A friend of mine has an area of land near Lanner Cornwall, There are several areas of mine dumps with 3 shafts which are blocked at depth, Who is resposable for Capping the shafts and removing the dumps and restoring it back to usable fields? , The council, or the owners of the mineral rights ?

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Are we talking about Wheal Comford perchance? (Between Bell Vean and Tresavean?).

Hi Stuey, No its around the buller area Helston road before four lanes on the left , dont worry all the shafts are no good!!, Its bit of a hypathetical question , testing the ground a bit !!!, so to speak !!

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The responsibility for the shaft capping and removing the dumps rests with the mine owner. If you have no idea who that is, or they are known to be long gone, there are various statutory bodies who delegate the role. Often it's the Council.

The statutory body will cap the shafts IF you can get them to fund it, and they will not regard it as urgent in the least if they are on private land and apparently stable.

As to the tips, the mine owner is responsible, not the mineral rights holder. If there are contaminated water leaching out, or something of that sort, there will be funds to deal with that issue but as for simply returning the land to agricultural use, if it wasn't done at the time then I doubt that anyone will do it at this stage.

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So What happens when the mine shut down a hundred years ago? . In theory ?, and where does the mineral owners responsability stop ?, Surface or above it ? . if you see what I mean about mine dumps?

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Under the M&Q, the mine owner must make the shafts and walkable outlets 'safe' from 'casual entry', by which I mean, the owner will provide a barrier so that people don't just walk into an open hole or adit.

In the case of an adit, this could be simply be a gate which is locked or some other form of barrier. With shafts, it is sufficient to place a wall round the open shaft, a suitable fence and signs. As I understand the shaft does not need plugging or a metal grill.

However things have changed and I would think in the modern world, shafts would be plugged or securely capped to prevent people like us from gaining access. Clwyd caps were used, the shaft remained open, ventilation was not changed and people could not easily fall down through them.

I know of one case locally where the mineral owner has stated that they do not have a legal responsibility to cap the open or blocked shafts on a piece of land near Helston.

I hope this makes it a little clearer (not) :smartass:

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Clear as mud Lol !!!, I know what mean , We are trying to find out where a mineral owners resposability stops!!, ie. do they actually own the mine dump???? or does the land owner ??

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Wheal Buller was comprehensively plugged. I gather Davey's Shaft was on private land. I assume the others were done at the same time. I assume the then owners declined the offer, as did the people at the shaft halfway up Chapel Hill in Lanner.

It totally baffles me. New Shaft at Buller clearly stated "Water can be heard in the depths of the shaft, obviously coming out of a shallow level" so it definitely went yet the put a 3m thick C30 plug in it!!!!. I dropped Kistle's Shaft (which has a batcastle on it) and it went about 120ft to water.

What the hell were they thinking of?

What was going through their tiny minds!

I poked around Buller and I remember seeing 2 shafts by the road which had clearly not been done by Operation Minecap in the 80's, or Carnon's 90's capathon. One had a load of rubbish in it (next to the bungalow).

Reading the CAU's reports on the shaft plugging made me wonder what the hell they were thinking of. Forget history, just sterilise them for all time. The Kerrier/Carrick people responsible were treasonous idiots IMO.

Thankfully, the chap in charge now has his head screwed on the right way.

I don't think that CCC have any money to ***** on capping holes. I suppose anything more than a fence is the surface guardian's responsibility.

the mine owner and the mineral rights owner are two different entities, unless the are the same ( so to speak ) - ie the mineral owner is NOT responsible for the mine unless they were the mining operator as well.

Combe Down mine owners were long defunct and as such, the rights defaulted to the local authorities ie Bath & NE Somerset Council ( BaNES ). Legal advice was that since the workings were a continuous series with multiple entries, the property owners could NOT be held to be the owners.

The workings were nominally transferred to the property owners once stabilised, so they are nominal "owners" responsible for preventing access to a solid block of concrete - not too difficult. BaNES are still the owners in law, for the remaining accessible sections, regardless of who owns the freehold at ground level.

I do know for a certain fact, that the mineral owners are NOT responsible for the tips. The mine owners, or their successors, are responsible for making them stable and preventing pollution from run-offs, but that's all.

much of this was clarified following the Aberfan disaster, which was caused in large part by a lack of coherent guidance on the matter in law. The Davies Enquiry established without doubt that the NCB, as they then were, had complied with the law - such as it then was - but this meant in practice that they had no overall policy and no requirement existed in law for there to be one.



The Cornish tips belong, by default, to the land-owners who may dispose of them as they see fit, in any legal fashion. Many of the tips round Brae were sold, washed for whatever could be extracted, and sold on as MoT Type 1 when the Camborne Bypass was built.

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that about sums it up. Note also that ( as at Combe Down ) there may not be a "mineral owner" as such, which is to say, no known owner or lessee of those rights, in which case ( by default ) it ends up as either the landowner, land tenant or council. This is particularly true of stone mines, chalk mines, gravel pits etc.

It's probably a fair comment to say that the responsibilities of the land owner or tenant are to some extent, more easily accessible than those of the putative or unknown mineral rights owner! Or, of course, the land owner and mineral owner may be the same entity in any case.

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Re Wheal Buller
I expect the guy who restored the Count house is good person to speak to. He has a web site below (presuming he has not sold it recently):

http://www.whealbullerproject.co.uk/ 

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The removal of dumps in this area would not be permitted, as it is within The World Heritage Site. This was tried at South Dolcoath about a year ago and they were instantly stopped. I may be wrong on this but I think there is a heavy fine if dumps are removed without good reason, returning to agriculture would not be one of them.

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AdrianP has done a very good reply to this. Would it be a good idea to save this in a section in "Information and Resources" under "legal" incase it crops up again?

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Yes I agree !!! :thumbsup:

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The removal of dumps in this area would not be permitted, as it is within The World Heritage Site. This was tried at South Dolcoath about a year ago and they were instantly stopped. I may be wrong on this but I think there is a heavy fine if dumps are removed without good reason, returning to agriculture would not be one of them.

times change.. nobody gave a sh1te about a few dumps back in the 70s....

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The removal of dumps in this area would not be permitted, as it is within The World Heritage Site. This was tried at South Dolcoath about a year ago and they were instantly stopped. I may be wrong on this but I think there is a heavy fine if dumps are removed without good reason, returning to agriculture would not be one of them.

times change.. nobody gave a sh1te about a few dumps back in the 70s....

They may not have given a shite but big brother was watching. A farmer I knew about 35 odd years ago had his dumps assayed by Brea Tin and was found to contain nearly 1% Sn so he decided to sell. Kerrier council got wind of this and deemed the dumps to be a commercial asset and threatened to back date the rates to the date on which the mine closed!. Needless too say only about seven lorry loads left the site and the burrow still remains today.

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oh yes, I remember that going on, I was at CSM at the time, which is where quite a bit of the actual assaying was done ( which is why the Min Pro lab was the first part of the Trevenson campus to open ).

But that's just the usual money-grabbing and jockeying for position that goes on all the while down there, at local government level. Most rural areas are pretty much like that.

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