Polzeath Mines Walk

Pentire and The Rumps jutting out into the Atlantic were the sites of the Pentire and Pentireglaze mines. The Romans certainly came up the River Camel to mine for vital supplies of tin at Mulberry Downs near one of their marching forts at Nanstallion. They only had two other main sites in the whole of their Empire.  This part of Cornwall in this respect has been much overlooked for its importance until recent discoveries of Roman forts outside Lostwithiel and digs at Tintagel itself. At that time Harbour Cove, on the Padstow side of the estuary, was the main port. The channel up the River Camel has switched sides over the centuries with the shifting sands of the Doom Bar. Not until the last few centuries, Padstow further up the river developed as the port for this exposed section of coast.

The old lead mine at Pentireglaze has few records and fewer photos or drawings of its operation. Clearly it was an important mine in its day and there is still evidence of shafts, dumps and sites of surface workings.   

In the 1840's and 50's the power for all the mining operations in the Pentireglaze area came from an engine house, sited close to the NT Old Lead Mine carpark. Incredibly it used a flat rod system to transmit power across the valley to the mine shaft at New Polzeath.  You can still see evidence of it in the bottom of the valley where the wheel house remains show where the direction of the rods was changed from downhill to uphill. 

Pentire Mine was up near what we call Compitt and Coppinger's Cave. Pentireglaze Mine nearer the NT car park produced 955 tons of Lead ore and 19,065 ounces of silver between 1850/75 but the foundations of the engine house and intensive dump are now largely removed.

POLZEATH CONSOLS - the mine included the former setts of Tinners Hill Wheal Philippa and part of Wheal Caroline MS 1855. Taylors shaft near quarry was on adit driven N on the lode. South of Polzeath the lode crosses Shilla Valley and enters Trebetherick Hill where Victoria Shaft was sunk. Midway between Taylor's Shaft on Tinners Hill and Victoria Shaft on Trebetherick Hill there was a 17 inch engine which pumped water out of both by means of 440 yards of flat rods (that's .25 of a mile or .4 km). The shaft and mine of Polzeath Mine south of Victoria Shaft were, as far as I can make out, Wheal Caroline. Wheal (or rather huel) is said to be derived from the Cornish language, and to signify a work or mine. 

Mulberry Downs quarry. One of only three places in Europe the Romans mined tin.

It's all connected! Roman Forts at Restormel (You could sail up the Fowey to there in Roman days and thus connect with the English Channel and easier sea routes) and Nanstallon (near Mulberry Quarry where most of the tin came from used by Romans to make Bronze). Road markers found near Tintagel (where we know much of the wealth of the area was centred in post Roman times) point to the importance of this area as a seat of power. Discoveries at Harbour Cove Padstow and Tintagel Island show Roman and post Roman connections all the way to today's Istanbul.

Stray Park pumping engine house, Dolcoath Mine. Nestled amongst the bungalows of Park Lane, Camborne is the 65" pumping engine house of Stray Park. Originally housing a 60" engine purchased from Pentireglaze Mine, Polzeath in 1857 and was later re-cylindered to 64". In 1900 it was almost entirely rebuilt with a 65" cylinder. Following a series of accidents that caused flooding in 1868-69 the mine was put up for sale as a going concern in 1870. Under Dolcoath ownership the mine was worked until 1921  when it closed with the engine being broken up in 1938.

Billy's Bunker

In 2015 I made a Royal Observer Corps monitoring post discovery. By talking with an old member of the Royal Observer Corp I helped the National Trust discover the Nuclear Bunker sited close to their HQ at Pentireglaze. Only a long stone's throw from their new tea rooms! At the end of its operational use in 1968, it had been filled in, buried and forgotten,  and the NT didn't know it was there until I told them.  

Howard Kent, a former ROC volunteer for the Trebetherick Post at Pentireglaze told me of his involvement in a Trebetherick bunker. The ROC was a defence organisation operating  between 1925 and 1995 and used civilian volunteers. This one operated between 1942 and 1968 and in its last 8 years used an underground bunker designed to operate in a nuclear war. Exercises were carried out 4 times a year to practice for this eventuality. When it was closed the  men were transferred to St Breward where a bunker can still be seen. 

Bunkers were designed to operate for 3 weeks with 3 men underground... safely observing the nuclear fallout! Next to the underground bunker there used to be an above ground earth made observer post used for spotting aircraft in WW2 but there is no evidence now of where that was.

Leading Trebetherick Royal Observer Corps Instructor, Howard Kent (born in 1933), kindly lent me his excellent book: "Attack Warning Red", by Derek Wood, which covers the work of the ROC and shows the layout of these now mostly lost and buried bunkers.