World Heritage Site Selection Criteria

The Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape is nominated as a cultural landscape under the criteria for cultural properties set out in the Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention. Under the second category defined in 39(ii): the organically evolved landscape, and within its first sub-category: a relict landscape, it is further proposed that this be taken to demonstrate the evolution of human society and settlement over time, under the influence of the physical constraints and/or opportunities presented by their natural environment and of successive social, economic and cultural forces, both external and internal.

Cornwall was an early and advanced eighteenth-century industrial region. During the nineteenth century the region played a strategic role in the world-wide spread of hard-rock mining skills, and of steam-engine technology. Cornwall pioneered the transfer of the British industrial revolution overseas. As a result, the nominated Site played a key role in the growth of a global capitalist economy. From 1700, the key interchange that characterised Cornish mining was the diffusion of technology. Cornwall and Devon both played a leading role in the development of the steam engine because this was the technology that was increasingly used to pump the deep wet mines of the region, to draw the ore to the surface and, later, to crush it.

Steam power was first adopted by a metal mine during the second decade of the eighteenth century. This was probably at Wheal Vor (Tregonning Mining District) between 1710 and 1714. The engine was a Newcomen atmospheric steam engine, patented by Thomas Newcomen and Thomas Savery from Devon. Despite this early beginning, it took time for the technology to be adopted, primarily because of the cost of the coal that had to be shipped from the coalfields of Bristol and South Wales. When the patent expired in 1733, engineers such as the Hornblowers began to improve the Newcomen-Savery design. John Smeaton, who was brought in by Cornish mines adventurers during the early 1770s, almost doubled the power of the Newcomen engine. This power output was effectively doubled yet again by Boulton & Watt who began to supply for their own engines to Cornwall from 1777. They also made highly significant fuel savings. By the time their monopoly came to an end in 1800, Cornish engineers such as Trevithick and Woolf were beginning to develop the high-pressure steam engine. Once again this was to double the ‘duty’ reached by the best of Watt’s engines.

So by 1838, the average ‘duty’ of Cornish engines was almost two-and-a-half times more than that of the best Watt engines. It was at the foundries and mines in Hayle, Tregonning, Camborne/Redruth and Gwennap Mining Districts that much of the development was carried out which was to propel the steam engine to previously unimagined levels of efficiency. A whole society was involved in this diffusion of knowledge and expertise, a society steeped in a vigorous and receptive industrial culture. It was a powerhouse of invention and innovation, importing new ideas from elsewhere, exporting new techniques in turn. It was a culture that gave rise to a local engineering industry dedicated to servicing the growing needs both of mining and processing the ore (‘ore-dressing’). Local foundries manufactured innovations such as ‘Cornish rolls’ which crushed copper ore, and the ‘Cornish boiler’ which was used to produce high-pressure steam.

A number of internationally significant innovation originated in the nominated Site. For example in 1792 William Murdoch was the first person to use gas for lighting. The house he lit still stands in the centre of Redruth. Richard Trevithick experimented with steam-powered road vehicles in Camborne and his railway engine of 1802 helped to lay the foundations for the railway system that revolutionised the world economy. Sir Humphry Davy invented the coal miners’ safety lamp in 1816. And William Bickford developed the miners’ safety fuse in 1831. Bickford’s factory complex at Tuckingmill became the global centre of fuse manufacturing. Parts of it still survive. Some of Britain’s earliest printed ‘scientific’ works on mining and mineralogy were produced in Cornwall. They included Mineralogia Cornubiensisby William Pryce, a Redruth mine surgeon, which was published in 1778.

Another intellectual characteristic of the nominated Site was the founding of miners’ and mechanics’ institutes such as the one at St Agnes, and mining schools such as the one at Redruth. Some mining schools were later incorporated into the Camborne School of Mines. In the nearby towns of Penzance, Truro and Falmouth, an interest in geology and science was encouraged by literary institutions and museums. The Royal Geological Society of Cornwall (1814), the Royal Institution of Cornwall (1818), and the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society (1833) were founded with the aim of increasing knowledge and improving skills within the industry. They still exist and retain their importance as part of the Cornish cultural heritage. Cornwall’s mining industry had a profound impact on the landscape. New ports and quays were built at places such as Hayle, Portreath, Devoran, Charlestown and Morwellham. New tramways and railways were laid down, for example the Poldice Plateway, the Redruth & Chasewater Railway, the Liskeard & Caradon Railway and the East Cornwall Mineral Railway. In addition there were the hundreds of distinctive engine houses with their associated ‘burrows’ and shafts, together with waste tips which sprawled across the landscape. New settlements such as Camborne, Carharrack and Minions  sprang up, each one containing rows of terraced miners’ cottages and the ubiquitous Methodist chapels.

As emigration became central to the cultural life of nineteenth-century Cornwall, this characteristic mining landscape together with numerous aspects of the mining community’s social ethos went overseas with the emigrants. Cornish engine houses and Cornish chapels can still be found in countries as far apart as Australia and Mexico.

