Cornwall Arts Photography from Cornwall

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Cornish Mines Tin Mining in Cornwall

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This gallery is special to us. We used to spend so much time at the stone circles and holy wells of Cornwall feeling I was in the presence of sacred place, now as we walk this land with our children we realise that the the real sacred landscape is in the heritage and culture of the old industrial landscape.

Cornish Mining is seen now through rose tinted glasses but in these pictures and these crumbling buildings we hope you feel a sense of the courage and determination of the Cornish people.

We are also honoured that our dear friend Clies Stevens 'an ex Cornish Miner himself' has written the introduction below with a further story below the last line of pictures.

Other tin mining pages - Geevor Tin Mine - THE WAY ‘OVE UN PARD! South Crofty by Clies Stevens

A MINERS DAY, 1850

Wheal Coates St Agnes

Photography by genius loci

click on image to enlarge

Wheal Coates St Agnes

Tin mining in Cornwall

Photography by genius loci

click on image to enlarge

Our Miners day in and around 1850 in the mining areas of west Cornwall would begin at 04.30 AM! And yes there is such a time of the morning. For his wife the day began here as well, she would be up to awaken the old fashioned but efficient Cornish range with shavings of dry wood and twigs before adding some carefully selected coal nuggets.
Light would have been provided by some candles left over from her mans previous shifts, he would have been charged for these by the way. Can you imagine going to work today and at the end of the month given a bill for the electricity you would have used at your work? I don’t think so somehow.
She would make him a large mug of precious tea, or it was close to the end of the month and no money left nettle tea. (I have drunk this brew and found it very refreshing) a large lump of whole meal bread for his breakfast, dry nothing to spread on it or if he was very lucky a thin spread of blackcurrant or gooseberry preserve from the summer, or perhaps a touch of honey to help it down.
A miner’s wife was a very special person back then, as she is today. She sent her man off to work deep in the bowels of the earth, not knowing if she would ever see him again, or perhaps he would be brought home in pieces. Not ever seen again was preferable because if the miner did not belong to the ‘CLUB’ she would have to pay for the funeral!

Wheal Coates St Agnes

Tin mining in Cornwall

Photography by genius loci

click on image to enlarge

Wheal Coates St Agnes

Tin mining in Cornwall

Photography by genius loci

click on image to enlarge

She would pay attention to his every cough, listening for the dreaded rattle and wheeze of ‘miners lung’ or silicosis. Look in the cemeteries of the mining areas and see the average age of the men who died there. 35 to 40 years of age was considered a good age for a miner!
At last he would leave his humble two up three down miners cottage with the others from the row of dwellings and make his way to whatever pit he was currently working in. Our Cornish miner was a skilled man, in high demand by all the Victorian mine adventurers. Untold millions were being made in Cornwall at this time, the great flat lode of the Camborne /Redruth area alone financed the Basset EMPIRE, let alone anything else. Cornish banks flourished and the mining exchange in Redruth was in constant contact with the London stock exchange by the new fangled electric telegraph.
All of this however was far from our miner as he made his way to work down rutted muddy lanes, his boots ringing of the cobbled streets if he was in the town. Murdoch had perfected his gas lighting at this time and Redruth boasted the worlds FIRST gas street lighting! But in the country of a winters day it was dark, oft times freezing and /or raining.

Levant

Tin mining in Cornwall

Photography by genius loci

click on image to enlarge

Levant

Tin mining in Cornwall

Photography by genius loci

click on image to enlarge

On reaching his work place if he was lucky he would get a ride down the shaft either on a man engine or a precarious ride in a ‘kibble’ the bucket used to raise the ore. More often or not he would have to climb down untold lengths of ladders, down the steaming shaft because the shaft was often so deep that at the bottom the water seeping from the tunnels was hot. This could take him 2 hours or more just to reach his workstation where he would work for the next 8 hours before CLIMBING back up to ‘grass’ and home. So, soaking wet and filthy, stained a reddish brown colour from the minerals and chemicals he was working with he would trudge home to the cottage, probably one of row of similar dwellings all owned by the mine and rented to the miner.
He might have stopped at the local ‘kettle and wink’ to get his pint of gin on the ‘wink’ or credit until payday. The surrounding countryside would have been full of the sulphurous smell of coal smoke, the only illumination in many areas the brightly lit engine houses working night and day none stop to keep the mines clear of water and winding the ore to the surface.

