North Crofty Mine

OS Explorer Map 103: Grid reference SW667413

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North Crofty Mine was created out of the former large sett of East Wheal Crofty, known to have been at work by 1822. In the 1850's East Wheal Crofty was sub-divided into North Wheal Crofty and South Wheal Crofty. The main shafts on the sett of North Crofty were: New Cook's Kitchen; New Cook's Kitchen Engine shaft; Richard's; Petherick's; Tredinnick's; John's; Burgess'; Praed's; Rule's and Cherry Garden shafts.

Nothing now remains of North Crofty. Its remains are buried under a car park and buildings on the western edge of the Cornwall College. Its sett lay just to the north of Trevenson Road, and to the east of Tolvaddon Road in Pool, near Redruth. Its nearest neighbour is South Crofty just to the south east.

The Great Flat Lode is an enormous ore bearing body tilted at an angle of about 45 degrees situated to the south of Carn Brea. Normally lodes are found perpendicular to the ground surface or at best at angles of about 60 degrees. The Great Flat lode got its name as in relative terms it lay a lot flatter in the ground. This, meant that mines could be placed at the optimum locations to extract the tin or copper ore from the ground without digging to excessive depths. The Great Flat Lode Trail encompasses all the major mines of the Camborne-Redruth area running in a 7.5 mile multi-use circular trail around the granite hill of Carn Brea. Follow the hyperlinks for more information and photographs on the main sections of this excellent trail.

'World Heritage' status for this area was granted on 14th July 2006. This should help to provide the necessary funding to improve and interlink all the mineral tramway projects. The majority of the trail is off-road and suitable for walkers, horse riders and cyclists. There are even some parts accessible to wheelchair users.

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