There is an old definition of a mine: "A hole in the ground with a Cornishman at the bottom."
   The mining industry in Cornwall, as well as once employing a large proportion of the local population, has supplied -- through emigration -- thousands of highly skilled workers to mining industries throughout the world.
   The earliest indications of mining activities in the West Country point toward tin-mining in Bodmin and Dartmoor. A document of 1198 refers to 'tin-getting' on these moors as an ancient practice. We know that tinners were important in this region in the Bronze Age and that tin from Dartmoor and Bodmin was exported long before the Roman occupation.
   Tin was obtained from 'lodes' (metal deposits) found mostly in streams. In time, the tin streams yielded less metal and the experience of the tin workers led them to lode-bearing rocks. By the mid-fifteenth century, shaft mining was the established standard method in Cornwall. Tin mining flourished in Cornwall until the end of the nineteenth century.
   Mines used to run out for over a third of a mile under the sea, and penetrated to a depth of 1,200 feet. The workers used to have to climb down almost sheer ladders to the bottom of the mine, which would take them as long as an hour -- and of course had to be climbed again at the end of a long hard shift.
   Water was a perpetual threat to all these mines as the tunnels ran well out under the ocean. The arrival of pumping engines in the eighteenth century greatly reduced the likelihood of catastrophic flooding. David's Cornish Engine House depicts a time when tin-mining was a flourishing business before the end of the nineteenth century.