This is not the Cornwall I know at all, and I feel in a position to comment on this being Cornish born and bred and having lots of friends and colleagues there, some of whom work in the mining industry.

Go into the Brea Inn on a Friday night and you will most definitely not encounter people who live in 'narrowly-defined closed communities with fairly limited ranges of options and who have 'ceased to look outwards'. What you will find is a very interesting group of people from the Camborne-Redruth area, some of whom are working at Crofty now, or have done in the past, who travel extensively for work and pleasure, have links and contacts far beyond Cornish shores and who can hold a stimulating conversation on almost anything.

The Cornish can be cussed at times, yes, but they aren't as insular, parochial, narrow minded and 'cut off' as people from 'up country' believe them to be.

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I have some literature which was the result of an attempt to get into the main lode of Dolcoath in the '60's. They went up the adit (which is now impossible) as far as Eastern Valley shaft where there is no connection at that horizon.

I have a feeling that the new Dolcoath adit may be lower than deep adit and this is why people have had no luck with finding the links.

There is a lot of speculation as to what is in there. What I find odd is how no-one had a go at the shafts, when they were open.

I wonder if the current Crofty programme is to drive through the workings and on towards the WF. I assume it is.

I should imagine the place is full of water, well rotten timber and lots of hanging deads could be some interesting surface effects should it be dewatered....
dolcoath old workings however could have intesting possibilties for dumping... grout the voids and lose your waste material .....It would serve to stabilize the ground for
future mine developement around these areas

It's a matter of perspective. You could go back to the thread about the BBC's 'tin men' programme, and find a different one.


I don't doubt that someone who proclaims himself to be a 'Cornishman born and bred', with a pixie for an avatar, a Cornish-language tag line and for all I know, a black-and-white oval sticker on his car, doesn't necessarily share some of these views.




backfilling the old Dolcoath workings with tailings, interesting one. Works very well with certain types of material, Boulby do it for one thing, but their tailings are nothing like anything likely to come out of Crofty. Wheal Jane tried sand-filling stopes, and couldn't make it viable although it worked technically; however that's 20 years ago.

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Wrong again Derrickman. I am not a Cornishman, but a Cornishwoman, and my avatar is not a pixie, but a medieval miner that appears on a sign in Kutna Hora, Czech Republic.

And yes, I do have a black and white sticker on my car. It's St Piran's flag which proclaims that I am proud to be Cornish.

I agree, it's a matter of perspective, but when that 'perspective' has been for hundreds of years an English one, where the Cornish are seen as backward, insular, parochial and uneducated, it's not surprising that I would find your comments (yet again) annoying if not a little offensive.

Kernow bys Vyken! (That's Cornish for 'Cornwall Forever').

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I have to agree with derrickman about WUM lack of openess - BUT I can see why, particularly when it comes to wardell Armstrong, as Wardell Amstrong were employed at one stage by the RDA to prove that crofty was NOT viable!!!

this overlaps with the recent posting by minegeo regarding production in the latter days of the previous Crofty, lode structures in the area and deep drilling techniques.

very interesting to have some actual information on the subject.

it's particularly difficult to accurately define near-vertical ore-bodies using deep surface drilling, for obvious reasons.

interesting also to read comments about WA. Asking further, it would seem to be the same study. RDA and Baseresult would seem to have had separate agenda at that time, for obvious reasons; however it does appear to lead to the same conclusion, that Baseresult could have demonstrated by way of an independent, respected consultant that the operation was comercially viable, and either chose not do do so, or were not able to do so.

minegeo's comments regarding confidence levels, ie that 'there is some and there could be more', and that this was actually a fairly normal situation in respect of proven ore reserves and probably resource ( an important distinction ), come back into view at this stage.

WUM are not, ultimately, responsible to anyone except their shareholders and/or financial backers. They have no reason to tell anyone else anything, unless they see fit to.

anyway, I would always wish the best of luck to anyone trying to actually DO something and produce wealth.

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Wrong again Derrickman. I am not a Cornishman, but a Cornishwoman, and my avatar is not a pixie, but a medieval miner that appears on a sign in Kutna Hora, Czech Republic.

And yes, I do have a black and white sticker on my car. It's St Piran's flag which proclaims that I am proud to be Cornish.

I agree, it's a matter of perspective, but when that 'perspective' has been for hundreds of years an English one, where the Cornish are seen as backward, insular, parochial and uneducated, it's not surprising that I would find your comments (yet again) annoying if not a little offensive.

Kernow bys Vyken! (That's Cornish for 'Cornwall Forever').

you'll have to excuse me not knowing a pixie when I see one, or indeeed when I don't. I only lived in Cornwall for 5 years and they don't show themselves to London boys like me... must be a fair old schlepp from Wicklow to the Brea Inn on a Friday night?

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With reference to WUM, yes there is a ticker for WUM, but that is a verydifferent Western United Mines.

I don't believe any commercial business would bare there soul to a consultant who was being paid to produce a report stating that their very operation was not viable!

Any consultant is only as independent as the client paying their wages!

I would say that the commercial aspects of WUM ( the South Crofty one, that is ) are very much the heart of the matter.

the question is, who is the financial backer?

An unlisted company with unspecified backers, is spending a seven-figure sum to drive a decline of ( by some accounts ) anything up to 2.5km in length, to reach ( one the one hand ) conjectural reserves located in an ore body which is well known in general terms but little known in detail and ( on the other hand ) unspecified reserves located at depths in excess of 400fms, below a vast derelict working with a history of runs of ground.

add into this, various quite major questions relating to construction and even location of a new mill, a protracted legal battle over a 30-acre site consisting of ( on the one hand ) valuable development land and on the other, an array of derelict industrial buildings, two major shafts and probably the most iconic headframe in the country.

it's better than Dallas...

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Who is the backer? Thats no secret. Its Trafigura Beerha.

And the declined is planned to be 7.5km

Trafigura Beheer? ok that makes all kinds of sense, their level of cashflow, and profit, means South Crofty are just a second-tier tax loss.

see what you miss, getting information second-hand? Makes sense as well, of the thing about the Dudnance Lane site. I can quite see that from Kerrier's point of view, it was and is, a major site; but I couldn't work out the arithmetic from the mine's side. I couldn't see that it was worth doing, considering all the other costs.

TB have got their own consultants, hence point (3) that BaseResult didn't need to co-operate with Wardell Armstrong.


ok I'm a lot happier all round for knowing that.

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Thats on WUMs website, being funded through Galena Assett Management

ok got it.

must admit I hadn't looked at the new website closely

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