Mining museum celebrates 25th birthday

Volunteers and former mine workers have celebrated the 25th anniversary of a mining museum which tells the stories of mining history in Cornwall, with the unveiling of a restored mining headframe.

The 12m (39ft) tall structure now stands on the skyline at King Edward Mine (KEM) at Troon, near Camborne. Trustee Peter Snodgrass said the amount of work volunteers put into the project had "been fabulous".

It was donated from the site of a mine near Blackwater and has replaced a headframe which collapsed at KEM in 1934.

A headframe sits above a mine shaft to lift mined ore to the surface, allowing miners to enter and exit workings, and directing fresh air into a mine, dispelling hazardous gases.

Lord-Lieutenant of Cornwall Colonel Sir Edward Bolitho unveiled a commemorative plaque at the celebrations on Saturday 11 July.

KEM was developed as a training mine by Camborne School of Mines (CSM) in 1897 and was a teaching facility for more than 100 years.

Snodgrass told the BBC the newly-erected structure was "one of the last wooden headframes in Cornwall and the first one to be erected in many many years".

He said: "What makes it special is its history".

Among the team of volunteers was Mike May, who was an apprentice at Geevor in 1962 and helped build the headframe.

KEM said his expertise "proved invaluable" to the restoration.

Volunteers put in thousands of hours of work, including dismantling, cleaning and retaining as much of the original fabric of the headframe for reuse as possible.

They also repaired and installed timbering, concreted foundations and reassembled the structure to its historic design so a headframe could tower on the Troon skyline "proudly" for the first time in 92 years, KEM said.

The headframe was originally built at Geevor in west Cornwall and erected at Cligga Head, near St Agnes, in 1962.

It was later moved to Nangiles in the Wheal Jane area near Chacewater, then to Wheal Concord near Blackwater in 1980.

The site was later taken over by Cornish Firewood, and owner Jason Thomas and his family offered the the headframe on long-term loan to KEM.

KEM's chair of trustees John McDonnell said the loan "helps us to highlight the relationship between mining underground and the winding mechanism and ore processing in the mill, which our museum so aptly demonstrates".

He added the museum was on the look out for more volunteers for a variety of roles.

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