Exploiting Cornwall's Mining Heritage

Journal of Tourism, Heritage & Services Marketing, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 15-22, 2018 15 Goldmine or Bottomless Pitt? Exploiting Cornwall’s Mining Heritage Bart Zwegers Maastricht University, Netherlands Abstract: This research paper discusses the rise of the heritage and tourist industry in Cornwall. It aims to historically contextualize this process by analyzing it in relation to the neo-liberal political landscape of the 1980s. The paper highlights several consequences of industrial heritage tourism in the region, including the growing gap between rich and poor that resulted from the arrival of newcomers from the richer Eastern counties and the perceived downplaying of Cornish heritage. It will explain how these developments paved the way for regionalist activists who strived for more Cornish autonomy in the field of heritage preservation and exploitation. Keywords: Industrial heritage tourism; Cornwall; Thatcherism; Mining heritage JEL Classification: B00, L72, B3 Biographical note: Dr. Bart Zwegers is a lecturer at Maastricht University, teaching in the Bachelor Arts and Culture and the Master Arts and Heritage. Contact details of the author: [email protected] 1 INTRODUCTION stimulating the commercial exploitation of former industrial sites. “The winding engines used to sing, a melody to Cornish tin This attempted transition, however, went far from smoothly. […] The water now reclaims the mine, and young men talk Service jobs in the tourist sector were often seasonal and low- of old men’s time […] The hammer of the auction man is the paid. Skilled craftsmen, miners with righteous professional only sound we soon will hear, and visitors will make the pride were forced into menial and servile jobs like ice-cream noise, and order drinks from Cornish boys” (Bryant, 1996). seller or car-park attendant (Deacon et al., 1988; Urry, 1990). The county’s real-estate market was hijacked by second Cornwall is located in the most south-western part of the home owners. Moreover, many of the new heritage British Isles. The county is roughly separated from the rest of attractions – museums, historic theme parks – seemed to England by the Tamar river, which has its source just four misrepresent Cornwall, either by portraying it as just another miles from Cornwall’s north coast and runs all the way south part of England, or by making a caricature of its unique and where it empties into the Atlantic Ocean. Some Cornish distinctive history (Kennedy & Kingcome, 1998). According residents find this geographical reality regrettable and wish to critics, heritage was no longer preserved as intrinsically that Cornwall would be cut-off from England entirely valuable. Instead, objects were sanitized, wrapped and (Laviolette, 2011). Cornwall is indeed separated by more prepared for tourist consumption. These sentiments gave rise than the Tamar alone; the region has a strong sense of ‘non- to numerous conflicts between local and national actors over English’ identity. The Cornish not only identified themselves the use, selection and interpretation of heritage objects in through their ‘significant other’, but also took proud in their Cornwall. region’s rich industrial history. The decline of the Cornish tin This paper aims to analyze Cornwall’s economic transition in and copper mining industry in the last quarter of the twentieth the context of the changing political climate of the 1980s. The century had a disruptive effect on the regional economy and case shows that debates about heritage and tourism do not culture. The Conservative government of the 1980s wished take place in a void but are constantly impacted by broader to cushion the negative economic and social effect of economic and political changes. The first section describes deindustrialization by transforming Cornwall’s economy, the history of industrialization and industrial decline in Cornwall. The second section analyzes the Conservative Copyright © 200 © 2018 Authors. Published by Alexander T.E.I. of Thessaloniki Some rights reserved. ISSN: 2529-1947. UDC: 658.8+338.48+339.1+640(05) Except otherwise noted, this work is licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1247534 Published online: 15 May 2018 16 Bart Zwegers government’s answer to the challenges posed by the loss of could claim that even by the late twentieth century, the industry. It particularly focuses on the rise of industrial Cornish economy had still not fully recovered from the heritage tourism in the 1980s. The paper concludes with an downfall that had begun in the 1860s. By the 1980s, assessment of the consequences of the new tourist industry Cornwall’s unemployment was amongst the highest in for the region’s sense of identity and autonomy. It will show Britain at 18.4 percent. The gross salaries of those who were how the rising tourist industry formed a seedbed for activist employed was 18 percent below the national average, and groups with a strong regionalist agenda. Cornwall’s gross domestic product was the second lowest of all regions and counties in Scotland, England and Wales (Havinden et al., 1991). 