South Crofty Mine

The former South Crofty mine is an amalgamation of twelve earlier mines worked in the past for tin and copper (ore). Initially, the mine worked copper on lodes (ore veins) that had been worked from the 1700s and earlier by a number of smaller concerns. Tin became increasingly important from the 1860s onwards as the price of that metal improved and the mine deepened, although copper was still an important product up to the end of the nineteenth century when it was replaced by arsenic and, later, tungsten as the chief by-product of tin mining.

The acquisition by South Crofty of New Cook's Kitchen Mine in 1893 was followed by a number of others in the first half of the 20th century with Tehidy Minerals Ltd including Dolcoath Mine (along with the Roskear Mines) in 1936, followed by East Pool Mine in 1947.

The sinking of two new vertical shafts in the 1900s (New Cook's Kitchen shaft and Robinson's shaft) and a period of extensive crosscutting (a tunnel driven across the long axis of the ore) led to the discovery and development of 12 new lodes within the granite, not seen previously above the 225fm level, essentially a new mine on hitherto unknown mineralisation beneath the old workings. Mining was confined to areas to the east of the Great Crosscourse (a wide, over 100m, fault that cuts across the main direction of the lode, located beneath the Red River) as to connect South Crofty to Dolcoath Mines would have resulted in significant additional pumping requirements, whilst the presence of adequate mineral resources within the existing mine area rendered it unnecessary to do so.

The extension of the South Crofty Mine west through the Great Crosscourse into an unexplored, unmined area in the 1970s (when the mine was controlled by the St Piran Mining Company) led to the discovery of the South Crofty "Dolcoath" series of lodes. Subsequently, exploration into the area around Roskear shaft (also not connected to Dolcoath) in the early 1980s saw the discovery of the Roskear lodes and later exploration to the northeast disclosed the No6 Pegmatite and later the North Pool Zones within South Crofty itself. [The Roskear shaft had originally been sunk to 2000ft in the 1920s for the development of the proposed "New Dolcoath Mine" and the area between it and the Dolcoath Mine to the south. However, its northerly site was such that the shaft bottom was somewhat above the mineralization [as the steepness of the granite surface [control to mineralisation] had been underestimated and the prevailing economic climate prevented further expenditure].
In 1982 St Piran sold the mine to Charter Consolidated, who in turn sold it to RTZ (Carnon) in 1984.

In 1985, there was a disastrous fall in the price of tin, seriously curtailing the tin mining industry in Cornwall. Following the award of government finance in response to the mining crisis in Cornwall to RTZ (and only to RTZ), a massive reorganisation of the mine took place whereby principal underground operations were transferred to Roskear section and (as in the 1900s) for all practical purposes, a new underground mine was developed at depth in that area. Mining was based principally on sub-level longhole stoping of wider orebodies. Shortly afterwards, the Robinson's Shaft was abandoned, together with much of the older section of the mine.

In the 1990s, for reasons of operational viability, the greater part of the original South Crofty mine was abandoned whilst the Roskear section, west of the Great Crosscourse, was developed as essentially a new mine on newly discovered mineralization beneath the old workings. This section became the major production section for the mine, until mining ceased for viability and regulatory reasons on 7th March 1998, (rather than through exhaustion of mineralization and resources).

The assets of the mine were purchased by Baseresult Holdings Limited in 2001 with the aim to resume mining operations in the Camborne Redruth mining district.