St Agnes Mines - Blue Hills

Blue Hills Mine on the coast at Trevellas Coombe lies at the end of the Jericho Valley, about one mile northeast of St. Agnes. The mine dates from the early eighteenth century and includes Wheal Betsy. It is known to have closed around about 1780 due to the excessive cost of dewatering the mine. It was restarted under the name East Polberro in 1813 and became Blue Hills in 1836. According to Thomas Spargo in his book The Mines of Cornwall (1865), the mine was renamed as Wheal Ocean in the mid nineteenth century and '...was worked a few years ago by the late Captain Gripe's party, and is to be reworked by a company with which Captain Craze is connected. An engine is to be erected shortly. The old engine was on the edge of the cliff. The sett is in the Manor of Trevellas, the mineral property of the Duke of Cornwall and immediately east of Penhalls Mine. It has always been considered a 'kindly' mine...'. To the east of Blue Hills lay East Blue Hills Mine and also Wheal Prudence - a mine that 'has been idle for many years' according to Spargo.

Blue Hills was mainly a tin mine employing on avarge between 50 and 150 workers in its lifetime. There are no records of any copper ore being present. It worked four main lodes, namely: Baldhu Lode, Pink Lode, Straggler's Lode and Betsy Lode. There were a number of shafts cutting the lodes, such as Blue Burrow Shaft on Baldhu Lode, whilst Pink Lode had Engine, Polyear's, Wheal Joy and Letcher's Shafts. Wheal Betsy Lode was opened up by Wheal Betsy Engine Shaft.
Records of output are scarce but Blue Hills raised 2,117 tons of Black Tin between 1858 and 1897, with its best years being between 1886 and 1891. Wheal Betsy meanwhile, returned 45 tons of black tin between 1839 and 1861. Chief Agents at the mine between 1868 and 1880 were James and Arthur Gripe as indicated by Thomas Spargo. Blue Hills was abandoned in 1897. An attempt to rework the mine in 1926 came to nothing.

Nowadays there are a number of ruined mine buildings on the foreshore just inland of Trevellas Porth. Further up the Jericho Valley lie the Blue Hills Tin Streams, run by the Wills family. Here it is possible to see how the tin was turned from the metal occuring in the rocks into tin metal and on into fine jewellery. The processes of streaming, vanning, crushing, concentrating and dressing the metal prior to melting and casting. It is an excellent way to see something tangible is created by the toil of all those thousands of Cornish miners and a great way to do something different if on holiday.

For more information on the Blue Hills Tin Streams please click HERE or examine a map of the area.

'World Heritage' status has been gained for this area. Cornwall in Focus are waiting to see just how Blue Hills and the St Agnes mines fit into the overall mine restoration framework.

For those of you with possibly a little more time to explore, once you've done 'the tourist bit', why not explore Cornwall's industrial heritage through its Tin and Copper Mines or learn more from my Cornish Bookstore