Pleasant coastal scenery on the way to the mines, Atlantic Ocean is the background......



Mining ruins like this all over the landscape here. The roofs and walls partly destroyed because when the mines died the easiest way to get at the metal from the mining steam engines was to pack them with explosives and blow them up, then run around and pick up the scrap metal. This is a very typical sight......



At Geevor mine, plenty of schoolkids on tour, everyone, even toddlers, have to wear hard hats.......



A bit hard to see but the following is a technical model of all the mine workings in the area. The blue line on the glass is the sea level, so most is below that, plus some went out under the ocean about a mile off shore. The deepest parts are something like 1800 feet down or more........



Of interest may be the fact that they were mining tin and copper in Cornwall from about 4000 years ago, and there was quite an international trade in the metals from that time.

The electric powered winding drums used to lift miners and ore to the surface.........



Previously they used steam engines to do the same task, funnily the old steam engines worked faster..... (crazy fisheye view to fit both cylinders in the frame)........



Three massive electrically powered air compressors supplied the mine operation.......



They tried to show the mine as it was when abandoned in 1990, falling metal prices finally killing it, all the bits and pieces of clothing and boots were left here in the locker room......



Looking down on the 7 foot diameter ball mill where the ore was tumbled with cast iron balls and progressively broken down to about 3mm or smaller to facilitate metal extraction......



Next we went underground in the Wheal Mexico mine nearby, probably late 1700's - early 1800's mine workings, quite squeezy in places.......



Back in the open air, we saw the original water powered stamper for crushing ore, before the rotary drum method made it more efficient and reliable, and maybe a little less noisy (?) .........



On down the coast a little is the Levant mine where a small 1840 beam engine escaped being turned into scrap and is running again under steam. This one has a 27 inch cylinder and is a baby compared to the biggest, preserved in Holland with 144 inch cylinder, a 90 inch one is preserved in Cornwall at Pool, all made by a Cornish factory, here's the baby below, used for lifting ore only. The men in the very early days used ladders and then later a man lift where a vertical beam moved up and down 12 feet and had a series of platforms on the beam. Men stepped on and off the platforms at the right moment to either go up or down. That method abandoned in 1919 when a beam broke loose and 31 men died in the following crash of everything falling down into the mine. Now back to the ore lifting engine.....



Impossible to get an overall shot as it is a large engine jammed into a small building, the green bits are the upper and lower inlet and exhaust valves for the steam, hard to see is the cylinder packed in white insulation behind, the rocking beam is overhead out of sight.

Now from upstairs and the beam end coming up to nearly hit the camera (the engine was running), below is where I was standing for the previous image......



Looking down onto the cylinder top.......



The depth gauge that the engine driver needed to pay attention to, it is fathoms, not feet (6 feet to a fathom)........



OK by now you are bored with machinery so a coastal view from the mine site.....



Finally, fish and chips for dinner, then back home to start on this page......

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