2 THE RISE AND FALL OF BRITAIN’S SILICON- VALLEY 3 FROM TIN TO TOURISM The rough land of Cornwall is underlain by extensive deposits of tin, copper, silver, gold, lead, zinc, iron, arsenic, uranium and other minerals, making it a rare geological By the early 1980s, only a hand full of mines were still wonderland. Some historians (Shell, 1978; Trounson & struggling on. With the tin prices getting another blow in Bullen, 2012) claim that exploitation of these mineral 1985 and the Conservative government refusing to further resources had already began in Roman times, but the history subsidize the industry, these mines also closed down one by of large-scale mining in Cornwall begins in the eighteenth one. The closure of South Crofty (Fig. 1) – the last working century with the Industrial Revolution. The new industry’s mine – in 1998 led to public grief. As the Cornish historian hunger for metal – particularly copper and tin – stimulated Bernd Deacon observed: “the despair [that the closure of the Cornish miners to delve ever deeper. At its peak there were almost 3,000 mines in Cornwall. Mining created a South Crofty] evoked was deeper than that accompanying dynamic industrial society in Britain’s far west. It was “the normal bad economic news. Local communities mourned the Silicon-valley of its day” (BBC, 2003[1986]). All kinds of loss of over 2,000 years of mining” (Deacon, 2010: 17; see mining related industries emerged here: iron foundries, boiler also Buckley, 1997). On the days following the mine’s works, sawmills, rope works, candle factories, boot and shoe closure, brass bands led processions of people from the works, clothing manufactories, explosive works, fuse works, nearby villages to the mine site, where they came together to and other industries needed to keep the mines running. This pay tribute and say their goodbyes. The loss was not only society was the cradle of technological innovations like high economic, but also social and cultural. pressure steam engines and pneumatic drills, that served not An anonymous graffitist quoted the Cornish songwriter only mining but other branches of industry too (Sharpe, Roger Bryant on South Crofty’s wall: “Cornish lads are 2005). fishermen and Cornish lads are miners too, but when the fish Cornwall was one of the first regions in Britain to and tin are gone what are the Cornish boys to do?” (Bryant, industrialize. However, it was also one of the first regions to 1996; see also Laviolette, 2003: 26). Although the message experience industrial decline. The prices of lead and tin on South Crofty’s wall certainly struck a poignant note of collapsed in 1866. In the 1880s, the same happened to the nostalgia, the British government had a clear-cut answer to price of copper. Ironically, this was in part the result of the this question: Cornish boys are to work in the tourist industry success of the Cornish miners, who had helped export skills, (Larkham & Barrett, 1998; Hesmondhalgh et al., 2015). knowledge and technologies to regions that now formed Cornwall’s biggest competition in the global market (Payton, 3.1 Conservation and Commercialisation 2005). Especially metal from Australia and the Americas was so cheap that Cornwall’s older and deeper mines were no The Thatcher government stimulated the commercial longer competitive. Deindustrialization had a heavy toll on exploitation of heritage. This neo-liberal approach had the county’s economy and demography. The workforce particularly major consequences for the way heritage began to emigrate in great numbers. One third of the population left to try their luck elsewhere. It took until 1971 preservation was publicly legitimized. It was no longer just a before the population rate was back at the level of the 1850s humble act of piety to the ancestry. Instead, historic buildings (Deacon, 2010; Deacon, 2004). were seen to have real present-day market value. The Once busy mining settlements were abandoned, harbours government of those days perceived heritage and the silted up, wharves rotted away, and fields were left to grow associated tourist and leisure activities as an economic cure – weeds. Land that had been used for mining was often so especially for economically deprived regions like Cornwall polluted that it could not be used for any other purpose. The (Robinson, 1999). One of the envisioned ways to exploit remains of the mining industry – its pump houses and hoists heritage’s economic potential was by involving the private – were often used as dump sites or as quarries for building sector. Many public buildings that were in the state’s care, materials. According to local historian and archaeologist were sold or rented out to entrepreneurs. In the 1960s and Adam Sharpe this carelessness was explainable: “No longer 1970s ‘economic regeneration’ and ‘conservation’ were were they the power house of the economy, but a painful generally considered antonyms, but in the 1980s the two reminder of hard times” (Sharpe, 2005: 69).

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