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Latest News
St Austell – Historic
Mining Town
"The local
history that nearly everyone has forgotten"
A free exhibition opening at 3pm on 22
March to the general public
The China Clay History Society
is organising a major exhibition at Wheal Martyn Museum to
illustrate the history of tin and copper mining in the St
Austell area. Whilst the last 200 years have been
dominated by china clay, there are possibly as much as 2,000
years of metalliferous mining before that, which local
people are scarcely aware of.
There were some highly
significant mines in this area. Charlestown United tin
mine, under Holmbush Industrial Estate, was, for a time in
the early 19th century, the largest tin producer in
Cornwall. Later in the 19th century, Wheal Eliza, at
Boscundle, was one of the most profitable tin mines in
Cornwall, closing in 1897, although some activity lingered
on into the early 20th century. Crinnis copper mine,
under the built-up area at Carlyon Bay, was a major copper
producer in the early decades of the 19th century and there
are many romantic stories associated with it.
Underground photographs of the mine, never shown in public
before, will be on display. Mining was a hard life,
with a life expectancy of 35 years; many children worked
down the mines.
Perhaps the most important
aspect of the local mining scene was the extent of tin
streaming in our local valleys; artefacts discovered in the
18th and 19th centuries show that tin streaming took place
as far back as Bronze Age times. St Austell would have
been a scene of intense industrial activity 200 years ago,
with the mines and the tin ore being smelted in the many
'blowing houses' scattered all over our area.
Mines such as Carclaze were of
great interest to late 18th and early 19th century
scientists, who travelled from all over Europe to visit it;
their observations underpinned the development of geological
science. Carclaze was also an engineering wonder, with
a 500m long underground canal built by John Parnell of St
Austell, possibly the earliest underground canal in Britain. |
