosscourse, there is ample evidence of shaft mounds marking the early workings. Adits which once drained the medieval workings are now largely covered over but in the woodland to the north of Whitsam Down is the lobby of a shallow adit probably dating from that period. The best surviving evidence of medieval activity is to be found well away from the mines themselves in Shillamill and Blackmoorham woods, where cuttings and tunnels mark the course of the mid 15th century leat.5

During the late medieval period the mining of silver-bearing ores effected a transition from a handicraft form, based on the activity of independent miners, governed by custom and with the minimum of royal involvement, to a capital intensive industry subject to central management in which the miner was an employee of the Crown or its lessees. After 1500 new centres of silver mining were opened up in mid wales and in the south-west of England, where earlier (medieval) sites like Combe Martin were reopened and proved particularly productive.