The St. Just Mining District
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[location
map] [historic landscapes]
[WHS GIS mapping] |
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The town of St. Just, in the south of the Area,
gives the district its name. It is the only large settlement. It
is a small, substantially-planned, industrial town built to serve
the local mines such as St Just United, Balleswidden, Boscean,
Wheal Owles, Botallack and Levant. For centuries St
Just was no more than a small group of farms and cottages
surrounding the parish church and its medieval Plęn-an-Gwarry (the
amphitheatre within which mystery plays were performed). Within
the surrounding landscape, families worked fields whose boundaries
had been laid out during late prehistory and which had little
changed during the Medieval period. Although farming would have
been the principal occupation, boats were launched from Priest's
Cove and local miners were working the alluvial tin deposits in
the valleys to the north and south of the town; the exploitation
of many of the local coastal lode outcrops was well under way by
the mid-16th century.
Although some growth in the town had already taken place by the
17th century - no doubt in response to the activities of these
early miners, it was the rapid growth of the mining industry
during the early decades of the 19th century which was to
transform this quiet backwater. Census returns show that the
parish population increased from 2,779 in 1801 to 9,290 in 1861,
the greatest growth occurring between 1831 and 1841, when the town
of
St Just trebled in area and mine employees made up a full
third of the local population. Within the district, existing
hamlets like
Bojewyan Stennack,
Botallack, Boscaswell,
Carnyorth,
Trewellard,
Nancherrow and
Kenidjack grew rapidly into substantial settlements whose
occupants worked almost exclusively at the local mines. The boom
was short-lived, however, lasting perhaps a little over half a
century.
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Decline set in during the 1860s when
most of the area's copper mines went to the wall and by the turn
of the century the population had halved as a result of many of
the mining workforce emigrating. The district is unique in that the
majority of its lodes strike at right angles to the coastline.
This lode trend is also at right angles to the direction of
most tin and copper lodes in the rest of the nominated Site and is
a phenomenon related to the area’s geological history. Cliffs
recede in deep, steep-sided, narrow incised clefts, locally called
‘zawns’. These indicate perpendicular weaknesses in the lode (and
fault) structures which are perhaps more highly concentrated in
their coastal exposure here than anywhere else in the world. It is
likely that this was one of the first areas within the Cornubian
Orefield where underground mining for tin was tried. Extensive
evidence survives of open-works (included within the term ‘gunnises’). |
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These are amongst the earliest and
rarest surviving group of surface hard-rock mining features in the
region. There are no rivers, and few streams, but water was
captured, transported along leats and used to power pumps and
dressing equipment on numerous mines, both large and small.
Perhaps the most distinctive feature of the Area however, one
intimately tied to its structural geology and the orientation of
its lodes, was the development of a group of world-famous pioneer
submarine mines. In the case of Levant Mine, workings extended
horizontally up to 1.5km from the shore at a depth of over 600m
below the sea-bed.
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The mineral processing sites in the
Area illustrate the full range of technological development in
this branch of mining. Numerous small scale tin-dressing floors
demonstrate the evolution of technology introduced during the
post-Medieval period. At the Botallack and Levant mines,
large-scale tin-dressing floors show how steam power was used in
ore-processing and the scale on which it was applied. There are
extensive remains of a tin mill preserved at Geevor Mine which
shows how twentieth-century technology was incorporated into the
industry. The surviving arsenic works within the Area indicate the
technological developments that occurred within this important
branch of the mining industry. |
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The mining district is small and more or less
confined to the coastal fringe. To the east, the lodes evidently
became less rich, and there although there are mines along the
coast through Morvah and Zennor
parishes towards St. Ives, they are small and were never very
productive. Inland, mining of any significance only took place at
Leswidden just to the east of St. Just town and at Ding Dong, on
the high moors to the east |
Given that, until quite recently, the area remained relatively
remote, being poorly served with roads, little landscape change
occurred following the late 19th century collapse of the mining
industry. Mining land tended to be agriculturally poor and very
exposed given its coastal location and there was little incentive
to bring it back into productive use. As
a result the survival of mining sites within this area has been
amongst the best in Cornwall. The acquisition of the majority of
the most significant mining sites in the St. Just District by The
National Trust since the mid-1990's has been followed by extensive
conservation programmes, whilst the acquisition of Geevor in 1991
by Cornwall County |
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Council following the closure of the mine prevented the
clearance of this site and the dispersal or scrapping of its
machinery. Geevor has now been developed as a mining heritage
interpretation site, and is currently managed by Pendeen Community
Heritage, a locally-based group which includes a number of former
Geevor miners.
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Places to Visit
Geevor Tin Mine - the largest preserved mining site in the UK.
In the far west of Cornwall, on the Atlantic Coast here Cornwall's
mining history comes to life. Until 1990 Geevor was working mine,
now a musem with many surface buildings with guided underground
tours through 18th / 19th century workings.
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Levant Mine - Levant is owned and managed by The National
Trust and is the home to Cornwall's oldest working beam engine
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www.rosevalemine.co.uk
- Rosevale Mine is a privately owned former tin
mine situated at Zennor, near St Ives in West Cornwall. For the
past 30 years the underground workings have been restored and
preserved as a typical Cornish mine. |
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