Crown Mine Botallack Cornwall England UK Europe
A picture taken from the South West coastal footpath. After 1540 Cornwall's mining production took off. The landscape of Cornwall was reshaped during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by deep-lode mining for copper and tin. The underground mines engine houses foundries new towns smallholdings ports harbours and ancillary industries together reflect prolific innovation which in the early nineteenth century enabled the region to produce two-thirds of the world's supply of copper. During the late 1800s arsenic production came into ascendancy with mines in the east of Cornwall and West Devon supplying half the world’s demand. The early nineteenth century also saw a revolution in steam technology which was to radically transform hard-rock mining fortunes. The high-pressure expansively operated beam pumping engine developed by the engineers Richard Trevithick and Arthur Woolf enabled mining at much greater depths than had been possible hitherto. Cornish-design beam engines and other mining machinery was to be exported from major engineering foundries in Hayle Perranarworthal Tavistock and elsewhere to mining fields around the world throughout the century. Commencing in the early 1800s significant numbers of mine workers migrated to live and work in mining communities based on Cornish traditions this flow reaching its zenith at the end of the nineteenth century. Today numerous migrant-descended Cornish communities flourish around the world and distinctive Cornish-design engine houses can be seen in Australia New Zealand South Africa Mexico the British Virgin Islands Spain and in the mining fields of England Wales Scotland Ireland the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. A much reduced mining industry continued in Cornwall after the copper crash of the 1860s with production mainly focused on tin. Metalliferous mining finally ceased in Cornwall in 1998 with the closure of South Crofty Mine Pool the last tin mine to operate in Europe.
Size: 3400px × 5100px
Photo credit: © QEDimages / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
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