15th December 2006
HERITAGE LOTTERY FUND GRANT CONFIRMED
HLF have awarded us a ‘Stage 2’
grant for the major project to renovate buildings at Geevor,
to create a new museum and to safeguard our special position
in an area of outstanding natural beauty. HLF have confirmed
that £2.6m will be put in. With contributions from Objective
One European funding plus generous support from the County
and District Councils, £3.4m. will be available. A lot
of planning has already taken place and we hope to see work
starting on the site in March 2007.
The site will be fully open to visitors throughout the project,
so come and see and see what is going on!
4th December 2006
SANTA TO MEET ALICE IN GEEVOR’S
UNDERGROUND GROTTO
Geevor Tin Mine is preparing for the arrival
of Father Christmas in the Underground Grotto. Alice, The
Mad Hatter and her other friends from Wonderland have helped
volunteers and staff at the mine make everything ready for
Father Christmas to visit the Underground Grotto on Sundays
10th and 17th of December.
In the spirit of Christmas managers at Geevor
have reduced prices to £4.00 entrance for adults for
the full visit to Geevor, including the underground tour,
while admittance for accompanying children, including the
visit to Father Christmas, is free.
Fiona Young, Education Officer and Events
Organiser, said, “We are all very excited about our
first Christmas event. We recognise the tremendous support
that people throughout Cornwall and particularly our local
community give to Geevor and we want to give something back
through this event by keeping charges to an absolute minimum
and allowing children to enjoy a free fun day at the Mad Hatters
tea party and in the underground grotto.”
Staff at Geevor expect Sunday afternoons
to be very busy and so recommend that visitors come in the
morning, spend some time choosing authentically Cornish Christmas
gifts in Geevor’s shop and enjoy a traditional home
cooked Sunday lunch in the cliff top café with spectacular
views over the Atlantic coast. Lunch with all the trimmings
is an exceptional price of £4.50 and a child’s
portion is available at a cost of just £3.00. Booking
lunch is recommended so please contact Margaret Burford on
01736 788662
Santa’s Underground Grotto is open
from 10 am until 5pm with last entry at 4 pm.
November 22nd 2006
GEEVOR TO SUPPORT TOURISM INITIATIVE
Managers of Geevor Tin Mine have acted to
support the Cornish Mining WHS advertising campaign by announcing
½ price admission, for travelers producing a rail ticket
from London, from December 1st until the end of January 07.
The offer supports the unveiling of 12 posters
marking UNESCO’s award of World Heritage Site Status
recognising the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape area’s
world wide cultural importance. The posters, alongside Platform
8, London Paddington’s arrival and departure point for
trains to and from Penzance, highlight aspects of the history
of mining and the world wide impact of Cornish miners and
are expected to be seen by up to 15½ million people
during the campaign.
The posters describe how Cornish miners influenced
diamond mining in South Africa, introduced football to Mexico,
founded Australia’s mineral industry, revolutionised
food packaging, accelerated the Industrial Revolution and
were responsible for changing English gardens for ever.
Bill Lakin, Chair of the Trustees of Pendeen
Community Heritage the charity that manages Geevor Tin Mine
& Heritage Centre for Cornwall County Council, said “The
posters are the first step in an advertising campaign by Cornish
Mining WHS that aims to bring 10% more visitors to the county.
We think that it is important for us to support the campaign
and reward visitors that take the train, the greenest transport
option from London, to Geevor with an offer of ½ price
admission.”
NB To qualify for ½ price admission
the visit to Geevor must take place within a week of the date
of the rail ticket from London Paddington.
7th November 2006
GEEVOR BREAKS RECORDS
Hard on the heels of news of Geevor’s
record breaking year to October 1st, with visitor numbers
up by more than 12%, comes the announcement that in October
visitors numbers were almost 40% up on last year.
Bill Lakin, Chair of the Trustees of Pendeen
Community Heritage the charity that manages Geevor Tin Mine
& Heritage Centre for Cornwall County Council, attributes
the continuing success of Geevor as an educational visitor
attraction to the continuing programme of restoration and
development of the site. “Over the past 12 months we’ve
done a great deal of work” explained Bill “and
these improvements have boosted visitor numbers through the
year. October’s figures are a welcome bonus –
the continuing fine weather has obviously helped.”