The Cornish landscape had a special meaning for its people in medieval times. The evidence for this claim is the propensity to adopt surnames based on place names. This link between people and places continued throughout the industrial period though developments in the nineteenth century meant it was no longer confined to geographical Cornwall. For example, Cornish surnames such as Menadue, Chynoweth or Nankivell, all derived from the Cornish language via place names, are now far more common in Australia than in Cornwall. So even Cornish names now have an international aspect. This illustrates the process of cultural interchange that has followed the changing fortunes of Cornish mining.
 

Cornish mining transformed both the region’s landscape and its society over a period of four millennia. It also helped to create a distinctive culture. The industrialisation of Cornish mining in particular had profound social and cultural consequences. By the mid-nineteenth century, Cornwall had spawned a proud and assertive regional identity, associated most closely with the mining districts. (This identity took on a wider global significance in the wake of mass migration overseas). Eventually this cultural tradition fused with other aspects of Cornwall’s heritage and developed into the contemporary perception of the Cornish - by the Cornish - as ‘industrial Celts’.

Cornwall’s mining landscape bears the imprint of much of this distinctive and changing cultural heritage. Most medieval European mining regions were closely controlled by the state. Cornish mining was different. It had developed under conditions which gave both miners and investors considerable freedom. Mining practice in Cornwall was based on Stannary law, a codified version of customary mining traditions which included such practices as the adventurers’ right to ‘bound’ land, in other words to stake a claim to a piece of land for mining purposes without regard for the constraints of normal landed property rights. The Stannary Courts and Convocation existed in association with the Duchy of Cornwall (the Duchy being an institution which tied Cornwall and parts of Devon into a close relationship with the Crown) and did so to their mutual advantage. Cornwall’s eighteenth-century mining activities, which were widely dispersed across the region, were characterised by elements of the older mining tradition coupled with new industrial practices. Together they produced a distinct regional culture. Employment relations, for example, became well-defined during this period. Although they harked back culturally to an older tradition of semi-independent tinner-smallholders, they were ideally suited to the requirements of a more capitalised industry. The payment systems known as tribute’ and ‘tutwork’, which contained an element of self-employment, were developed in the nominated Site and prevailed in almost every mine.

The practice of leasing out smallholdings on unenclosed land within the mining districts enabled a proportion of the miners to build cottages, rear pigs and grow some vegetables. This lessened their dependence on both the market and the mine. It also maintained the economic role of the family unit and guaranteed relatively egalitarian relations between the men and women within the household. The characteristic landscape of small fields and scattered cottages associated with this practice can still be found in many parts of the nominated Site.

As to religion, the dispersed settlement pattern associated with industrialisation in eighteenth-century Cornwall provided fertile ground for Methodism. When new mines were developed and a mining village sprang up to house the miners and their families, the Methodists were able to establish themselves immediately, unlike the Anglicans who had to undertake a lengthy legal process. So a network of small chapels provided the focal point for people’s spiritual life. By 1851, Cornwall had a higher proportion of Methodist members and chapel-goers than any other part of England. Methodism continued to exert an important influence until the mid-twentieth century. Well over 700 chapels still survive in Cornwall and more than 80 per cent of them are Methodist in origin.

From the 1840s onwards, there was an outpouring of work in the Cornish dialect. In the 1880s and ‘90s a distinct school of literature emerged and included Edward Bosanketh’s Tin (set in St Just mining District) and H. D. Lowry’s Wheal Darkness (A5). John Harris (1820-1884), the Cornish poet and miner, published several volumes of poetry celebrating his native landscapes, including Lays from the Mine, the Moor and the Mountains (1853) and A Story of Carn Brea (1863). These developments provide clear evidence of mining’s position at the centre of local culture.

As to popular culture, a number of distinct elements became central to mining communities: they ranged from sports such as Cornish wrestling to food such as pasties and saffron buns. The folk tales of the region and its rich oral culture were captured by collectors such as Henry Hunt and William Bottrell in the 1860s and 70s. Later, the Cornish adopted cultural activities which were enjoyed in other parts of industrial Britain, including male voice choirs, brass and silver bands, carol singing and rugby. They all became mainstays of local cultural life and came to be identified as quintessentially ‘Cornish’ by the 1900s.

The Cornish family was distinctive in that it was the custom for there to be a relatively equal division of labour regardless of gender. This practice was retained well into the nineteenth century. Boys (as young as eight years old) worked underground, whilst Cornish women had in any case developed a sense of relative independence from the late eighteenth century onwards due to the common practice of employing girls and women in the copper mines as surface workers, or ‘bal maidens’. This independence was reinforced in the latter part of the nineteenth century when mass migration produced another distinct family form, that of the Cornish ‘dispersed’ family. In this case there was a stark division of labour, with the men working overseas for variable amounts of time while their wives undertook total domestic and financial responsibility at home in Cornwall. What had been a singular regional culture based on mining gained global significance when some 200,000 Cornish people migrated overseas. In America and Australia, in particular, it was the Cornish who often established the culture of the mining ‘frontiers’. Cornish words became commonplace, often derived from Cornwall’s Celtic language: words such as ‘wheal’, meaning mine working; ‘bal’, which originally referred to a group of individual workings but which later applied to a single mine that incorporated these earlier and smaller workings; and ‘gunnis’, meaning a stope (a chamber from which ore is excavated) that is empty or no longer worked.

