Mines around St Just, Cornwall

The small town of St. Just is all that evolved as an urban centre. Mining families carried on working the fields whose boundaries had been laid out hundreds of years previously. By the mis 16th century miners were working the alluvial tin deposits in the valleys to the north and south of the town, plus many of the coastal lode outcrops.

Census returns show the parish population of St Just increased from 2,779 in 1801 to 9,290 in 1861, with the greatest growth occurring between 1831 and 1841, when mine workers made up one third of the local population.The boom was short-lived, and the decline set in during the 1860's when most of the area's copper mines had closed and by 1900 the population had halved with miners and their families emigrating to get work.

The characteristic lodes in the St Just area strike more or less at right angles to the coast. They increase in richness as they run out under the sea, and become rapidly less productive inland. The mining district is therefore more or less confined to the coastal fringe. To the east, the lodes became less rich, and there although there were mines virually along the coast through Morvah and Zennor parishes towards St. Ives, they were much smaller and less profitable. Inland, mining only took place at Leswidden, a little to the east of St. Just and at Ding Dong, on the high moors to the east.

The relative remoteness of the area has meant that much of the mining archeology has been preserved. Many of the most significant mining sites here have been acquired by The National Trust . While Geevor was bought by the Cornwall County Council in 1991 following the closure of the mine, which preserved the existing machinery there.

Mines and Mining in Cornwall

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