I’m always amazed at some of the stories I read and the things I hear about how our predecessors were able to defeat the odds and harness even the most hostile of natural things in order to make their lives better. This year I have been exposed to that in a much more obvious way than ever before while we’ve explored the mines and moors around here.

Today we visited a place that demonstrates, in my view, the most extraordinary feats of human will and endeavour, the Carnglaze Caverns. This is a ‘brown sign’ place that we’ve passed many times and never been to before. I’m not sure if the ‘brown sign’ culture is a uniquely British one, but whenever you see a ‘brown road sign’ it means the place is of interest to tourists. I must admit that I mostly want to avoid such things - here in Cornwall, where the scourges of modern life barely permeate, the handful of MacDonalds burger bars have brown signs so the tourists from ‘upcountry’ know where to get their fat-laden, artery busting meals. Brown signs also trumpet such ‘attractions’ as caravan parks, pubs, Trago Mills and such like.

I suppose I do them a disservice really because some of them do point out some wonderful things such as Heligan, Eden and this, Carnglaze Caverns.

These caverns were man-made by centuries of quarrymen, working in family teams, with boys as young as thirteen actively mining and many younger children employed too. In the West Country, there is no history of women working underground, that was a male domain. That’s not to say women didn’t participate in the work, but they worked above ground, splitting slates and, in the case of the mines, extracting the ore from the granite on the dressing floors.

Apparently, the young boys held the drills above their heads for hours while their fathers and uncles smashed the end of the drill with a hammer to penetrate the rock and allow the small quantities of gunpowder to be inserted and the slabs of slate blasted away from the roof of the caverns. Amazingly, there are no records of any ‘serious’ injuries or fatalities in this quarry. It is unusual in as much as it’s been worked underground, where most of the slate quarrying was ‘open cast’ quarrying, in other words above ground.

This particular part of the quarry was being worked from the top of the cavern (most of the quarry was worked from below the rocks) and the eagle-eyed will notice an old iron chain hanging from the roof of the cavern. This is how they hauled the slabs of slate, weighing a ton each, up from the floor of the cavern. An amazing feat.

Eventually though, this particular cavern was abandoned because an underground spring started to fill the void. The water is as pure as can be and crystal clear. Apparently the blue hue is because of the slate dust. The red colouration on the rock is iron. The water is ten meters deep (around 35 feet) and the silence is deafening - the only sound the dripping of the water through the rock and into the pool.

This place truly gives you a feeling of how tough life was for those quarrymen and for the associated workers. Our forefathers certainly knew how to work hard to feed their families in a much more cruel environment than most of us will ever know. Unlike many of the ‘brown signs’ in the area, this one is really worth a visit. I was fascinated and inspired by the story of this place.

In fact, they regularly have concerts in the top cavern and I’m sure it’s only a short time until we experience that spectacle. Wonderful.

I am grateful to David and to the lovely chap who showed us round and gave us a flavour of the place (we were his only customers) for this picture. I got my composition set up but with the lights on got burned out highlights. The guide switched off the lights (other than the underwater ones) and I got a hugely underexposed image so DM suggested that 15 seconds of my 30 second exposure should be without the main lights and the other fifteen seconds with them. The guide duly switched them off, counted to fifteen and then switched them back on. The exposure was perfect!