Qualla: Hemerdon Mine

Hemerdon Mine: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SelfieCity, CC BY-SA 4.0. Twice in the 20th century, Britain went to war and remembered Hemerdon. The tungsten-tin deposit just outside Plympton was discovered in 1867 and largely ignored until 1916, when First World War shortages of tungsten, the metal that hardens armour-piercing shells, made every domestic source suddenly precious. Hemerdon's mill opened in 1917, processed 16,000 tonnes of ore between 1918 and 1919, and shut as soon as the war ended and prices collapsed. The pattern would repeat. In 1939, with Hitler's tanks rolling east and tungsten supplies under threat, the British government remembered Hemerdon a second time. Winston Churchill personally backed the case for wolfram mining as a key industry.

Read more: Hemerdon Mine on Qualla

Image: SelfieCity | CC BY-SA 4.0

Hemerdon Mine: What Lies Beneath

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MichaelMaggs, CC BY-SA 3.0. The deposit Hemerdon sits on is geologically unique in south-western England: a sub-vertical Early Permian granite dyke, more than 100 metres wide, intruded between Devonian slates known locally as killas. Mineralising fluids penetrated the fractures and laid down sheeted veins o...

Read more: Hemerdon Mine on Qualla

Image: MichaelMaggs | CC BY-SA 3.0

Hemerdon Mine: Two Wars, Two Mills

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Southwesterner at English Wikipedia, Public domain. Hemerdon Wolfram Ltd built a 90,000-tonne-per-year mill in 1939 that began operating in 1941, achieving 55% wolfram recovery. The Ministry of Supply concluded in 1942 that Hemerdon offered Britain's best prospect for large-scale domestic tungsten production. The government took t...

Read more: Hemerdon Mine on Qualla

Image: Southwesterner at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Hemerdon Mine: The Mine That Wouldn't Stay Open

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Southwesterner at English Wikipedia, Public domain. From the mid-1960s onward, a succession of companies kept rediscovering Hemerdon. British Tungsten Ltd, owned by Canadian entrepreneur W. A. Richardson, increased the proven resource to 5.6 million tonnes by 1970. Hemerdon Mining and Smelting Ltd partnered with mining giant AMAX ...

Read more: Hemerdon Mine on Qualla

Image: Southwesterner at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Hemerdon Mine: Wolf, and Then Tungsten West

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team, Public domain. Wolf Minerals, an Australian-listed specialty metals company, acquired the leases in 2007 on a 40-year deal, renamed the project Drakelands Mine 'to recognise the local community,' and started construction in 2014. First ore went into the plant in June 2015. If production had hit...

Read more: Hemerdon Mine on Qualla

Image: NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team | Public domain