Hello everyone! Apologies for being so inactive recently, but Christmas is a nightmare when you’re trying to juggle the demands of your family and your followers! Hope you all had a lovely Christmas despite the distinct lack of Cornish things to brighten your day. The festive feeling hasn’t quite abated for me yet, so I’m offering you the snow-covered engine house of the South Cundurrow Mine, a relic of Cornwall’s rich mining past, that can be found about a mile from the centre of Camborne in the west of the county.
This is the town square of Camborne, a town situated in western Cornwall, part of a conurbation, alongside the village of Pool and the town of Redruth. With a lovely Cornish name meaning ‘crooked hill’, Camborne was originally a small hamlet called Camborne Churchtown until the copper and tin mining boom in the late 1700s, when it was transformed into one of the many prosperous centres of the Cornish mining industry. It was home to the renowned Dolcoath Mine, which was once the world’s deepest mine, with its principal shaft delving to an astounding 3,500 feet underground. Annually, the residents of Camborne celebrate Trevithick Day in honour of engineer Richard Trevithick, who in 1801 launched on Camborne Hill the world’s first self-propelled passenger vehicle - a steam-powered road locomotive nicknamed the Puffing Devil. As part of Trevithick Day, a parade of steam engines puff their way through town, and - an essential part of any good festival - there’s a lot of dancing to join in with.
