"A mine is a hole in the ground with a Cornishman at the bottom"

There has been mining in Cornwall for hundreds of years, almost as long as man has lived on the peninsular. The first mines were probably opencast, surface ore would have been washed from the gravel beds of streams or dug in shallow open pits. In Roman times it seems likely that Cornish tin was mined and exported to other areas of the country for smelting. - Tin is one of the constituent parts of Pewter.
Underground mining as we know it seems to have started in the 16th century when some lodes of ore which could be seen on the cliffs around St. just began to be explored. As these explorations went deeper into the ground other metals were found, there were early attempts to raise Copper ore in the St Just, St Ives and Perranzabuloe areas. With the invention of the pumping engine and other more sophisticated machinery it became possible for the mines to be taken deeper and deeper to follow the richer lodes.
Most people, when talking about Cornish mining automatically think of Tin mining, it is true that great quantities of tin have been mined in Cornwall However that is not the only metal which has been mined in viable quantities in Cornwall. Copper was, in the 18th & 19th Centuries, mined in some quantity. The open cast mining of China Clay continues to this day, although even that is going through a tough time.
Anyone who has visited Cornwall will be familiar with the sight of the disused engine houses which dot the landscape, some areas are littered with them, proof - it would seem of the extent of the industry at it's height. An industry which shaped and controlled the lives of the people of Cornwall for several hundred years. The years of real prosperity from mining were in reality short lived and by 1860 the decline had already set in. In fact those abandoned engine houses tell only part of the story. There were hundreds more mines than those we can still see today. Throughout the 18th and 19th century mines opened and shut with alarming frequency, new adits were dug for drainage and new air engine houses built only for the price of tin and copper to drop or the vein to peter out and the mine close down, all too often within only a year or so of it opening. If the price of the metals should then rise the mine would be reopened, very often under a different name, possibly incorporated into a different mine. All it needed was for another group of 'Adventurers' to have the courage, or was it stupidity, to put up some more money to enable the mine to open. The labourers were only too glad of the work even if it was short lived. It is some times difficult to see how anyone made much money in mining in Cornwall, obviously the lucky few did. Certainly the ordinary labourers were rarely among that number. By the early 1900's all but a few mines had closed and the few remaining ones struggled on precariously through the 20th century. Geevor mine finally closed in the 1970's to be converted into a museum and the last survivor of a once great industry - South Crofty at Pool finally closed it's doors after a prolonged struggle for survival in March 1998.
It is extremely difficult, if not impossible to identify the mine any one ancestor worked in. In fact they all probably worked in many mines as most were only open for a short time. Lodes reopened under different names, shafts were taken over by different 'adventurers' and the men went wherever the work was and when there was no mining work they worked as general labourers wherever they could. Anyone trying to pinpoint a mine where an ancestor may have worked in the early 1800's or even the 1700's is probably fighting a loosing battle unless disaster hit, which was not that uncommon, and names can be found in the newspapers of the time.
Disasters and accidents were certainly frequent occurrences. Working conditions for the miners must have been atrocious. Long climbs down ladders at the start of the shift, long hours underground with only the light from the candle in their helmets, and, at the end of a long shift another long and exhausting climb back up the shaft to the surface, often 20 or 30 fathoms or more above them.
If there was a rock fall or an explosion the chances of being rescued were slim. With the invention of the steam engines it became common for man engines to be installed which carried the men up and down the shafts to the working vein of ore but there are many occasions when these failed.

It is easy to see how the Cornish miners gained their deserved reputation for mining expertise – they had years of experience behind them. The development of the man engine and the huge pumping engines enabled mining to develop in areas where it would not have been possible otherwise. Many areas of the world benefited from this expertise. The goldfields of America and Australia, Diamond mines in South Africa, Coal in the USA and many other places in between.