Time Trek

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As you walk up the hill from Wheal Mexico to the café and shop you are invited to 'Walk with us from the discovery of metals in Cornwall to the present'. This is Geevor's time trek, giving you glimpses of history from 2050 BC to the present.

A Brief Chronology

16 to 5 billion years ago	Creation of tin in the hearts of supernovae.
4.6 billion years ago	Formation of Solar System.
375 million years ago	Accretion of Cornwall begins.
290 million years ago	Emplacement of tin lodes starts.
9,000 years ago	Arrival of Mesolithic man.
6,000 years ago	Start of agriculture in Britain.
5,300 years ago	Penwith Chamber Tombs - the Quoits are their remains.
4,900 years ago	Scillonian Chamber Tombs, such as Ballowall Barrow, St.Just.
4,600 - 4000 years ago	Metal in use, stone circles built.

2050 BC
Holme Timber Circle, Norfolk - known colloquially as Seahenge. The timbers used to construct the circle were hewn by bronze axes.

1950 BC
Beaker People, Tin, Copper and Bronze. Associated with this type of pottery is the first evidence of metal working.

1850 BC
Tin Streaming. Cassiterite pebbles lay along stream beds, ripe for discovery and processing. It was these sorts of deposit that were used by the first tin streamers.

1750 BC
Trade Routes. A Bronze Age shipwreck was found at the mouth of the Erme in Devon with a cargo of crudely shaped ingots of pure tin.

1628 BC
Destruction of a Civilisation. In about 1628 BC the volcano of Santorini exploded sending ash into the stratosphere and scattering hot pumice and pyroclastic bombs.

1600 BC
Climate Deterioration: The worldwide climatic effect of Santorini must have been sudden and catastrophic. The collapse of the Bronze Age Wessex Culture at about this time is probably linked.

1400 BC
The Towans at Godrevy, on the north east end of St Ives Bay have yielded archaeological evidence of a middle and late Bronze Age culture.

1300 BC
Fire Setting: By lighting a large fire against a wall of ore, and throwing cold water on it, the rock would shatter. A place where this may have occurred is Gryll's Bunny near Botallack Mine.

1159 - 1141 BC
Tree Rings from Ireland: Buried in peat, oak trees are preserved. In 1159 BC to 1141 BC trees show almost no summer growth. Here is a famine situation. Did it affect Cornwall? Certainly.

1000 BC
Climate and Peat: Peat is present on many upland areas of western Britain. In 1842 the then Vicar of St Just, Rev. John Buller, mentions in his book antiquities the finding of tree stumps buried under twelve feet of peat. As an environmental indicator and organic material preserver there is little better than peat.

900 BC
Dean Moor, Dartmoor: An excavation at Dean Moor in Dartmoor, site dated at 1400-900 BC from pottery, yielded a single pebble of tin ore and a blob of smelted tin slag.

700 BC
The Celts: Peaceful settlement over the period of the first millennium BC provided the basis of the modern Celtic nations.

c 425 BC
Herodotus writes: "... I have no reliable information to pass on about the western margins of Europe, ...and I am not certain that the Cassiterides exist, which are supposed to be the source of our tin. ...Nevertheless, it is true that our tin and our amber come from the outermost reaches of the world".

c 325 BC
Pytheas of Massalia: Pytheas, the explorer and navigator, journeyed from his home at Massalia (Marseilles) round Spain to Cornwall where he found a flourishing tin industry.

250 BC
Chun Castle: A smelting furnace was excavated here in one of many digs between 1862 and 1930.

55 BC
Caesar invaded Britain and again in 54 BC. The lead of Mendip and Derbyshire and the copper of Wales provided the economic impetus for Roman invasion, not tin, as they had their own mines in Northern Spain.

100 AD
Romans in Cornwall - Roman coins of 60 to 160 AD found near Carn Brea, Camborne.

250 AD
Revolution in Spain forced the Romans to look elsewhere for tin. They traded with the Cornish tribes who remained independent.

400 - 460 AD
St Perran {Piran} (Patron Saint of Tinners) landed at Perranporth having travelled from Ireland.