Perhaps he would have got lift from a drayman who had just delivered his coal to the engine house, a lift in exchange for a ‘pull’ at the precious gin bottle. Some of these men could swallow a huge quantity of ‘gin’ but it was not quite the gin we know today. That could be the subject for another day perhaps. So he sits up there with the driver, wrapped in the filthy Hessian/canvass sacking used for the coal against the freezing night air over his soaking wet and cold work clothes.
The pitch dark of the country side was lit by those yellow flowers of the occasional oil lamp in the engine houses and the pitiful glow from the candles he had managed to save from the days work shining in his window where his fretful wife waited for her man to come safely home. Such was a normal day in the life of the men who pushed the knowledge of their trade nay a calling to the very limits of science and technology. If a need arose and no implement existed it was invented, right here in Cornwall. If technology to work a place did not exist underground it was carefully thought out and implemented at the risk of the lives of the men who tried them.

Levant

Tin mining in Cornwall

Photography by genius loci

click on image to enlarge

Levant

Tin mining in Cornwall

Photography by genius loci

click on image to enlarge

My country in 1850 was the most heavily industrialised county in England, and England led the world in technology if not humanity.
So why did our miner do this work? Because likely his father had, and his father before him. Because when he and his wife dressed in the market day best stood at the stalls haggling over prices he would be one of the very few customers to have silver coins in his pocket and death growing in his lungs; because very few men in the whole land knew his job like him and he was proud to be Cornish, proud to be a Cornish miner.
Clies Stevens

	Wheal Coates St Agnes Tin mining in Cornwall Photography by genius loci click on image to enlarge		Wheal Coates St Agnes Tin mining in Cornwall Photography by genius loci click on image to enlarge
	Wheal Coates St Agnes Tin mining in Cornwall Photography by genius loci click on image to enlarge		Wheal Coates St Agnes Tin mining in Cornwall Photography by genius loci click on image to enlarge
	Wheal Coates St Agnes Tin mining in Cornwall Photography by genius loci click on image to enlarge		Levant Tin mining in Cornwall Photography by genius loci click on image to enlarge
	Botallack Tin mining in Cornwall Photography by genius loci click on image to enlarge		Botallack Tin mining in Cornwall Photography by genius loci click on image to enlarge

THE GIANTS OF MY LAND
When as a child I would listen with utter fascination to the stories of giants and piskeys and other magical creatures I never gave a thought to the fact that every time I ventured out to the moors with the constant four legged companion that I was actually walking among the giants, albeit of a different nature.
Scattered among the granite hills like wildflowers are the remains of that time when men, Cornishmen at that built the magnificent granite memorials to Cornwall’s industrial heritage. Look a little more closely before you dismiss those now gaunt and haunted mine buildings, Haunted by the wind and the crows who seem to mock you as today’s puny men.
Try if you can imagine how to raise a solid granite block weighing at least a ton to the height needed to support the huge beam of the steam engine, this would take the weight of that beam as it worked 24 hours a day all year long to keep the water down in the workings, but I digress here. That massive hand cut granite block was raised up a minimum of 20 feet without the aid of modern machinery and using frail wooden scaffolding, if you could call it that. They did it as part of a days work, and installed the huge machinery into the engine house as well.
Were they Giants? Oh yes, they were gigantic men who never praised their own work or skill, just did what was needed and quietly contemplated the day over a ‘pipe’ and pint later. My land is studded with these modern monoliths, a testament to the stubborn tenacity of the race of Cornish folk who travelled all over the world, took their skills with them and built yet more engine house’s even bigger then those they had left behind, because they had ‘done thet at hoome pard’ and it was nothing new to them.
All over Australia and America, South America and Europe they have left the mark of Cornish work and skill, name’s like Murdoch, Bolitho and Harvey, Holman and Davey the list still goes on and on, and just the same as in the 18th century the quiet pride of KNOWING and not to vain boast is our thing. Yes I live among veritable giants, Giants of the past now but in their day they took the world to new beginnings and pushed the envelope of known science ever further.
Cornwall is Quaint you say, and I love you for it because it is quaint, but look at the great works my people have left behind, and wonder at the race of giants it took to make them.
Kernow bys Viken Clies Stevens

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The Cornish Miners Association (CMA) was born out of a determination by ex-miners to remain as a close- knit community. Mining creates an environment that is unlike any other. The close friendship, camaraderie, dependence upon each other in dangerous situations underground The CMA aims to help preserve this unique community which has existed for thousands of years in Cornwall and survives in Cornish communities in Australia, South Africa, West Africa, Mexico, the USA, Canada and a score of other countries and continents. All former miners and mine workers are invited to join and participate. click here for more info