Random Mine of the Day : Okel Tor Mine
Oct. 3rd, 2015 08:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnThe Okel Tor mine was once worked by the excitingly named Okeltor Silver Lead and Copper Mine Company in the 1840's, but it sounds like they found rather more lead, copper, tin and of course the eternal arsenic than silver.
I have a (unsupported personal) theory that the Romans, who had their recently-discovered first-century fort just up the hill and left a bit from here, may have got there first on any easily-accessible silver that was near the surface.
There may come a day when I do a post showing a mine that isn't one I just happened to wander past this morning. But this is not that day, since it was a lovely morning for a walk. This is a mile or so below Gunnislake weir, which is the point at which the tide stops coming in. So, this is the river at high tide, 18 miles or so inland, and busy with canoes.
I have a (unsupported personal) theory that the Romans, who had their recently-discovered first-century fort just up the hill and left a bit from here, may have got there first on any easily-accessible silver that was near the surface.
There may come a day when I do a post showing a mine that isn't one I just happened to wander past this morning. But this is not that day, since it was a lovely morning for a walk. This is a mile or so below Gunnislake weir, which is the point at which the tide stops coming in. So, this is the river at high tide, 18 miles or so inland, and busy with canoes.
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Date: 2015-10-04 08:59 am (UTC)It's extraordinary how beautiful mines and other indutrial sites become, given a hundred years and some vegetation.
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Date: 2015-10-04 02:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-04 01:08 pm (UTC)Ever since you started posting random mines, I've had a constant earworm of Cousin Jack by Show of Hands, a song about depressed, emigrating Cornish miners. Its singalonga chorus includes the line "the copper, the clay and the arsenic and tin," so now I just need a clay mine to complete the set. Although I accept that ordering a clay mine does kind of go against the whole "random" part of the random mine concept.
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Date: 2015-10-04 02:33 pm (UTC)I believe that the Tamar Valley is not rich in clay, so you will probably only get your earworm items ticked off and be able to cry 'bingo' if I happen to be over to St Austell one of these days.