Country diary: mine stacks punctuate the landscape

Botallack, Tin Coast, Cornwall: Today this once industrious land is deserted apart from a few curious visitors, keen to see the Poldark family mineAbove the summer-blue sea, mine stacks, ruined engine houses, and the 1980s head-frame above Allen Shaft punctuate the landscape. From Botallack's restored count house (the accounts office), which provides refreshments and a repeating video about the Poldark TV series (this is the site of the "Wheal Leisure" family mine), a volunteer from the Trevithick Society conducts us around the abandoned ground, exploited on and off over centuries for its shiny stones - tin and copper, and later arsenic.Grylls Bunny - an overgrown quarry partly masked with later mining spoil - was an early opencast working for tin, and small pits extend down the cliff. By the early 19th century, shafts had been sunk and levels driven out beneath the ocean; the greater depths of working necessitated steam power to supersede horses and water wheels, to work the pumps, winding machines and stamps (crushers). Two engine houses, built of dressed granite blocks, are perched on the Crowns rocks, just above sea level. Continue reading...