Mount Wellington Mine

Overview

Mount Wellington, sunk in 1976, was the first new mine opened in Cornwall in decades — a bold bet on the tin industry that flooded so badly it closed within two years, was rescued as a satellite of neighbouring Wheal Jane, and finally shut for good in 1991 as one of the last working tin mines in Cornwall.

History

Mount Wellington opened in 1976 as the first new mine development in the Cornish tin industry for many years, sunk by the Cornwall Tin & Mining Corporation at a cost estimated between £4 million and £25 million and initially forecast to have a 25-year working life. The No. 1 Wellington Shaft was sunk to 210 metres and later deepened to 310 metres, working mineralised lodes including Wheal Andrew and neighbouring claims. The mine proved extremely wet, pumping over 5,000 gallons of water a minute, and closed prematurely on 20 April 1978, with no more ore raised from the shaft after that date. The site was sold to a scrap dealer before being bought in 1979 by Carnon Consolidated, a subsidiary of Rio Tinto-Zinc, which reopened it in association with the neighbouring Wheal Jane mine, partly to help dewater Wheal Jane's own workings; Billiton Minerals separately purchased the Mount Wellington mill in 1979 and reprocessed tailings and dumps in the Carnon Valley until 1981. By 1984 Mount Wellington operated as part of an integrated mining unit with Wheal Jane and South Crofty under RTZ management, and the combined operation, including Mount Wellington and the Wheal Maid tailings lagoons, finally closed for the last time in March 1991.

Geology

The mine worked tin-bearing lodes, including Wheal Andrew, within the Gwennap mining district's granite-related hydrothermal mineralisation, the same system that produced the district's historic copper and tin wealth.

Geological setting: Hydrothermal Deposits (well documented example), Veins and Lodes (well documented example)

Workings

The No. 1 Wellington Shaft was sunk to 210 metres and later deepened to 310 metres; the mine's greatest operational challenge was water, pumping over 5,000 gallons a minute at its wettest, and its later life was run as an integrated unit alongside the neighbouring Wheal Jane and South Crofty mines.

Closure

The mine closed prematurely in April 1978 due to severe water ingress, reopened in 1979 as a satellite operation of Wheal Jane, and finally closed for the last time in March 1991 alongside Wheal Jane and the Wheal Maid tailings lagoons.

What remains

The former mine site was redeveloped in 2007 as a private, gated business park, now home to a number of tenants operating in the renewable energy sector.

A truncated headgear and a large, largely stripped processing building survive on the redeveloped site; the mine's underground workings remain accessible via older, adjoining workings.

Abandoned workings can be dangerous — unstable ground, uncapped shafts, flooding and bad air are common even where a site looks safe from the surface. This entry describes history and general location only; it is not an access guide.

Recorded claims

Individual factual claims, each attached to the source(s) that support it below. Where sources disagree, both are kept.

• The No. 1 Wellington Shaft was sunk to 210 metres and later deepened to 310 metres; the mine pumped over 5,000 gallons of water a minute at its wettest. ¹
• The combined operation including Mount Wellington, Wheal Jane and the Wheal Maid tailings lagoons finally closed for the last time in March 1991. ¹

Images

Sources

1. (secondary) Mount Wellington Tin Mine — Wikipedia
2. (primary) Mount Wellington Mine mine plan — British Geological Survey (BGS Exeter)
3. (secondary) Mount Wellington Mine (Wheal Magpie), Cusgarne, Gwennap, Cornwall, England, UK — Mindat

Record created: 23 August 2026 · Last researched: 23 August 2026