Qualla: Wheal Trewavas

Wheal Trewavas: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. Walk west from Porthleven harbour on the South West Coast Path and after a mile and a half of cliff and gorse, you come on them suddenly: two ruined engine houses standing on the very edge of Mount's Bay, with the sea four hundred feet below and the working ground falling away into thin air. Wheal Trewavas operated for only twelve years - from about 1834 to 1846 - and brought up seventeen thousand five hundred long tons of copper before it stopped. The shafts ran out under the seabed. The miners worked, every shift, below the waves of the Atlantic. What is left today are the chimneys and engine houses of Old Engine Shaft and New Engine Shaft, both Grade II listed, both standing on cliffs that have been quietly trying to take them back into the sea for the better part of two hundred years.

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0

Wheal Trewavas: Twelve Years of Copper

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jowaninpensans, CC BY-SA 4.0. The mine exploited four copper lodes running south-east along the coastline, into the cliff and out beneath the seabed of Mount's Bay. About 160 men were employed at its peak - a small operation by Cornish standards, but well placed on geology that paid. The output figure of 17,5...

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Image: Jowaninpensans | CC BY-SA 4.0

Wheal Trewavas: Old Engine Shaft

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Poyser, CC BY-SA 2.0. The engine house and chimney of Old Engine Shaft are situated on the cliffside, twenty metres above the sea and forty metres from the clifftop. To reach them you scramble down a steep grass slope from the coast path; the engine house perches on a narrow shelf above a vertical dro...

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Image: John Poyser | CC BY-SA 2.0

Wheal Trewavas: New Engine Shaft

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bob Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. A short distance further east along the coast stands the second pair of ruins - the engine house and separate chimney of New Engine Shaft, near the top of the cliff rather than on its face. Both are Grade II listed. The shaft they served went deeper than the first and pushed the ...

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Image: Bob Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

Wheal Trewavas: A World Heritage Coast

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tim Green from Bradford, CC BY 2.0. Wheal Trewavas is a Scheduled Monument and forms part of the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape inscribed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 2006. The inscription recognises that Cornwall, between roughly 1700 and 1914, was the most technologically advanced mining region...

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Image: Tim Green from Bradford | CC BY 2.0