Whilst we were visiting western Cornwall last month, Liz and I stayed in a cottage on the outskirts of St Just in Penwith.
When we first visited St Just in the late 1980s, it seemed a rather grim and depressed place. The tin mining industry, traditionally St Just's main source of employment, was in terminal decline. Like many other mining communities around the UK, the town was being victimised by a government that believed "unemployment is a price worth paying" and regarded militant mineworkers as "the enemy within".
Since then, thankfully, St Just has undergone a revival. The town now seems to be prospering once more, partly because it has become popular with tourists as a base for exploring the Land's End peninsula. It is also home to a thriving colony of artists. Another indication of St Just's changed fortunes is the brand new extension that has been added to the primary school - surely a positive sign!
In September we were delighted to discover that the former mining area around St Just has been included in the new Cornish Mining World Heritage Site. It joins a select group of 830 properties around the globe which the World Heritage Committee considers to have "outstanding universal value". Other World Heritage Sites in the UK include Stonehenge, the Tower of London and Kew Gardens.
Looking at the scenic ruins of the old mine buildings, it is hard to imagine that the wild and rugged Cornish coast was once a seat of heavy industry. The mines produced not only tin, copper and other metals but also arsenic, much of which was exported to the USA where it was used as an insecticide in the cotton-fields.
Working in the mines and ore-processing plants must have been hellish. Accounts from the 18th and 19th centuries describe the dreadful conditions in which men, women and children toiled.
Much of the land between Levant and Geevor still appears to be heavily contaminated with mining waste, but elsewhere nature has healed the industrial scars. I find it reassuring that, given time, even the most despoiled areas can become green once more. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the rare red-billed chough can now be seen amongst the ruined mine buildings near Botallack.
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