Hope you washed yer hands afterwards after poking around in those labrynths. That arsenolite is just as deadly now as it was way back then.
:)
Thanks for the concern :flowers:
This works didn't have a labyrinth!
Arsenic soot was brought in from various local tin smelters. It was roasted in furnaces (now just low piles of rubble) re-purposed from an earlier tin smelter and the arsenic was condensed out into large cast iron vessels (long gone). The works operated from 1812 to the mid 1850s. By the time of the 1860s arsenic boom the use of cast iron condensing vessels had been superseded by the more familiar chambers / labyrinths.
The site is not impressive, more swamp and jungle seasoned with barbed wire than anything else, and I wouldn't have bothered except that it was Cornwall's first and I am writing an article about it.