Hi,

Does anyone know where the underground scenes at Ross Poldark's Wheal Leisure mine were filmed? Was it a set or did they use a real mine like Geevor's visitor mine?

hi Blackcraig 1. As far as I understand the underground scenes were shot down "Poldark" Mine at Wendron. Don't know where you live but that is between Redruth and Helston.

The original underground scenes in 1970's series were filmed underground at King Edward Mine (Camborne School of Mines training Mine section)

His farm house (Nampara) is on Bodmin Moor, but all the interior shots of his farm and peasant hovels filmed at St Fagans Welsh Folk Museum, just outside Cardiff. Truro is a combination of Charlsetown and Cosham, near Bristol. His uncles fancy house, now owned by Francis Poldark, is in Gloucestershire, but cannot remember where sorry.

The place where Demelza goes to her first ball would have been, in real life, the Assembly Rooms in Truro, which are still there by the cathederal. The Red Lion Inn where they are wheeling and dealing for buying copper, and Francis picks up "ladies of the night" and they gamble fortunes away, existedas a fancy 31 bed hotel until 1967 when a runaway lorry ploughed into it. It was demolished and a horrible concrete build replaced it and CO-OP built supermarket. The stairway from the hotel was saved and is in Godolphin House near Leedstown. 😉

The Gloucestershire house and also the location of the chapel where Ross and Demelza married is Chevanage House, which is open to the public on selected days.

http://www.chavenage.com/ 

Hope to go and have a look sometime in the near future.

John

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I thought I saw a beam on the Wheal Leisure engine house last night in a far distance shot - Anyone else notice?

The set didn't include a beam, just the bob. If you saw a beam it was a digital one.

- I agree it was in the distance, so easily could have been digital. There was nothing in the close-up shot.

But some suggestions for the BBC, if the set design can afford it.
- Piles of waste rock and fine sandy material ( although I guess they may have tipped much of it over the cliff at the time?)
- Piles of coal
- Piles/Barrels of crushed ore
- A Boiler house
- more steam and smoke
- waterwheel, launders, leats for crushers/boiler?
- A beam with rods
- Less candles underground
- Can people rotate the rod when hand drilling?
any other suggestions?
Perhaps the BBC did have a mining expert who was overruled by set designers, but I am sure they could do a little more for the next series.

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What matters is how popular the series is, and to some extent how authentic the viewers think it is, not how authentic it is it reality.

I learnt recently that when the authentic digging noises for the WW1 tunnellers drama "Birdsong", actually recorded underground, were presented to the production team, they said there was not enough reverb, so they added reverb to make it sound "authentic".

Very true. As long as the peasants get the general idea, you don't want to spend vast amounts of cash appeasing a few nerds!