Cornwall's Mining Heritage
The extraction of tin, copper and allied minerals is known to have taken place in Cornwall for more than 3,000 years, at least since the time of the Phoenician traders, and for many centuries Cornwall was known as the world’s capital of tin production. Early methods included the processing of river-bed deposits and open-cast excavations, but the problems of flooding prevented deep rock mining until the invention of the steam-driven pump.
By the late 1700s huge beam engines dotted Cornwall, installed in the massive stone engine houses which are now characteristic of the Cornish landscape. The fortunes of the mines rose and fell with changes in the world price of tin, particularly in the mid- to late-1800s when many Cornish miners and their families were forced to follow their trade to California, Peru, South Africa and Australia (the Diaspora). They say that if you look down any hole in the ground around the world, you'll find a Cornishman. Cornish miners were highly valued not only for their skills but for their Methodist principles and Protestant work ethic.
At its height, the Cornish Tin Mining Industry had around 600 steam engines working to pump out the mines. The last mine to close in the late 1990s was South Crofty, at Pool near Redruth, but a major enterprise using the most modern equipment and methods is currently working to reopen it. By and large, however, nature is reclaiming its own, cloaking the stark remains of a bygone industrial era in the green, purple and gold of native Cornish heather and gorse.
Wheal Music operated from around 1780 until at least 1848, producing mainly copper, and included the Navvy Pit on the opposite side of the road north of Parc Shady. The Navvy Pit was worked up until 1833 and is said to have made £100,000 (considered very profitable in those days). It was about an acre in area and 150 ft. deep, the largest opencast copper mine in Europe.
In 1866 a new venture was begun; existing mineral lodes had become uneconomical and Wheal Music, Old Wheal Bassett and Wheal Ellen amalgamated in a new company with the aim of exploiting the ground beneath the Navvy Pit. A new engine house was constructed close to Wheal Music count house, but like the house at New Wheal Towan, this one never had an engine inside. It was built by a Manchester-based company in 1866 and more shares were advertised on the strength of an alleged discovery of a rich lode of copper (27.5%) in the new shaft. That is the last we hear of the concern which went under the grandiose title of Ellen United Copper and Zinc Mining Company. The Trevithick Society’s founder, the late Mr W. Tregoning Hooper, used to say that the house was built by his uncle who received not a penny piece for his work!
It is not many years since the Tywarnhayle valley was a rust-coloured, stark reminder of the days of the hard-rock miner, but once again nature is prevailing and we are privileged to enjoy this dramatic and nostalgic scene which has recently been enshrined as a World Heritage Site.
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