Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape
The mining landscape of Cornwall and West Devon was included in the UNESCO list of world heritage in 2006. The promotion of copper and tin had a long tradition and the cultural and economic development of the region is regarded as exemplary for the industrialization of England in the 19th century. With the South Crofty mine in the pool last tin mine in Europe was closed in 1998. As World Heritage Sites have been awarded several mining areas, including the St Just Mining District, Cornwall.
Justification for the inclusion in the list of World Heritage Site
The landscape of Cornwall and West Devon was transformed in the 18th and early 19th century as a result of the rapid industrial growth by the pioneering copper and tin mining large area. The extraction of raw materials in civil engineering required complex machines and related infrastructure. In the environment of the mines emerged winding towers, machine shops and foundries. As a supplier to small and craft enterprises settled and the villages developed into new cities. In the early 19th century the region was able to produce two-thirds of the world's supply of copper. The substantially preserved structures are a testimony to the contribution of the mining landscape of Cornwall and West Devon has done for the industrial revolution in Britain. Cornwall and West Devon were the origin of which were exported and disseminated from inventions of mining technology in the entire world in the 19th century.
History
As early as the Bronze Age and during the ancient Cornwall was the main source of tin. The raw material was shipped to the bronze production in the entire Mediterranean. By the end of the 19th century Cornwall covered more than half the world's supply of tin and copper was mined on a large scale here.
It is essential for the mining industry in ever greater depths was the development of the steam engine in the early 19th century. With built by Arthur Woolf and Richard Trevithick high-pressure pump machines with a balance- pumps a significant improvement of drainage was connected and thus become a greater depth reduction possible.
In the 20th century, the raw material mines were largely exhausted. Mines in Asia and South America could produce cheaper and many of the miners from Cornwall migrated there from. Some of the abandoned tin mines were due to rising industrial demand for arsenic - often an accessory mineral of tin - changed in the early 20th century on arsenic extraction. By arsenic dusts wide regions were poisoned by the mines. Only at the end of the 20th century began with a restoration of the country and some mines such as the Levant Mine or the Geevor Mine were converted to visitor mines. Was finally set the foundation construction in Cornwall in 1998, when with the closure of South Crofty Mine, the last tin mine in Europe ended its operation.
Mining areas
The World Heritage Site covers ten spatially separate mining areas with the associated communities and infrastructures that are thematically grouped because of similar industrial development:
- St Just Mining District
- St Agnes Mining District
- Tregonning and Gwinear Mining District
- Camborne & Redruth Mining District
- Wendron Mining District
- Gwennap Mining District with Kennall Vale and Perran Foundry
- Luxulyan Valley with Charlestown
- Caradon Mining District
- Tamar Valley Tavistock
- Port of Hayle