
Before the Railway: How Perran's Iron Ore Reached the Sea
Gravel Hill’s iron mine stood beside the Atlantic. Its ore still travelled about three miles by cart to reach a ship. That awkward journey explains a great deal about this coast.
What I’m thinking about while I’m actually making things.

Gravel Hill’s iron mine stood beside the Atlantic. Its ore still travelled about three miles by cart to reach a ship. That awkward journey explains a great deal about this coast.

The Gannel carried cargo, served mines and supported shipbuilding. Restoring that movement changes the relationship between Newquay and Crantock.

A wheelpit, a corn mill, coastal mines and competing transport schemes reveal the working landscape behind Holywell’s beach.

Ore from Newquay crossed the Gannel to be processed near Crantock. A forgotten works connects the town’s mines to the opposite bank.

Wheal Leisure, the workings around Droskyn and Cligga’s wartime tungsten put the mining town back beneath modern Perranporth.

A shaft, a count house, miners’ homes and an adit towards Towan: the industrial hillside hidden inside modern Newquay.

Holywell Bay could have had a railway, pier and harbour. The parliamentary record reveals a serious Victorian proposal—and a coastline that escaped a very different future.