Botallack Mine

Leaf 313 – Looking Back

 

On the rugged north coast of Cornwall there is a very picturesque view of two former engine houses, now ruins, perched on a cliff over the sea, which can be found at the old abandoned mine of Botallack. Here in the nineteenth century, copper, tin and arsenic was mined from seams which ran both inland and out under the sea. I remember visiting this place when I was a child. I also remember countless lessons at school when I was growing up about the wonders of the indomitable age of Victorian progress and the “Industrial Revolution” which forged the very greatness of Britain. Yet these ruins seemed to suggest to me that given time, nature can reclaim and eventually efface such a site of hellishly coal-blackened destruction, while we quaintly cover it over with a veil of whimsy and nostalgia.

 

 

BOTALLACK MINE

 

Sea salt working

a white seam into

blackened red brick.

 

 

 

Photograph Credits: Gareth James (top) & Rod Allday (bottom), Geograph.