Baronet's Engine House, Pennance Consols, Lanner

Cornish Engine Houses

Tin and Copper Mines in Cornwall

Scattered across Cornwall’s mining landscape, they still stand today. The ruins of the engine houses that once kept the region’s tin mines and copper mines running. I photographed them in their surroundings. On sheer cliffs, on high moorland, among pastures and spoil heaps.

Tin mining in Cornwall dates back to the Bronze Age and is among the oldest in the world. It was only later, during England’s industrialisation in the 19th century, that copper mining took hold on a large scale – the region’s development was exemplary. Within a few years, the landscape changed dramatically. Since 2006, the “Cornish and West Devon Mining Landscape” has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site – the ruined engine houses remain its most visible testimony.

The engine houses resemble each other in their architecture: a rectangular plan, built from the surrounding stone, a tall chimney, a front wall thicker than the side walls. Inside stood the steam engine. It kept the mines – some of which extended below sea level – free of water, hauled equipment down into the shafts, or drove iron stamps that crushed the ore. This massive, technically necessary construction is the reason so many engine houses have survived to this day.

The work was made in 1996/1997, between the two series on bedrooms and British abbeys. It was the first series in which I brought the landscape itself into the lighting concept. That changed a good deal. The distances grew larger, the light sources different, the walks longer. Wind and weather became factors I had to reckon with. The view of the Crowns engine houses on the Atlantic cliffs near Botallack remains one of my quiet favourites to this day.

All the images were taken with a Hasselblad 500C and a single lens: the 80mm Tessar. Some images have a green or orange sky. This is owed to the surrounding orange street lamps: with this film stock, a long exposure first turns the sky green, then orange.

The engine houses are witnesses to an era that shaped Cornwall to this day. They belong to this landscape, just like the sheer cliffs and the fishing villages.