Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape - England

The Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape is a World Heritage Site which includes select mining landscapes across Cornwall and West Devon in the south west of the United Kingdom. The site was added to the World Heritage List in 2006. 

Lucy went on a trip to Cornwall last October and offered some cards from there. This was one of my missing sites, so i immediately contacted her in order to get one of those cards. She sent me this one with the Rinsey Mine Engine House, also known as Wheal Prosper. This is a former tin mine engine house, which was built in 1860, though the mine was worked earlier in the century producing an average of 860 tons per year between 1832 and 1849. It ceased production in 1865 but the engine house still stands which provides a dramatic backdrop to the ocean below. - in: http://www.cornishhideaways.co.uk/rinsey_cove.htm

© J. Salmon Ltd

Much of the landscape of Cornwall and West Devon was transformed in the 18th and early 19th centuries as a result of the rapid growth of pioneering copper and tin mining. Its deep underground mines, engine houses, foundries, new towns, smallholdings, ports and harbours, and their ancillary industries together reflect prolific innovation which, in the early 19th century, enabled the region to produce two-thirds of the world’s supply of copper. The substantial remains are a testimony to the contribution Cornwall and West Devon made to the Industrial Revolution in the rest of Britain and to the fundamental influence the area had on the mining world at large. Cornish technology embodied in engines, engine houses and mining equipment was exported around the world. Cornwall and West Devon were the heartland from which mining technology rapidly spread. - in: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1215