Poldark Tin Mine & Open Air Museum 7 Day Weather Forecast

Accommodation in Trenear, Wendron, Helston, Cornwall.

At Poldark Tin Mine and Open Air Museum there are expertly guided underground tours deep into the atmospheric 300-year-old tin mine. Sealed up and forgotten for hundreds of years it’s been open to the public for over 45 years since it was discovered in June 1975 and is a World Heritage Site. The underground sequences in the current BBC television series POLDARK were shot here in 2014. Prolific author Winston Graham renamed the mine as Poldark M...

Poldark Mine (Wheal Roots)
Trenear, Wendron, Helston
Cornwall
TR13 0ES

01326 573 173

At Poldark Tin Mine and Open Air Museum there are expertly guided underground tours deep into the atmospheric 300-year-old tin mine. Sealed up and forgotten for hundreds of years it’s been open to the public for over 45 years since it was discovered in June 1975 and is a World Heritage Site. The underground sequences in the current BBC television series POLDARK were shot here in 2014. Prolific author Winston Graham renamed the mine as Poldark Mine in 1976 and launched some of his books at the mine his last being in 2002. Two earlier BBC series have been associated with the mine which was used as a location. Mine visitors can use the deep underground George V Royal Mail box to get a special franking mark on postcards to surprise friends and relatives. The mine is a labyrinth of some miles of stopes passageways and tunnels on three levels and pumps over twenty million gallons of water a year to keep the tour routes open to the public. The entire mine has yet to be fully explored.

Historically the six acres of attractive riverside grounds are one of Cornwall's most important industrial heritage and tin processing locations. Considered by many as the veritable cradle of tinning in Cornwall the gardens have unique prehistoric evidence of working for alluvial tin in the Bronze Age, the proof being a unique Scheduled Ancient Monument over 3000 years old, the Trenear or Poldark Mortar Stone which was worked from an outcrop of living granite over 290 million years old. Waterwheels were first installed here in the 13th century by Cistercian Monks from Rewley in Oxford who created the 1.5 mile long aqueduct and diverted the river to operate the first water powered tin stamps in the world. The stamps worked until 1875, an incredible record.

The museum is stuffed full of mining & other objects of all shapes and sizes including Holman mine drills, ancient model mines and engines, a wider range of artefacts shows how tin was used in communications and in the modern world and what it meant to community life locally and globally, there is a 1919 steam railway engine from Falmouth Docks and other railway items from mining gunpowder vans to small skips. Tin recovered from two shipwrecks is accompanied by an impressive chamber pot from the wreck of the SS Liverpool!

The 1846 Bunny Tin Mine Cornish Beam engine overlooks the gardens being truly the very last in commercial service in Cornwall, steam finally turned off in December 1959 - moved here by volunteers in 1972, the last Cornish engine-man's chair is in the museum.

The pretty valley demesne was given to the monks under a royal charter dated September 15th 1294 and further land by the Black Prince in 1354. The Trevalis Estate sold the land and watermill in 1883 which became the Trenear Dairy and continued to use the water wheel and leat until 1972 making butter and cheese. It became part of Unigate.

The mill building remains with its water wheel. Situated in the rural River Cober valley that for five hundred years was the scene of intense industrial activity, today the attractive surroundings and gardens belie their industrial past and are a must for every visitor to Cornwall.