Work starts in the New Year on the conservation
of 21 buildings, the creation of a major new museum of hard
rock mining, new visitor facilities, biodiversity surveys
and the development of an ecological trail.
Bill Lakin continued “Unesco's award
of World Heritage Status to the Cornish Mining area will help
us build on this season’s increased number of visitors.
People will arrive in Cornwall already knowing that there
is a huge wealth of industrial heritage that they can see
and have fun exploring. Geevor is developing, with the help
of the £3.8m Heritage Lottery Fund and Objective 1 grant,
into a site which will be the finest mining museum anywhere:
it will generate jobs and help in the regeneration of the
local economy.”
13th October 2006
FREE ADMISSION TO GEEVOR ON WORLD
HERITAGE DAY
Managers and staff at Geevor Tin Mine Museum
& Heritage Centre are to hold a World Heritage Day on
Sunday 29th October to celebrate the site’s new status.
Unesco's award in the summer of 2006 of World Heritage Status
to the mining landscape centred around 10 areas of the former
mining districts of Cornwall and West Devon. Geevor will offer
free admission (Sunday 29th October only) to the Museum and
surface buildings and to the underground tour.
As part of the Heritage Day festivities,
Geevor managers have arranged a special underground trip on
Saturday 28th October to Rosevale Mine at Zennor. Rosevale
is the only underground mine restoration project of its type
in Cornwall and forms a unique and important part of the county's
mining heritage. It is equipped as a working mine, but also
contains a wide variety of mining machinery, tools and relics.
The free tour aims to demonstrate the methodology of hard-rock,
narrow vein mining and give an understanding of the underground
environment of a typical Cornish mine. A tour of this type
takes between 1-2 hours. Miners’ battery lamps and safety
helmets are provided, but visitors need to wear boots or stout
shoes and rough clothing. This is a unique opportunity to
visit a mine where normally there is no public access. The
trip is limited to 16 visitors and bookings will be taken
at Geevor starting on 16th October on a “first come
first served basis”.
The day also sees the opening of the newly
restored stamps. The stamps, dating from the mid C19th, were
removed from Locke Farm, near Nancledra, in 1983 by the mining
company operating the Geevor mine at the time and then exhibited
at the original museum. After years of neglect, the lengthy
restoration of the stamps has been completed and they now
stand adjacent to a public footpath running through the centre
of the Geevor site where they can be seen and enjoyed by all
visitors – paying or non-paying. Visitors will also
be able to see the restored water wheel turning using water
power.
The Berryman family worked the stamps until
the 1950s at Trelocke Farm, Nancledra and Mrs Beth Barker,
Mr and Mrs Berryman’s daughter, is to open the restored
wheel and stamps on Heritage Day.
8th September 2006
GEEVOR ANCHORS EURO ROUTE
Geevor, the biggest mining history site in
the UK, has been named as an Anchor Point for the European
Route of Industrial Heritage, a network of the most important
industrial heritage sites in Europe.
The Anchor Points comprise the complete range
of European industrial history and provide an explanation
of what can be seen at a local level. Visitors of all ages
can relive their industrial heritage in the form of attractive
guided tours, multi-media presentations and outstanding special
events. All the Anchor Points throughout the UK, Netherlands
and Germany, the heartlands of the Industrial Revolution,
are also starting points for a variety of regional routes.
Bill Lakin Chair of Pendeen Community Heritage,
the charity that manages Geevor for Cornwall County Council,
said “We are hugely pleased at this further recognition
of the
international significance of Geevor's heritage. We hope that
our European friends will follow the route to Geevor and that
our visitors too will want to explore the fantastic heritage
sites in Europe”.
15th June 2006
Geevor waterwheel and stamps restored
An 18 month project to restore and relocate
an historic set of tin stamps and the waterwheel that drove
them is approaching completion at Geevor Tin Mine Museum &
Heritage Centre, the biggest mining history site in the UK.
