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Group of Miners, Dolcoath Mine, Camborne, Cornwall. Probably early 1900s
Royal Cornwall Museum Photo Prints and Wall Art
Group of Miners, Dolcoath Mine, Camborne, Cornwall. Probably early 1900s
A group of miners at the surface. This photograph is probably taken somewhear near the dry or change house at Dolcoath, where the miners could wash and exchange their wet and dirty clothes for their surface clothes. It is taken prior to the men going underground, as they look clean and tidy, with some still wearing ordinary headgear. Also there are lots of candles in evidence that they will need underground. The older man on the right of the picture might be a Mine Captain. The earliest records of this mine show that it was being worked for copper in 1740, and probably earlier. It was nearly 300ft deep in 1746 and an extensive mine in 1778, when a section of its eastern part was published in Pryces Mineralogis Cornubiensis. It closed ten years later, to reopen in 1799. In the next 120 years it became the largest and deepest mine in Cornwall, with its bottom level 3, 000ft below the surface. Its output of copper and tin ores to 1788 is thought to have been no less than 1, 2500, 000, pounds, of which copper alone realised some 450, 000 between 1740 and 1777. Between 1799 and 1920 its output amounted to over 9 million pounds, including income from sales of arsenic, silver and other minerals. The mine was in the dividend list for most of its working life, and shares, nicknamed Dollies, were the blue chip of the industry. Photographer: Unknown
TRURI : MIdol.73
Media ID 15389307
© From the collection of the RIC
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