597 AD
St Augustine was sent to England to convert the country to Christianity.

664 AD
The Synod of Whitby was convened to determine the date of Easter, which the Celtic and Roman branches of the Church celebrated on different dates. In Cornwall monasticism remained rather than being replaced by the Diocese structure of the Roman Church ordered administration.

814 AD
King Egbert (Saxon) subdued all lands of Dumnonia and forced local kings to do him homage.

931 AD
Saxon King Athelstan imposed ecclesiastical rule on Cornwall by founding the see of St Germans.

1000 AD
Natural Forest: Cornwall was once, in about 7000 BC, covered in English Oak, Sessile Oak and Wych Elm closed forest. By the beginning of the last millennium human use had ensured that there was virtually none left.

1086 AD
Domesday Book: The nearest places to Pendeen in the survey are Brea and Kelynack, now small settlements to the south of St Just.

1156 AD
Pipe Rolls: The Pipe Roll of Henry II states that annual tin production on Dartmoor was about 60 tons.

1197 AD
William de Wrotham appointed Lord Warden of the Stannaries and started raising taxes on tin.

1214 AD
Cornwall's tin production 60 tons.

1305 AD
Stannaries of Devon and Cornwall were now two separate entities.

1337 AD
Annual Cornish tin production was 650 tons.

1348 AD
The Black Death, Bubonic Plague, reduced the population of Cornwall from 60,000 to 40,000.

1355 AD
Cornish tin production down to 250 tons annually.

1400 AD
Cornish tin production was 800 tons annually.

1494 AD
First Crockern Tor Stannary Parliament (open air, near Two Bridges, Dartmoor).

1497 AD
The Cornish rebel against Henry VII because of yet more increased taxes. Led by Michel Joseph, the smith (An Gof in Cornish ) of St Keverne, and Thomas Flamank, a lawyer of Bodmin, with 10,000 Cornishman they made their way to London but were defeated at Blackheath.

1524 AD
German miners had a more developed technology so their skills continued to be imported to develop all sorts of metal mining.

1549 AD
Prayer Book Rebellion: A march from Stamford Courtenay to Crediton by men of Devon and Cornwall to protest against the use of English in the Prayer Book.

1588 AD
Spanish Armada: On 29th July 1588 the Armada was sighted from the Lizard. The English ships were more manoeuvrable than the heavy Spanish vessels. The outcome is well known.

1602 AD
Carew's Survey of Cornwall:This survey, completed in 1602, details life in the county in late Elizabethan England.

1687 AD
Trelawny: Bishop Jonathan Trelawny was imprisoned, along with six other bishops, for objecting to the preferential appointment of Catholics to high civil office.

1720 AD
Thomas Newcomen erected one of the first steam engines in Cornwall at Ludgvan Lez near Penzance.

1753 AD
Last Cornwall Stannary Parliament at Hingston Down.

1801 AD
Richard Trevithick demonstrated, on Christmas Eve, the first working steam driven road locomotive.

1812 AD
Tinplate canister for preserving food manufactured in Bermondsey. Richard Trevithick applied the Cornish Boiler that could produce steam at higher pressure, much more efficient.

1838 AD
Tin coinage abolished. The Duchy of Cornwall and the Crown have been compensated for its loss ever since.

1867 AD
A miner earned £2.10 shillings (£2.50) per month, with a sack of flour costing £2.10 shillings (£2.50).

1875 AD
In the first six months of this year 10,567 emigrants left Cornwall. Emigration agents targeted the county to obtain the skills of the miners.

1895 AD
The Collapse of Tin: A very similar situation to that thirty years earlier - the increase of availability of Malay tin from alluvial deposits pushed the price of metallic tin from £97 a ton in 1895 to £64 in 1896.

1911 AD
Geevor Tin Mines Limited formed.

1919 AD
Victory Shaft started, so named to commemorate the end of the First World War.

1990 AD
Final mine shift on 16th February.

1992 AD
Geevor acquired by Cornwall County Council as a Heritage Museum.

2001 AD
Pendeen Community Heritage formed with the express purpose of submitting a management bid to run Geevor Mine Heritage Centre for Cornwall County Council. The bid was successful and this large-scale mining museum is now run by local people.