Wheal Edward Mine

Wheal Edward Mine Grid reference SW470328

Wheal Edward Mine lies on the cliff edge on the north coast of Cornwall, between the villages of Pendeen and St. Just. It occupies an area on the western boundary of the Wheal Owles Sett, adjacent to the former Boswedden Mine Sett. To the north lies the better known and much more picturesque Crowns Engine houses of the Botallack Sett, whilst a few metres inland lies the pumping house of West Wheal Owles.

The mine worked the copper and tin lodes running NW-SE, as most of the lodes of this part of North Penwith do, via an incline shaft extending out under the sea. The bedrock is greenstone - one of the hardest rocks there is making development quite slow. Another quirk of the geology is that exploratory excavations indicated that in most cases the richer ore was to be found under the sea - an added hazard. There were limited amounts of pitchblende and uranium produced here but production ceased in 1893 when the adjoining mine of West Wheal Owles broke into the flooded workings of the ancient Wheal Drea Mine. For more information on this disaster please see the section on Wheal Owles.

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