The Tregonning - Godolphin Mining District
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[location
map]
[historic landscapes] [WHS
GIS Mapping] |
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The granite cone of Godolphin Hill and the long
ridge of Tregonning Hill with the engine house and chimney stack
of Great Work mine prominently visible in the saddle between them,
dominate the southern part of this ancient mining district. Some
of the richest and, at times, the deepest tin and copper mines in
the Region occur within this Area.
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To the north the landscape is a
mixture of gently rising downland on which a patchwork of
smallholdings and new farms has been created, interspersed with
long-established farms and parkland associated with the great
mining estates of Godolphin and Clowance. Most miners’ cottages
are dispersed in a landscape of small fields or set in small
groups, though larger settlements of highway villages with fine
industrial terraced cottages exist, notably at Praze-an-Beeble and
Leedstown. Small groups of miners’ cottages set within substantial
blocks of early nineteenth century miners’ smallholdings flank the
A394 road through the southern part of the mining district. A
number of engine houses form landmarks in the Area and the sheer
density of mine shafts in the landscape is particularly
impressive. Some mark the site of some of the earliest steam
engines on metal mines in the world.
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Mining has a long pedigree in this extensive and broadly
triangular-shaped mining district, which stretches along the south
coast from Marazion to Porthleven, its northern edges following a
line which runs from just south of
Hayle eastwards through the
Gwinear mining district to
Praze-an-Beeble. Several of the mines
within this area, notably Great Work, Wheal Vor, Great Wheal
Fortune, Godolphin Mine, Binner Downs, Halamannning, Wheal Alfred,
Crenver and Abraham and the Marazion mines, were substantial
producers, but many other smaller mines are documented within this
area. The underlying lode structure here is complex, the broadly
north-east – south-west lode orientation characteristic of most
of Cornwall here is here intersected by one which runs
east-south-east – west-north-west.
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Sites overlying and immediately surrounding the Tregonning granite tended to be
significant for tin, whilst the majority of the mines to the north
and west were important early copper producers. Many of these rich
but often shallow copper mines had already been abandoned by the
1840s. A substantial number of the tin mines within this area had been
worked long before the 19th century, Leland in 1540
noting that the mines owned by the Godolphin Estate had "been
unto Sir Francis (Godolphin) and his ancestors many years as a
minte, by reason of the riches which the same doth yield in Tin
Works …. (which) do continually employ 300 persons at the least".
Great Work was the site, in 1689 of the introduction of blasting
to mining by Thomas Epsley. This mine, which must have been
amongst those working in the 16th century, was still
producing 300 years later. Wheal Vor, too, was one of Cornwall’s
great mines, its output so substantial that a smelting house was
established at the mine in 1816. The district is also significant
in that both Savery and Newcomen are reputed to have trialled
their earliest pumping engines at Wheal Vor, where Brunton later
erected his first rotative calciner in the 1830s.
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Tregonning and Godolphin Hills dominate the southern part of
the district; to the north, the landscape is a mixture of
gently-rising downland on which a patchwork of smallholdings and
new farms have been established, interspersed with
long-established farms and land associated with the estates of
Godolphin and Clowance. There are few large settlements within
this area, most miners’ cottages being dispersed through a
landscape of small fields or set in small groups, though
Leedstown, Godolphin Cross, Carnhell Green, Praze-an-Beeble and
Goldsithney developed into rather more substantial settlements.
Small groups of miners’ cottages flank the A394 linking Marazion
with
Helston through the southern part of the mining district, the
road separating farmland created during the mining period to its
north from the old farms of the coastal plateau to its south. |
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Comparatively few engine houses survive within this extensive
district. The pumping engine house at Great Work on the shoulder
of Godolphin Hill has been conserved by The National Trust, as has
that on the coast at Wheal Prosper, unlike the precariously-sited
and increasingly derelict engine houses at nearby Trewavas Cliff.
Other engine houses survive within the landscape, though most are
in relatively isolated locations and have to be hunted for. Above
all, this is primarily a landscape of many hundreds of shaft dumps
which together mark out the outcrop of lodes running continuously
for miles beneath this landscape. At Halamanning, Wheal Alfred,
Binner Downs, Penberthy Crofts and other sites which have not been
reclaimed to agriculture, the former importance of mining within
this district is still readily apparent in the extent of their
waste dumps, the scientific value of which is increasingly being
recognised by geologists.
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