Botallack Mine

Crowns Engine Houses

Useful Information

Location:	Nearest Parking: TR19 7QQ. On the Tin Coast, near St Just, Cornwall, TR19 7QQ. From St. Ives follow B3306, turn right through the village of Botallack (50.1430331, -5.6931398)
Open:	no restrictions. Botallack Count House: All year daily 10-17. Count House Café: All year daily 10-16. [2024]
Fee:	free. [2024]
Classification:	Tin Mine Copper Mine Oldest Show Mine of the World
Light:	bring torch
Dimension:
Guided tours:	self guided
Photography:	allowed
Accessibility:	no
Bibliography:	Robert Michael Ballantyne (1868): Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines, Nick Hodson of London, England. gutenberg
Address:	Botallack Mine, Tel: +44-.
As far as we know this information was accurate when it was published (see years in brackets), but may have changed since then. Please check rates and details directly with the companies in question if you need more recent info.

History

16th century	first written mention.
18th century	the captain of the mine, Henry Boynes, opens a so-called deep adit level.
1795 or 1810	first steam-engine was put to work.
1865	mine becomes a sort of show mine.
1895	mine closed.
21-SEP-1973	Count House listed as a Historic Monument.
1970s	BBC television series Poldark was filmed partly in Botallack, using Manor Farm as Nampara.
19-MAR-1979	Crowns Engine Houses listed as a Historic Monument.
2006	inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Geology

Like all other tin mines of Cornwall the mining followed mineralized gangues in the granite diapir. The ores contained tin, copper, and arsenic, which is a by-product of the tin ore. The vein reached the surface at the cliff face and the vertical mined out vein is easy to see from the sea.

Description

Botallack Mine is not a show mine, so it is an exception to most other mines listed here, as there are no underground tours and no development. The site is nevertheless an important mining-related tourist site, a Historic Monument, listed on the UNESCO World Heritage list, and rather easily accessible. Of course, it's an open air site so dress according to cornish weather, and good walking shoes are mandatory. We also recommend to bring a torch, there are definitely dark corners of interest.

The road from Botallack, a tiny village, ends at The Count House, which is - of course - a former mine building, with educational sign at the wall and a cafe inside. The former mine office building, an account house provided office space for the purser and his managerial staff, has been used for various purposes since the mine closed. Obviously reason why it still exists and is not in ruins. It was built around 1861 when the main produce of the mine shifted from copper to tin. It was the representative building of a mine and had to look both solid and prosperous, to reassure all visitors and potential investors. But it was also the office from which the mine was run and the miners were paid. A special event were the "setting days", when the rights for 'pitches' within the mine were auctioned. And on days when accounts were to be read and approved the sharholders, which were dubbed adventurers, were provided with renowned dinners. The house was taken over by the Penzance School of Mines as a school of mine surveying after the mine had closed. At the beginning of World War I the building became a private house, in the 1960s it was a Folk Club, later disco and a restaurant. Since 1995 it is owned by the National Trust who has a visitor information in this building. The whole site is managed by the National Trust, except for the café. There is no entrance fee, but there is a parking fee, except if you are member of the National Trust.

This had not always been so, for in the early days Devon Great Consols, like other mines in Devon and Cornwall, had arranged the work underground into two types. The first of these was ‘tutwork’, in which the miners undertook to drive a level or sink a shaft at a certain price per fathom. It was applied to other exploratory and development works, in which no working of the ore was involved. The second method was 'tribute work' in which the miners agreed to work the actual lode, retaining for their wages a portion of the receipts from the sale of the ore which they sent to the surface. In the event of the lode being poor the miners would keep 13s. in every £ 1 of receipts, whilst when the lode was rich the ‘bar gain’ would allow them to retain as little as 3½d. in every £1 and still earn good wages. Both tutwork and tribute bargains were auctioned by the management to the miners on monthly ‘setting days’, the bargain being allotted to the lowest bidder. The tribute method gave the miners a chance of earning higher wages. Thus, if the lode improved within the month to yield more valuable ore, their wages would be increased. However, the reverse was also true, so that if the lode diminished in richness their wages would fall.
J. C. Goodridge, B.A. (1964): Devon Great Consols A study of Victorian mining enterprise, pp 237-238. pdf

Along the trail from the car park to the engine houses, which is partly the South West Coast Path, there are numerous mining related sites. There are the ruined walls of mine buildings, an iron headframe, a sort of quarry with cave-like structures where the ore was obviously mined on the surface, and on the other side of the road there are the ruins of the treatment plants where the ore was milled and processed. Arsenic Calciners can be seen, where the poisonous arsenic was neutralized. The trail from the car park leads down to the cliff, where it ends on the rugged cliffs at Crowns Engine Houses, which are actually the walls of two tower-like buildings which once contained the steam engines powering the mining activities. The lower one still has the chimney of the steam engine, which was integrated into the wall of the building. The 19th-century engine houses perched on the cliff are quite famous and a popular photo motive. However, there is nothing inside any more, only the walls remain, and it is not possible to enter.

Mining started here during the Bronze Age, but most remains from this period are long gone. The mining was mentioned by Roman chronologists, including Julius Caesar. First written mentions of the mine are from the 16th century. But until then the mining had been low scale, the heydays of the mine started in the 18th century, when the captain of the mine, Henry Boynes, opened a so-called deep adit level. The first steam-engine was put to work a century later, depending on the source either 1795 or 1810. The Botallack Mine produced 14,500 tonnes of tin, 20,000 tonnes of copper, and 1,500 tonnes of arsenic, as well as 1.5 million tonnes of waste. This modern mine was a submarine mine with tunnels extending under the sea.

This mine is actually one of the earliest show mines, although it is not a show mine any more today. It was visited by the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1865, who descended the shaft. The later King Edward VII and his wife Alexandra of Denmark inaugurated the new diagonal shaft which reached out under the sea to a depth of 500m. As a result the visit of the mine became quite popular and the mine operators charged visitors a guinea per person.

The mine was quite successful, until the tin price dropped in the 1870s. Tin mines were opened in Malaysia, Banka Island, Sumatra, and Australia, and at the same time the demand for tinplate in the American market fell. The setts were put up for auction, but there were no bids for the mine. The mine was closed in 1895.