Exploring Cornwall's Mining Heritage: Engine Houses, Mines and Museums to Visit

Look closely at Cornwall and you are looking at a mining landscape. Ruined engine houses stand on the cliff edges, chimney stacks break the moorland skyline, and the whole county is threaded with the remains of an industry that once made this one of the most important places on earth. For two thousand years Cornwall lived on tin and copper, and that history is written across the land. Here is how to explore it, much of it within a day of our cottages.

A World Heritage landscape

Cornwall's mining story is important enough to carry a global stamp: the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2006. At its 19th-century peak, Cornwall was a powerhouse of the Industrial Revolution. It was a Cornishman, Richard Trevithick of Camborne, who built the first high-pressure steam locomotive, and when the mines declined, Cornish miners took their skills across the world, from South Africa to Australia to the Americas, becoming known everywhere as Cousin Jacks. The old saying went that wherever there was a hole in the ground, you would find a Cornishman at the bottom of it.

The Tin Coast: engine houses on the cliffs

The most dramatic mining scenery is on the far-western Tin Coast, around St Just and Pendeen, roughly fifty minutes from us. Here the engine houses stand right on the cliff edge above the Atlantic:

• Botallack, where the famous Crowns engine houses cling to the rock above the waves, is one of the most photographed spots in Cornwall and a key Poldark filming location (more on that in our Cornwall on screen guide).
• Levant Mine, cared for by the National Trust, has a beautifully restored beam engine that still runs on steam, and a sobering history: the mine reached out under the sea.
• Geevor Tin Mine at Pendeen, which only closed in 1990, is now the largest preserved mine site in the county, with a museum and an underground tour.

Wheal Coates and St Agnes

Further up the north coast, the Wheal Coates engine house above Chapel Porth near St Agnes is perhaps the postcard image of Cornish mining, a lone stone tower on the clifftop looking out to sea. It is free to walk to and unforgettable at sunset. It is the same stretch of coast that appears in our piece on surprising facts about Cornwall.

Mines and museums to visit

If you want to go deeper, quite literally, Cornwall has a superb set of mining attractions, several of them ideal for a family day out:

• Geevor Tin Mine (Pendeen): the big one, with surface buildings, a museum and an underground walk.
• Poldark Mine (Wendron, near Helston): the only complete underground guided tour in Cornwall, down into a real 18th-century tin mine.
• King Edward Mine (Troon, near Camborne): the oldest complete mine site in Cornwall, with working machinery and a strong link to the Camborne School of Mines.
• East Pool Mine (Pool, near Redruth, National Trust): home to two giant Cornish beam engines, vast machines preserved where they stood.
• Heartlands (Pool): a free heritage park on the old Robinson's Shaft, with diaspora gardens telling the story of Cornish miners abroad.
• Wheal Martyn (near St Austell): the museum of Cornwall's other great extractive industry, china clay, the white stuff still quarried in the hills behind St Austell today.

From a base near Falmouth

The great advantage of exploring the mines from a central base is how close most of them are. The mining heartland around Camborne, Redruth and Pool is only twenty to thirty minutes away; Poldark Mine at Wendron is around twenty-five; Wheal Martyn near St Austell about forty; and the wild Tin Coast in the far west about fifty. You can pick a mine, a museum or a clifftop walk and be home for dinner, which is rather the point of staying somewhere well placed.

Plan your visit

• Surprising facts about Cornwall: the Stannary Parliament, the safety fuse and more mining history
• Cornwall on film and TV: where Poldark was filmed, Botallack included
• The best base to explore Cornwall: why a central spot near Falmouth reaches the mines, the coast and the moors alike
• Cottages for couples near Falmouth: how a Trewena stay works as your base

Come and explore Cornwall's industrial past from a comfortable present. Our three cottages sit on the edge of Falmouth, well placed for the whole mining landscape, or drop us a message about a stay.