| This
steep-sided valley takes its rust-coloured appearance from the
thousands of tonnes of waste rock from copper mining which was
tipped down its sides. An engine house with a castellated chimney
stack at Wheal Ellen (1866) survives on the valley floor.
Further seawards at Tywarnhayle Mine,
the engine house is one of the very few to survive which was built
for a wooden beam; it was at this shaft that electrically-driven
centrifugal pumps were first used in Cornwall in 1906.
This was also the
first site of experimental froth flotation in the early twentieth
century. This major innovation had a world-wide impact on mineral
processing. From 1908 until recently the underground levels in the
hillside were used as a training mine for the Royal School of
Mines, Imperial College, London. |
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