The Cornish Engine

1/7/2025

This opens with waves crashing against the cliffs as if it were straight out of a Daphne du Maurier novel as we pan to ruined stannaries and scarred terrain. All we really need now is Leslie Banks and Charles Laughton. Sadly, no - not quite. Instead we are taken on a tour of the really quite precarious mines of Cornwall that are long since abandoned. There are still one or two pumping engines working, and these are massive great things of an intricate design that you can imagine will work forever. Over the years, the miners have searched for tin, arsenic and copper in the past, but now they mostly work above ground using high-powered jets of water to filter out some fine clay for use in the ceramics industry. The pumping rods can weigh over 100 tons and stretch some 2000 feet down into the