Mining Cornwall’s past with lithium as its future

Boris Johnson called it the “Klondike of lithium”, and now Cornwall stands on the cusp of a 21st-century mining revolution, breathing new life into an industry which has fed legend and romance for at least two millennia.

The granite peninsula, which juts into the hostile seas around south-west England, is scattered with relics of the county’s mining industry. Ruined engine houses are almost as ubiquitous on the Cornish coast as 4x4 vehicles and west London families in Billabong wetsuits, who come for the surf.

This is where Ross Poldark strode the cliffs — played by Aidan Turner in the hugely popular BBC novel adaptation — moodily contemplating his precarious mining investments, his thought processes aided by the frequent removal of his shirt.

But Poldark, who sought to extract copper and tin from Cornwall’s volcanic underbelly in a historically accurate central plotline, was not able to call upon the help of the UK Infrastructure Bank, which last week announced a £24mn investment in the mining company Cornish Lithium.

The company said the cash would “significantly accelerate” its efforts to create a domestic supply of battery-grade lithium, vital for the transition to electric vehicles. Cornwall hopes to become a European lithium hub.

Cornwall’s mining industry is embedded in the Celtic region’s history and self-image, spawning a host of legends and tales of varying degrees of improbability. Joseph of Arimathea is said to have travelled there on a tin trading mission, bringing along a teen Jesus for the ride. “And did those feet in ancient time walk upon England’s mountains green?” asked William Blake. QTWTAIN as they say.

Cornwall’s culinary gift to the world, the pasty, is said to owe its thick pastry rim to the fact that miners with traces of arsenic or tin oil on their hands would use it as a handle, afterwards discarding it as toxic waste. Good story, although Glyn Hughes, a food history researcher, recently claimed the whole thing was made up and that research going back to the 18th century could find no mention of this practice.

Miners would, however, sometimes offer the last bite of their pasty to “knockers” — whiskery little folk who lived underground, committing acts of mischief or playing a key industrial safety role, knocking on mine walls to warn of impending collapse.

What is certain is that a diaspora of Cornish miners took their skills and pasties around the world, settling particularly in Australia, Michigan, South Africa and Mexico, where an annual international pasty festival is held in Real del Monte.

China clay mining also shaped the region’s interior, creating a white lunar landscape punctuated by conical spoil heaps, the famous “Cornish Alps”. It also played a key role in the history of the FT.

In 1893 the newspaper said it was going pink: “In order to provide outward features which will distinguish the Financial Times from other journals, a new heading and distinctive features will be introduced, and the paper will be slightly tinted.”

China clay played a key role in the production of paper and the FT chose the red and pink clay from the Bodelva pit for its new look. The old mine now contains the biodomes of the Eden Project. But china clay mining has been in decline for years and when the last Cornish tin mine closed at South Crofty in 1998, it was as if part of the soul of the region had been torn away.

Cornwall has found other ways of making money, of course, not least by rebranding itself as a “premium” holiday destination favoured by privately educated youth wearing Jack Wills polo shirts; much of Britain’s political and media class are there over the summer.

It has a thriving arts university at Falmouth and the creation of a spaceport seemed destined to move Cornwall into an exciting new era, although the first launch in January saw Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket mission end in failure.

But mining has been at the core of Cornish identity since the Bronze Age. There is something about the rock, forged from fire and thrusting far out into the Atlantic, that has proved irresistible. Lithium may be about to add another layer to the legend.

george.parker@ft.com