Britain, particularly England and Wales, is littered with a plethora of monuments and museums that seek to pay homage to the kingdom’s diverse mining and industrial heritage. The region that is perhaps the most richly endowed with such relics, monuments and historical attractions is the county of Cornwall, on the south-western tip of England.

Significantly, Cornwall, as well as part of the neighbouring county of Devon, was the most important metal mining district in the UK, producing most of the country’s tin, arsenic and copper. In fact, it is estimated that two-thirds of the world’s supply of copper was mined from deposits in the south-west of England in the early nineteenth century, a period that saw the advent of the Electrical Age. Moreover, the area boasts the longest history of continuous production, with mining having started over 3 000 years ago.

The impressive mining heritage can be attributed to the fact that the two counties overlie the Cornubian orefield, the most intensely mineralised belt in the British Isles. Apart from the rich reserves of tin, copper and arsenic, the field has hosted deposits of lead, zinc, tungsten, silver, uranium, antinomy, cobalt, nickel, iron-ore, manganese and fluorspar, all of which have been exploited to varying degrees over the centuries.

Such is the profound historical importance of Cornwall and West Devon’s once rich and extensive mining industry that the landscape, which is now littered with relics of underground mines, engine houses and foundries, as well as the towns, ports and ancillary industries that sprang up to support the mines, was added to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s World Heritage List in July 2006. The extensive World Heritage Site com-prises ten of the most historically signifi-cant areas and components of the Cornwall and West Devon mining landscape dating principally between 1700 and 1914.

On a recent trip to the UK, I was fortunate enough to visit one of the ten thematically linked attractions, namely Morwellham Quay, on the Tamar river, which separates the coun- ties of Cornwall and Devon.

Morwellham Quay is a historic and picturesque river port located on the east bank of the navigable Tamar river, and was used mainly to transport ore from the many tin, silver, lead, copper and arsenic mines that were exploited in the vicinity between the twelfth and late-nineteenth centuries.

Interestingly, although the port experienced its heyday in the midnineteenth century, it was constructed around 974 AD by a group of Benedectine monks who had founded an abbey in Tavistock, four miles east of the river, a decade earlier. The monks used the port as a link to the seaport of Plymouth, some 23 miles to the south, to import supplies necessary for monastic life and to ship their surplus agricultural wares up and down river.

It was only in the early twelfth century, during the reign of King John, when the rights of tin miners were confirmed and a thriving tin mining industry sprang up in the vicinity of West Devon, that Morwellham Quay was first used for transporting ore to Plymouth and beyond. Tin would remain the main product of export until the discovery and exploitation of silver and lead in the thirteenth century. It was only at the turn of the eighteenth century that copper, the metal that is most associated with the quay, began to be mined in the vicinity. Indeed, it was in the early 1700s that copper was first proven to be an extremely valuable metal, owing to its resistance to corrosion by seawater, and was subsequently used to line the bottom of warships to prevent the build-up of barnacles on the hulls.

Fortuitously, as demand for that metal began to take off, a fairly rich copper deposit was discovered in the little hill adjacent to the quay. The George and Charlotte mine was opened around 1718 and was systematically mined until exhaused in 1869.

However, Morwellham Quay’s heyday as an ore shipping port only came in the mid-nineteenth century, when the richest copper strike in the world to that date was made just four miles north. The Devon Great Consols, which, in fact, was a consolidation of five adjacent mining operations, was discovered in 1844 and rapidly established itself as the richest copper mine in Europe. Further, it is said that Devon Great Consols contained enough arsenic to poison every woman, man and child in the Victorian world. It was the sheer volume of copper ore produced by the mine which, at its height, averaged just below 30 000 t/y of copper, that gave rise to Morwellham’s fame as the ‘greatest copper port’ in Queen Victoria’s empire.

However, by 1903, the Consols’ wealth had been exhausted and the mines closed. By this time, the railways had taken over and Morwellham’s usefulness was also exhausted, causing the site to descend into a state of disuse and dereliction.

The site remained abandoned until 1970, when the Morwellham and Tamar Valley Trust was established to restore the quay to its former glory. After clearing debris, retiling the quays, desilting the dock and reconstructing a few of the Victorian buildings that lined the river bank, the trust officially opened the open-air museum in 1973. Since then, thanks to the trust’s tireless and ongoing efforts to continue the restoration and upkeep of the site, Morwellham Quay has been recognised as one of the best heritage sites in Britain.

Although all that can be seen of the quay today is a slipway into the river, visitors can enjoy the docks, ships, canal, railway, social history displays, guided talks and demonstrations by costumed professionals on site, and also take a tram ride into the George and Charlotte copper mine.

Indeed, Morwellham Quay provides a superb glimpse into a bygone mineral era and is certainly a not-to-be-missed historical attraction for all mining and industrial enthusiasts.