Perranporth copper mine remembered in the town’s car-park name.
Wheal Leisure was a copper mine east of historic Perranporth, between the Perrancombe and Bolingey streams. Thomas Spargo’s 1865 survey described it as long idle but formerly rich and worth working again. The name survives at Wheal Leisure Car Park. That modern name is useful orientation; it does not locate an individual shaft beneath a particular parking space.
Sources
Connected subjects
Read on
- Before the Beach: Perranporth Was a Mining Town
The car-park name remembers a copper mine. A carpenter’s workshop, a chapel commission and changing mineral fortunes help put people back into the town around it.
- From Waterwheel to Railway: The Industrial Landscape Hidden Around Holywell
Behind the beach were people managing water, grinding grain and moving heavy loads. Follow their work through a landscape that kept changing jobs.
- The Mine Beneath Mount Wise: Putting Newquay’s Lead and Silver Back on the Map
A mine beneath a familiar view, children whose wages went straight home, and a hillside that kept finding new jobs after the digging stopped.