Just a reminder the last day of the Kurt Jackson exhibition will be Sunday 15th March. Must not be missed! It has been a fantastic exhibition and our first to be held in the brand new Hard Rock Gallery. I do recommend it, the paintings are very striking.
“These are far more than pretty or dramatic pictures: they get beneath the skin of the surroundings and explore, often with great passion, the contexts within which the scenes exists”
Bill Lakin, Chair, Pendeen Community Heritage.
Yesterday I came back to work to discover a strange man in my office. He was waving a chisel around. Turns out, as part of the ongoing conservation of the buildings on site has reached me at last. It’s a bomb site, I cant even see my desk, so i have been banished to a spare space in Rebecca’s office.
I’m a busy bee at the moment, I’ve just finished writing a paper with Bill for the South West Community Archaeolgy Conference. Our paper is called ‘Geevor Tin Mine- In the Care of the Community?’ If you would like to read it, email me (claire@geevor.com) and I’ll send you a copy!
I have also been playing with twitter, I’m slightly addicted (in my defence I can now see what all other museums are up to quickly and easily). Its another tool in the web 2.0 box of tricks. I said I would attempt to explain what web 2.0 is and why its being used at Geevor. Well… basically its about encouraging everybody and anybody to become interested and involved in Geevor by any means possible. I focus on electronic things, internet mainly. This helps people and me to talk to about Geevor and all the exciting things that are going on.
I’m also creating content to go on the forthcoming e-learning website. I’m doing rocks at the moment, did you know that some of Cornwall’s rocks are over 600 million years old!? thats old!
there has been a twitter explosion recently! Geevor has been on twitter since october (beating the british museum by 3months- i am slightly smug about that). but to be honest I didnt know whether it would take off or not, but it has! Even Charles Darwin is following Geevor’s expolits on Twitter, so maybe you should too.
February half term is coming up thick and fast and Geevor has a number of events that might take your fancy!
Story-telling, art workshops, gallery talks gallore, and why not get some first hand experience with real mining machinery with our hand drilling and rock crushing area!
come and get creative in this illuminating mixed media drawing workshop, inspired by our resident exhibition of paintings by Kurt Jackson. For more information visit www.geevor.com or call 01736 788662
Who’s Bill? find out moreWalk off the excesses of Christmas and the New Year – enjoy the natural surroundings of Geevor, revel in the rich industrial heritage and check out 4,000 years of archaeology beneath your feet . . . – well, this was what we told the peopl e who were bold enough to come on the first of 2009’s events.
The first of these guided walks took place on Sunday 18th January. We had a lot of publicity – stories in local newspapers and even a live interview on Radio Pasty – but the weather had not been listening and was awful. Only three hardy souls turned up to taken for a stroll on the 18th Janauary by Nick Thomas and I.
The weather looked to be bad and worsening so we took them on a walk to the Slimes Plant first. They were the first visitors to go in here for many years as the restoration work was only finished last year. I suppose that the techniques for recovering very fine grains of tin that otherwise would have been washed out to sea is at best a minority interest, but the visitors were enthusiastic about the building and the weird and wonderful machinery in it – or may be just polite.
As it was almost not raining we set off across the site onto the National Trust land on the east side of Geevor. Here we looked at the 4,000 year old fire pit discovered in 2006. The people of the Beaker ulture had some sort of temporary campsite here and used the pit for cooking. The area had no permanent population then. When they left, they deliberately left pieces of their characteristic pottery – possibly so they could be sure the archaeologists of the future could identify them accurately. During the Beaker period in Britain the first bronze objects were made – it would be nice if there was some evidence that they visited Geevor to collect tin and that this marked the start of 4,000 years of tin production here
We walked on in wind and rain to Boscaswell Fogou, one of the enigmatic Iron Age underground structures found in Cornwall and few other places. Recent work by the National Trust has found evidence of previously unknown settlements in the fields below the fogou. We had copies of some of the geophysical evidence for hut circles in the fields, but the heavy rain and wind meant that we did not examine the site in detail.
We returned to mining history as we crossed onto the area of the old Boscaswell Downs Mine. Passing on of the blocked adit entrances next to the path, we noted the large amount of water emerging and those of us who had not worn wellies wished we had. We walked west along the Coast Path and Nick pointed out to us one of the exciting features of walking round here – an open mineshaft concealed in the grass within feet of the path.
At the bottom of the Geevor site we saw the famous ‘Blue Cliff’ caused by staining from the copper recovery process used at the nearby Levant Mine. The ruins of the calciner there – used to drive off the arsenic and other impurities from the ore – provided a bit of shelter for a moment before passing on to Levant. We looked at the winding and pumping engine houses and admired the impressive zawn beside them. No visit to Levant is complete without looking at the Miner’s Dry and the Man Engine Shaft and hearing the story of the disaster of 1919 when 31 miners were lost.
who’s Jo W? find out moreToday is a typical Pendeen foggy January day. The headgear is still visible however; a silent but powerful reminder of times gone by. I have returned from a tropical holiday to find that the site was busy over New Year. Super. The waterwheel froze in the cold spell, apparently. Must have looked amazing. Our ‘walk off the Christmas calories’ walks in January were well attended and I am busy planning new exhibitions and events to increase our visibility in 2009. More on that next time. We are in the middle of cataloguing our collection of underground mine maps and plans in the hope that these are digitised for us…. We are all waiting with baited breath on the appointment of our new ‘Business and Marketing Manager’ for a fresh injection of enthusiasm and leadership. ‘Coatgate’ has returned, and just don’t ask about the flags……
It’s been a hectic January catching up from the workload accumulated over Christmas hols and over the first week or so of the New Year when I was recovering from influenza. This very busy time, combined with increasingly more school groups visiting us, again prompted me to advertise for another part-time Learning Development Officer to work alongside myself and Jo Buckingham to further the learning both onsite and offsite. So watch this space in the next couple of weeks to see our new addition to Geevor’s Learning Team. Despite having lots of bookings, we’ve had to postpone our two schools this week due to the weather! The heavy snowfall (well, for Cornwall it was heavy!) has made the steep hill towards Geevor impassable for the average car (like my 17yr old Astra!) and so the site had to be shut on Monday afternoon and Bill the Chairman, had to taxi stranded staff up the hill in his 4×4! Thankfully all got home safe and sound. Back to work now, lots of things to organise especially as part of our new events 2009 programme, our packed February Half Term Activities which include creative art workshops for adults and children, gallry talks, storytelling and handdrilling sessions, so I hope to see many come!
Geevor Tin Mine Museum's Weblog 