The stamps – dating from the mid C19th
- were removed from Locke Farm, near Nancledra, in 1983 by
the mining company operating the Geevor mine at the time and
then exhibited at the original museum. After years of neglect,
the stamps have been restored and repositioned adjacent to
a public footpath running through the centre of the Geevor
site where they can be seen and enjoyed by all visitors –
paying or non-paying. The next phase of the project will be
to get the wheel to turn using water power.
The work was undertaken by Clive Williams
Builders and Jerry Harvey Engineering of Pendeen. Both Clive
and Jerry began their working careers at the mine. Clive Carter
of Canonstown, who undertook the reconstruction of the wheel
in 1983, advised on the project.
“We are fortunate to have local craftsmen
who can undertake work like this and do it in a way that that
respects the historic significance of the project. We have
also been greatly helped by the input of the County Council
Historic Environment Service and by English Heritage”
said David Wright, Development Officer for Pendeen Community
Heritage, the charity which manages the site for Cornwall
County Council.
Funding for the project came from the Esmée
Fairbairn Foundation, the PRISM Fund for the preservation
of scientific and industrial material, the Pilgrim Trust and
the Cornwell Trust.
9th June 2006
£3.8 million funding creates
jobs boost
Cornwall County Council’s Environment
& Heritage Service has received funding approval for the
development stage of a £3.8 million project to create
the UK’s finest museum of hard rock mining at Geevor
Tin Mine.
The project includes the conservation of
21 buildings, the creation of a major new museum of hard rock
mining, new visitor facilities, biodiversity surveys and the
development of an ecological trail. Bill Lakin, Chair of Pendeen
Community Heritage, the charity that manages Geevor for Cornwall
County Council, said “The project spend will be as local
as we can make it and will have a significant impact on the
local economy. Outputs calculated on Objective 1 formulas
show 48 jobs created directly and indirectly locally, with
£1.6m pa additional gross sales within the local (Penwith)
economy”.
The project is a partnership between Penwith
District Council, Pendeen Community Heritage and the National
Trust. Funders, including the Heritage Lottery Fund and European
Community Objective One, gave the go-ahead following detailed
assessment of the international importance of Geevor Tin Mine
– the best preserved tin mining complex in Europe.
Mike Simpson, Mine Manager at Geevor Tin
Mine explained “This 2 year project will greatly enhance
the visitor experience at Geevor Tin Mine for everyone, especially
families, and will increase visitor numbers to 50,000 p.a.
by September 2008 and 65,000 p.a. by 2010. It will also enable
us to expand our education programme and is the good news
that Pendeen Community Heritage have been waiting for”.
Geevor Tin Mine is a key site in the proposed
Cornish Mining World Heritage Site and the new museum will
include the story of Penwith’s mining heritage as well
as the extraordinary story of Geevor Tin Mine.
Bargain admission for Geevor visitors
10th April 2006
Geevor Tin Mine Museum & Heritage Centre will give this season's
visitors a one year pass for the price of admission for the
day.
The special offer is available through the Gift Aid scheme
and visitors who are UK taxpayers and decide to make a donation
equivalent to the price of admission qualify for the one year
pass. The Government gives Pendeen Community Heritage, the
charity that runs Geevor for Cornwall County Council, 28%
extra of the value of the donation.
Mine Manager Mike Simpson said "There is so much to see at
Geevor, Europe's largest preserved tin mining site, and it's
growing all the time. This summer new exhibits open, including
stamps and a water wheel, and there is a continuing season
of fun things to do for children. The one year pass will give
visitors the opportunity to return and see parts of the mine
and museum they missed".
The staff of Pendeen Community Heritage (PCH), managers of
Geevor Tin Mine & Heritage Centre, work hard to ensure that
the site is conserved and used in a way that serves the local
community, such as providing educational opportunities for
children and adults, working to promote other local businesses
by joint working and providing discounted entry to visitors
arriving by bus, helping to ease traffic volumes during the
busy summer season. PCH also provides free parking, encouraging
visitors to leave their cars at the site and explore the dramatic
coastline of the far west of Cornwall on foot.
For further information please contact Mike Simpson of Pendeen
Community Heritage 01736 788662 email: pch@geevor.com or visit
the web site at www.geevor.com
