This is the Prince of Wales Engine House and other assorted buildings from Phoenix United mine on Bodmin Moor.

Apparently this was built in 1907, making it almost a white elephant of its time, even before it was built. It’s part of Phoenix United, which produced both copper and tin between 1842 and 1898 and employed around 600 people in its heyday. This engine house was an attempt to reopen the mine, some nine years after the original operation had been closed. The building was built in 1907, by 1909 there were only four people employed here and by 1911 the place had closed down. A similar fate met one of the other local mines – somehow it was just no longer economically viable to mine here after the turn of the 20th century.

So, you could hardly say the re-opening and building of these buildings were a roaring success. Unlike a lot of the other mines in the area, most of the buildings of Phoenix United were demolished when the mine closed so this later one is more-or-less all you can see of the old workings, other than the fenced off craters of capped shafts.

I shot this mine from a distance last year....twice!

We’d not actually explored these buildings before – despite their clear and obvious intact-ness but we’re jolly glad we have done now – what a fabulous piece of our industrial history. The trip around them was designed to make John (the chap in the photo and our geological and mining expert) happy and happy he was! He reckoned they were the finest set of mine buildings he’d ever seen from this era.

I’d like to think we’re reasonably well-informed and reasonably interested in the history of our area but his knowledge shows us just how ignorant we are. He points out stuff to us that we’ve not noticed and we were roundly ticked off for not bringing him to this location on their last visit a year ago.

The thing that makes me laugh about this particular one – there is a plaque commemorating Prince Charles’s visit to this building about 15 years ago. The sad thing is that all of the local mines are on Duchy of Cornwall land (so in other words basically owned by Prince Charles) and he’s done nothing to stabilise them or stop them decaying – so much for his interest in Cornwall.

The photo I shot last year, could easily have been repeated this evening - a dinenr party meant the kitchen looked like a bombsite again!