Last time I talked in very general terms about the main, and most obvious, sights at Botallack, a disused tin mine in Cornwall:
First, there is the enormous stone chimney, to power the pumps that maintain low water levels in the mine:
And then there is something which I have never managed to fathom out. It looks rather like Cornwall’s attempt at Peru’s Nazca lines, but constructed with stone and concrete:
In among them were two Georgian missile silos, their “Hanover” ICBMs targeted on Napoléon’s distant boudoir. Spot the photographer, by the way:
Walk a little further on to the south and there is a view of the winding gear, the top bits of a more modern chimney, and a ruined wall. And what a sky! :
Keep walking and there is a view back towards the car park. The metal winding gear has not been used for a long time, perhaps as far back as 1900.
Again, everywhere there are ruined buildings, all of them in local stone:
At least one of the forgotten buildings was an arsenic-refining works. In areas of volcanic rock where tin and copper are mined, some nasty substances may always be encountered such as arsenic, cadmium, lithium and even uranium.
I suspect that perhaps, over the years, the local builders and farmers have been helping themselves to many of the pre-cut stone blocks for their own walls and/or barn building or perhaps even as the hard core for country roads.
If you turn round and walk past the big stone chimney:
You can then continue for fifty or a hundred yards, until you get to the “abandoned mine engine of Wheal Owles”:
That particular disused mine is frequently used in Poldark episodes when the work force is filmed actually working the mine. I have walked over to the Wheal Owles on just one occasion but I didn’t take any photographs. To be honest there are so many of this type of ruined pump house in this part of West Cornwall that the old adage “Seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all” comes into play.
This is the view straight ahead of the bench towards the north. There is another large ruined building and then what looks like the stump of a demolished chimney nearer to the tip of the headland.
Here’s that same view looking slightly more northwards;
You can just see the reason why the BBC people chose this site. It’s at the bottom left of the photograph above, and it’s one of the Crowns mines, the most photogenic industrial location in Cornwall and its second most photographed tourist site after the Men-an-Tol:
We’ll walk down to see the Crowns mines next time.
John Knifton 