The Cornish wage systems known as ‘tribute’ and ‘tutwork’ were applied. So too was the cost book system of mine finance. Cornish folk traditions were adopted: choir-singing in California and pasties in Mexico, for example. And Cornish chapels were built in South Australia. In the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, Cornish entertainers such as Fanny Moody, and novelists such as Silas, Joseph and Salome Hocking became household names in Australia, South Africa and parts of North America.

The trans-national aspect of Cornish culture was cemented by family links, by constant trans-continental migration and by the return of so-called ‘Cousin Jacks’ to Cornwall. It blossomed from the 1880s to just before World War I, receding only with the collapse of international metal mining after 1919. The region’s mining communities have bequeathed a vibrant cultural heritage. Social and family history is intertwined with a living tradition of music, art and literature. This heritage continues to shape the modern Cornish identity, even though the mining industry itself has contracted.

In the late twentieth century, the industrial cultural heritage of rugby, choirs and dialect merged with the revival of other cultural traditions such as Celtic music and dance, and the Cornish language itself, and together they now underpin a vibrant, dynamic and changing cultural identity. Perhaps the most visible sign of this development is the flag of St Piran, the patron saint of Cornish tinners, which is in widespread use. The flag - a white cross on a black background - symbolises the tin metal set in a black background of charcoal ashes and represents contemporary Cornish pride in a sense of identity and inheritance. St Piran’s flag is also unfurled at events in North America and South Australia connected with a renewed sense of trans-national Cornishness.

The nominated Site is an intrinsic part of that greater landmark of human history known as ‘the Industrial Revolution’. Cornish mining made substantial technological, social and economic contributions to the British industrial revolution and it was Cornish mining which made pioneering use of industrial practices overseas. This occurred at a crucial formative period in the development of modern industrial society and played a key role in the growth of a global capitalist economy.

Metal mining transformed the landscape and society of Cornwall and West Devon. The serial nomination represents the most significant of the dispersed industrial areas within the Site and includes a range of highly visible components, all relatively close to one another. Together they exemplify the evolution and development of Cornish mining technology in its entirety. Steam power was the greatest of the technical innovations to be developed during the Industrial Revolution, and the nominated Site was central to its introduction and development. Neither transport nor many of the strategic industries of that era could have continued to advance without the innovative application of steam power. The developments which came from within the nominated Site were often owed to everyday tinkering by empirically-trained, local working engineers rather than to innovative flashes of genius. The acme of steam development was the Cornish Beam Engine. There are more than two hundred Cornish engine houses spread across the nominated Site. They are among the most distinctive industrial buildings in the world. The variations in their design reflect the evolutionary development of the Cornish engine, and the form of each individual engine house reflects the type and size of the engine it once housed.

Four beam engines survive in situ in Cornwall. There is a winding (hoisting) engine at Levant Mine (St Just Mining District), a winding and a pumping engine at East Pool & Agar Mine, and a pumping engine at South Crofty Mine (both in Camborne and Redruth Mining District). Another significant contribution to steam technology was made by the foundries that manufactured the engines. The principal surviving foundries are: Perran (Gwennap Mining District); Harvey’s of Hayle; Holman’s and Sara’s (in Camborne and Redruth respectively); Mount, Tavy and Bedford (Tamar Valley Mining District); and Charlestown. These foundries also manufactured a wide range of other mining products. Holman’s, in particular, was internationally renowned for the production of compressed air rock drills. Their products dominated the mining world.

Cornish copper ore was the basis on which the Bristol and Birmingham brass industries were founded. These were the largest producers in the world. Cornish copper ore was also responsible for Swansea (South Wales) becoming the global centre for copper-smelting during most of the nineteenth-century. The copper output from west Cornwall during the first three decades of the nineteenth century amounted to two-thirds of the world’s supply. During the 1850s, Devon Great Consols in West Devon became the largest single producer in Western Europe.

There is a great deal of evidence of the former importance of Cornish copper both at the sites where it was extracted and also in the form of the substantial transport infrastructure needed to export it. Millions of tonnes of copper ore were carried from the mines to the new purpose-built mineral ports. A high-capacity transport network had to be developed rapidly from the early nineteenth century and substantial remains of this network occur right across the nominated Site in various forms. There is an internationally significant group of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century industrial ports, together with former tramways and railways and canals.

Until the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Cornwall and West Devon produced more tin than any country in the world. The ore was mined, ‘dressed’ and smelted locally. Tin was the foundation of the English pewter industry and later of tin plate manufacturing, and that in turn led to the development of the canning industry. There are substantial remains of the technologies used to dress and to smelt tin, particularly in St Just, Camborne/Redruth, St Agnes and the Tamar Valley.