Everything about the Cornwall And West Devon Mining Landscape totally explained
The
Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape is a
World Heritage Site which includes select mining landscapes across
Cornwall and
West Devon in the south west of the
United Kingdom. The Site was added to the
World Heritage List during the 30th Session of the
UNESCO World Heritage Committee in
Vilnius, July
2006.
History
Up to the middle 1500s, Devon produced approximately 25-40% of the amount of tin that Cornwall did but the total amount of tin production from both Cornwall and Devon during this period was relatively small. After the 1540s, Cornwall's production took off and Devon's production was only about between a ninth to a tenth of that of Cornwall. From the mid-
16th century onwards, the Devon Stannaries were worth very little in income to the King and were sidelined as such following the Supremacy of Parliament Act 1512 (this doesn't apply to the
Stannaries of Cornwall).
The landscapes of Cornwall and West Devon were radically 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.
Areas
The World Heritage Site comprises discrete but thematically linked areas spanning Cornwall and West Devon. The areas (with the area codes from the site nomination) are:
Further Information
Get more info on 'Cornwall And West Devon Mining Landscape'.
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