Botallack Mine

Botallack is the image of Cornish mining that everyone knows even if they have never heard the name: two roofless stone engine houses, one perched on a ledge just above the surf, the other a little higher up the cliff, with the Atlantic breaking beneath them. These are the Crowns. The lower house was built in 1835 for a pumping engine made by Harvey and Company of Hayle; the upper one followed in 1862 to hold a winding engine that hauled wagons up the Boscawen Diagonal Shaft, sunk between 1858 and 1862, which ran at a slant out beneath the sea floor.

Mining on this stretch of coast is recorded from the sixteenth century and is probably far older. Botallack worked tin, copper and arsenic, and in its heyday its galleries reached nearly half a mile out under the ocean. The mine became famous enough that in 1865 the Prince and Princess of Wales went down the Boscawen shaft, and for a while the owners charged ordinary visitors a guinea a head to follow them. Falling metal prices closed the mine in 1895. By then it had brought up, by modern estimates, some 14,500 tonnes of tin, 20,000 of copper and 1,500 of arsenic.

What remains on the cliff top is a whole industrial landscape, not just the two famous chimneys: the ruined arsenic works with its labyrinth, a maze of brick flues where the poisonous fumes from roasted ore condensed and were scraped off the walls; old dressing floors; and the count house of 1861–62, where the mine captain lived, the shareholders dined and the miners were paid. The National Trust bought the site in 1997, and since 2006 it has been part of the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage Site. The Crowns stood in for the fictional mines of Poldark, both in the 1970s series and in the 2015 adaptation.

The best way to see Botallack is along the South West Coast Path, which runs past the Crowns on the cliffs; the view down on the lower engine house from the path above is the classic one, especially in the evening light.

Getting there

Botallack lies on the cliffs of west Cornwall near St Just, about 11 km from Penzance. The nearest major airport is Cornwall Airport Newquay (NQY), about 60 km away. The National Trust manages the site, and the South West Coast Path passes along the cliffs past the engine houses.