Random Mine of the Day: Wheal Bramble

[bunn]

I did wander past a First World War-era wolfram mine today, but unfortunately the fog was so thick that it was quite invisible.     So instead here is a second mine from yesterday, Wheal Bramble, which was a copper mine between about 1850 and 1880.

It's attached to the confusingly-named South Devon mine - confusing because this bit of it is definitely over (under?) the river in Cornwall.   Heritage Gateway thinks the building in the foreground is 'Remains of pumping engine house and other mine buildings' whereas aditnow considers it a forge workshop. Maybe it has been both.  You can't see the mine captain's house which is a bit further up, and still inhabited, although so far as I know, not by a Mine Captain.

Comments

[anna-wing.livejournal.com]

Your part of the world seems alarmingly full of disused and potentially hazardous holes in the ground. The pictures are fascinating! The only mines I've ever been to were the copper mines in Chile, Chuquicamata and El Salvador and the like, which are not quite the same:

http://www.federacionminera.cl/2012/codelco-cierra-por-anticipado-negociacion-colectiva-con-sindicato-de-su-mina-andina/

http://geoblast.cl/sitio/portfolio/mina-sur-chuquicamata/

[bunn.livejournal.com]

We are indeed blessed with places where there is no longer any copper, tin or arsenic :-D

Most of our mines started out as open-pit ones like the Chilean ones but of course a lot smaller! I wonder what Chuquicamata would look like a hundred years after being abandoned. Perhaps not so green, Chile is quite dry, isn't it?

[anna-wing.livejournal.com]

Chile has every conceivable climate. Chuquicamata is more or less in the Atacama Desert in the north, which is so desert that it doesn't even have vultures. El Salvador has closed, so the town is no longer there, and I expect that it has returned to being blasted wilderness.

But down south near Tierra del Fuego is vast tracts of glacial wilderness and in the middle is the Lake District which has snow-capped volcanic cones and lakes bigger than many small European countries. It is staggeringly beautiful, very like New Zealand in all the "Lord of the Rings" films except more so. Look up "Mount Osorno" and you will see.