Cornwall & West Devon Mining Landscape

World Heritage Status places Cornwall and West Devon’s historic mining landscapes on a par with such international treasures as Stonehenge, the Taj Mahal and the Great Wall of China.

Cornish Mining represents one of the longest histories of industrial heritage conservation in the world and is unique in being the first of its kind concerned with the mining and ore processing of tin and arsenic, together with copper and other industrial metals. Through these advances the industry contributed substantially to the industrial revolution in the rest of Britain.

The World Heritage Site covers mining landscapes dating from 1700 to 1914, when deep hard-rock mining was developed locally and major technological developments within the area helped to transform mining both locally and worldwide.

Made up of ten distinct areas where the physical remains of mining from this period are best represented, the Site includes the mines themselves, the remains of the early infrastructure and the surviving evidence of its social and economic consequences including distinctive settlement patterns.