St. Day Tin Mine

This film shows a Cornish tin mine at Mount Wellington in operation but whose future is in doubt. Mining is a dangerous profession and the notion of working underground is not what many of us would enjoy, but mining is and has been vital to our survival and modernisation. As extraction techniques develop and the demand for raw materials to supply the new technologies sector increases, some mines are being reopened.

Mining can be traced as far back as the Bronze Age. By 1870 Cornwall was the first in the world for tin mining, however in 1872 tin was discovered in Tasmania and Australia bringing about the a decline in the price of tin. WWI and WWII saw the increase of tin production only for it to drop dramatically a few years later. Other ores and minerals which are mined are copper, zinc, arsenic, coal, gemstones and tungsten. Cornish miners can be found all over the world, known as ‘Cornish Jacks’, they emigrated to Australia, South Africa, and America during the decline in the UK mining industry but the UK still trains mining engineers and supplies mining expertise around the world.