Tin and Copper Mines, Cornwall, England:

Many of our Smith ancestors were employed as tin miners. One descendant, Lisamarie O'Connor owner of Smith Family Tree-Cornwall to Australia attached a long note about tin mining. Tin and Copper Mines, Cornwall, England: Tin and copper had been mined in Cornwall as far back as the Bronze Age, although the practice remained largely unchanged up to the eighteenth century. However, the introduction of the use of gunpowder in the 1690s helped with the sinking of shafts and the driving of levels. Thomas Newcomen’s ‘fire engine’ steam pump helped with the problem of flooding in the 1710s, but the running costs of the engine discontinued its use. Mining improved further in 1777 when James Watt came to Cornwall to supervise the erection of one of his engines at Ting Tang mine in Gwennap, near Redruth. His engines easily drained the water and used a quarter of the fuel in the process. This lowered the cost of extracting the copper and helped Cornish miners to compete with cheap Welsh ore. Further advances were made in the construction of these engines by Jonathan Hornblower and Richard Trevithick. Trevithick built his high-pressure engine and enabled Cornwall’s mines to sink to extraordinary depths. This invention helped the county to become the biggest copper producing region in the world. The demand for tin-plate in the British domestic market in 1800 also fed a tin boom in the nineteenth century, and served as a ready alternative when copper deposits began to run out by mid-century. Richard Trevithick, the engineer The impacts of mining were wide-ranging; the population of Cornwall almost doubled; towns expanded and ports became crowded with ships with orders from around the world. A local manufacturing industry developed with the enormous increase in demand for engines and machinery, which led to the establishment of major iron foundries near the mining centres. Transport and communications improved The profits that could be made from mining in Cornwall in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries generated vast new wealth for entrepreneurs and added to that of the old landed families. Modest Cornish families made their fortune through mining and ancillary industries. While the industrial revolution generated vast wealth for a few, it brought misery to many. With an over-supply of labour, wages for those employed in mining and industry were pitifully low. Families had to work long hours in insufferable conditions when they were malnourished and permanently exposed to disease, polluted environments and hazardous conditions. In 1888 the Camborne School of Mines was established and acted as an important training centre for the region’s miners, although by then Cornwall’s supplies of copper and tin were in decline and many Cornish miners were leaving the county to seek their fortune overseas. The decline and the exodus continued into the twentieth century and South Crofty was the last Cornish metalliferous mine to close, in March 1998.