Geevor Tin Mine & Hard Rock Museum

TR19 Pendeen, Great Britain (UK) (Cornwall)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Geevor Tin Mine, formerly North Levant Mine is a tin mine.
It was operational between 1911 and 1990 during which time it produced about 50,000 tons of black tin. It is now a museum and heritage centre left as a living history of a working tin mine. The museum is an Anchor Point of ERIH, The European Route of Industrial Heritage. Since 2006, the mine has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape.

Tourist attraction

Geevor Tin Mine is now a museum and heritage centre, covering an area of 67 acres (270,000 m2) which makes it the largest preserved tin mining site in Great Britain. It is an important part of the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape and was recognised by UNESCO in 2006.

Geevor's new Hard Rock museum is part of the final stage of this improvement programme. The museum tells the story of tin mining in Cornwall and Geevor in particular, showing what happened on the surface and underground and what life was like for those who worked there, including oral history recordings.
Visitors can also walk through the mine buildings to see the original machinery and there is a guided underground tour into Wheal Mexico, an 18th-century mine. The site has a souvenir shop and a cafe that overlooks the Atlantic Ocean.
There are interactive activities e.g. panning for gold and gemstones.

History

Tin and copper have been mined from the general area of Geevor since the late 18th century. During the 1880s as many as 176 workers were employed at the mine.

The Wethered shaft was begun in 1909 and initial development occurred around it.
By 1919, the works were moving west toward the coastline and the Victory shaft was sunk about 540 metres to the north-west.

During the 1960s there was much underground exploration; this included extending into the undersea workings of the Levant mine that had closed in 1930, work that was complicated by a hole in the seabed that first had to be plugged before the workings could be drained.

By the 1970s Geevor's sett covered an area of about three square miles and included Boscaswell Downs mine, Pendeen Consols and Levant mine. The mine closed in 1990, and the pumps were switched off in May 1991 allowing the workings to flood. The mine is not geologically exhausted of tin, but it is exhausted of tin that is recoverable economically.

During the 20th century Geevor drove over 85 miles (137 km) of tunnels from which it produced around 50,000 tons of black tin and made a profit of over £7 million. On average over a million gallons of water, a quarter of which was sea-water, was pumped from the mine daily.

Hard Rock Museum

at Geevor is home to fascinating exhibits about metal mining in Cornwall.

There are hands-on, interactive activities for the whole family to enjoy. There are plenty of things for the kids to play with, helping them to learn about this important part of Cornwall’s history in a fun and interesting way.

There is a gallery with a collection of minerals, rare artefacts and exhibits about the history of tin mining and its uses today.

You can listen to recordings of miners telling the stories of their experiences in their own words and watch the film, ‘Geevor Voices’, about the history of Geevor including rare footage taken underground and on the surface when it was a working mine.

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