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  • Storm waves crash onto the imposing, rugged once tin mining cliffs at Pendeen, West Penwith, Cornwall. The last mine closed years ago, but numerous engine houses and chimneys mark the site of this once booming Cornish industry providing high grade tin.
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  • It was a surreal surprise to find a ram’s skull staring at us from the apex of a derelict tin mining power house. This area is littered with the remains of an historical tin mining industry; exploration shafts now just lush grass-covered conical depressions in the wet moorland. Once a noisy hive of activity and ore crushing, but now just the sounds of the wind through gaps in the walls. Likewise the bleating of sheep still echo across the open landscape, but this poor soul has long past, the bone bleached and dripping with hill fog. It’s strange but there is such peace now on the moors and even the saturating low cloud creates a sense of calm not panic, silence not noise. I felt a deep connection with history and the spirit of the place. Dartmoor is minimal and mesmerising.
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  • Ruins of tin mine workings in the Godolphin area of South West Cornwall. Mine shafts sink 1000ft into the depths of the earth just next to here. Looking at the beauty of nature quietly reclaiming this once massively busy mining locality it's hard to imagine just how different the place would have seemed back then, noise, commotion, danger, dusty, dirty landscapes and the increasing destruction of natural landscape in our quest for ore & minerals. I've always been fascinated by the forgotten world of dark shafts & tunnels lying beneath our feet in regions like this.
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  • Ding Dong Mine is a renowned Cornish mine thought to be the oldest in Cornwall. The last underground shift was on 7th July 1877. There was a massive decline in the demand for Cornish tin after the start of imports of cheap tin from Australia and the Malay Straits. In the three years before Ding Dong’s closure the number of mines in the Cornwall fell from 230 to 98. At its peak, Ding Dong provided a living for over 500 people but by November 1877 it was down to 64 and in January 1878 remaining workers were paid off & the mine closed.
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  • In the early 19th Century, the capstone was rotated, and the uprights altered to support it. In the process the quoit was lowered considerably. It was said that originally a horse and rider could pass comfortably beneath it. It may originally have been as long as 60 feet in length and is estimated to have been erected in 2500 BC.  In the background stands the famous Ding Ding Mine, where Cornish miners toiled hard to extract tin for world export. It's ironic that whilst we were pulling out precious metals we were simultaneously sinking ancient monuments !
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  • Beautiful, colour-rich dusk in a cove below Cape Cornwall, St Just, at dusk, a tin-mine hewed landscape within stone, multi millions of years old
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  • Above one of the poorest areas in Cornwall, once a tin-mining heartland, stands a memorial to one of Cornwall's super rich - Francis Basset, 1st Baron de Dunstanville, a prominant politician who made his fortune in tin-mining but seemed mostly against any politcial reform as it would have have eroded his power & wealth in Cornwall. He was the fourth richest landowner in Cornwall. He never had an heir and his Barony is therefore extinct. The superb granite tors atop this hill, eroded over eons, preceeded humanity and will succeed humanity, thankfully.
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Glyn Davies, Professional Photographer and Gallery

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