World Heritage
Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape (2006)
Ten separate Areas (A1 - A10), from west Cornwall to west Devon
N50 08 10 W05 23 01
Levant Mine (Ainsley Cocks © Cornwall County Council)
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 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 were exported around the world. Cornwall and West Devon were the heartland from which mining technology rapidly spread.
Commencing in the early 1800s, large numbers of mine workers migrated to live and work in mining communities based on Cornish traditions, in for instance South Africa, Australia, and Central and South America, where Cornish engine houses still survive.
Justification for Inscription
Criterion C (ii): to exhibit an important interchange of human values, over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, town-planning or landscape design.
Criterion C (iii): to bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared.
Criterion C (iv): to be an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates (a) significant stage(s) in human history.
- Address
- Deborah Boden
World Heritage Site Co-ordinator, and
Ainsley Cocks
Research Officer
Cornish Mining World Heritage Site Office
Historic Environment Service
The Percuil Building
Old County Hall
Station Road
Truro
Cornwall
TR1 3AY - Telephone
- Deborah Boden: 01872 322586
Ainsley Cocks: 01872 322585 - Facsimile
- 01872 323811
- dboden at cornwall dot gov dot uk
acocks at cornwall dot gov dot uk - Websites
- Cornish Mining World Heritage
- Resources
- Nomination Document
- Management Plan
