There is a new website: -

www.mountwellington.co.uk

and a new Facebook site: -

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=61356503336&ref=mf 

The underground workings at Mount Wellington Mine have now been licenced to CMEC (Cornwall Mine Explorers Club) which is headed up by chairman Roy Morton.

Best regards

Richard Freeborn
Managing Director
Mount Wellington Mine Ltd

In Addition to Richards announcement above, CMEC will not be taking any new members just at this moment. We have an initial core membership and we are still in the process of setting things up. We have a good number of founder members and are assembling a working team.
Once we have established our basic operating system and things are running well, we will expand to invite other explorers to join us.
Please don't ask us at this stage to put your name down in advance as that could be seen by some to smack of favouritism and we wish to keep things within the constitution of the club.
In the meantime, I'll be pushing our initial membership to get things rolling so we can open up to new members.
We would rather keep things small at the moment till we have something worth joining as too many times groups set up, have very little to offer in the way of continuity, and members become disillusioned quickly.
Keep a look out on the Wellington Site on Facebbook and I'll keep a thread running on here for those who don't subscribe to Facebook, ( I can't say I'm that stoked with it myself), I guess it's what your used to in the end.
PS. There is no website for CMEC at this stage, only when we 'open up' will we be considering putting one up, so any Q's ,PM me. Best Regards to all Roy.

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Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear.......

Or, like a fairy, trip upon the green

Roy, Is the Cornish mine exploring club going to be a club that explores all cornish mines or is it going to be more of a "friends of Mount wellington" type of club ?

The explorers club will be a good mixture of each, along with trips to other parts of the country when things get going (maybe not this year, but who knows?) and the Wellington part will be the main club project although not the only one.
Wellington is as I'm sure you or any mine explorer can appreciate, a unique opportunity to preserve a well known mining site. As Richard has pointed out though, the mine will NOT be a public access heritage site; HSE and M&Q rules and regs would make this super expensive, fraught with red tape and unworkable. The private approach is by far the best and we will be following the NAHMO style of leasure use of mines.
Hope this answers your Q's without rambling too much.
Best regards, Roy

P.S. This message has also been posted on ME.

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Hi Roy,
This sounds interesting, How far down can you get these days? and what condition are things in.

Mike Berry
P.S I have not got round to the Falmouth Consolidated document yet. 2 small children and no spare time!!

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Hi Mike, certainly not as much as we were used to back in the 80's. Unfortunately only the adit level is accessible and the stopes above. The entrance - along the gully -is now getting very dodgey and every time I go in there I'm expecting to see the roof on the floor. The clay slips have washed out from the joints in the Killas and what's holding it all up at present is anyone's guess.

Spare time... the holy grail for anyone with a family.. 🙂

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Congrats on this development!

One debatable issue re access agreements is wether it is not best for any access agreements in the long term to be administered by BCA regional councils - after all that's what they are there for. This seems to work very well in some areas, eg Derbyshie, Mendip. There has been an argument that conditions are different in different areas, but I am not sure that really holds water. This should get away from control freaks taking on a site and refusing access to anyone else, or access being lost when a small group folds - eg South Caradon.

So who holds the mineral rights for the section of the mine currently accessible? I know that Kensa controll the access points on the site but do they also own the rights to the underground section as well?

If it is Kensa that hold the mineral rights for the currently accessible section then it's all good but if not then could possible problems with mineral lords occour if people start doing maintainence work down there?

I "thought" that the mineral lord was still Lord Falmouth, permission to extract being given by the council to probably the WJ group.

I have an odd feeling that the rights are often still owned by the lord. Not sure about Camborne though.

Thats an interetsing one on the mineral rights. re Camborne, South Crofty bought Teidy minerals in the early 80's, becoming their own mineral lord, I believe that baseresult/wum bought the mineral rights with the mine.

I find it very hard to believe that any bigshot mineral lord would sell the rights. I would have thought they are pretty savvy people who hire pretty savvy advisers.

Having said, I gather Jane wanted to buy the rights to F+S, who belong to the family of my bird, (definately not Lord Falmouth.)

I'm more interested what the future of the Wheal Maid Decline is since WJ sold it to Gwennap Council. I suppose they might put a dog poo bin and a bench there. Being a strategic shaft and United being a pretty good bet, it would be interesting to see what the score is.

Hi,
I worked for a mining company that reprocessed old mine dumps and tailing deposits in Cornwall, Mineral owners are much too shrewd to sell mineral rights they usually grant a mining licence or have an aggrement to extact minerals always on a royalty basis. the worst cases we came across were when several mineral lords owned a percentage of the same area, a real nightmare!!!
Mike B

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I've certainly never heard of any other mining company in Cornwall buying their own mineral rights. I believe it was 1981 that Crofty bought their own.

I gather that some of the best prospects in Cornwall have mineral ownership issues. I suppose that they need something to pay the inheritance tax. It gets back to the government anyway.

I can't think of anything worse than slackjaw stealing money from the Cornish and spunking it on more ridiculous projects.

Anyone for a big sports day?

To go into the in's and out's of mineral ownership here would only fuel more and more complex questions requiring just as many complex answers. So, the easiest way to answer all the above is to say that all these factors have been taken into consideration and explored. The upshot is that CMEC have a licence for access to the workings, and as part of a safety campaign to prevent inadvertent public access and possible injury, we need to make sure that incidents of this kind do not occur. Some work will need to be done such as repairs to the gate and making sure that there is free access to bats which roost in one of the stopes. The bat people are in favour of this and have advised us accordingly.
We believe that all the possible bases have been covered over the year that negotiations have been taking place, and our agreement with Mt.Wellington Ltd. is one which we intend to develop and nurture for the future. BCA insurance will be mandatory for any members or future visitors.

Just as a matter of interest I think you will find that Lord Falmouth's mineral rights extend from the Kea side of the Carnon valley up to the the Carnon River (the old course, not the present one), and this was established in the High Court of Justice, Queen's bench division in the case, Wheal Jane Limited and Carnon Consolidated Tin Mines Limited - plaintiffs, and John Evans - (Farmer/Landowner), Defendant.
1980 I believe. In which Mr Evans proved ownership and moreover part ownership of the mineral rights beneath his land. A rare occurence in Cornwall. Needless to say there was a monetary settlement.

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I just had a quick word with your old mate Allen Buckley about the mineral rights in the area and the quick answer is one doesn't want to go there. Knocker is correct that Baseresult bought the rights from Crofty about seven or eight years ago after Crofty had bought them from Tehidy Minerals in 78. With this come other rights, probably the Basst mines other bits and pieces and much of the rest is still spread around the large families. At the mention of Gwennup he said he had to go 😉

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I think Allen was being diplomatic there in not wanting to have to go into explaining the complexities of mineral law that I've been delving into for a very long time.
Sometimes to answer a simple question requires the inquirer to have a certain level of understanding, most of which is not common knowledge, and could take a week to pick up and understand before even tackling the original question, and then one might only get a general idea rather than a specific answer........if you know what I mean? :confused:

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Yup, I know what you mean Roy. Let's just say it's a very involved and tricky area. :surrender:

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Wishing you the best of luck with this venture, Roy. I'm feeling very homesick hearing about your plans 😢

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