CA 1993

There are few areas in prehistory where Britain can claim to be the biggest and best. Stonehenge is certainly a world class monument but now it is joined by another site which can perhaps claim to be the most pre-eminent of its type in the world; for the Bronze Age copper mines on the Great Orme Head appear to be the most extensive hitherto discovered anywhere in the world.

Above. Four dark holes mark the
entrances to the
Bronze Age mines at the Great Orme

Left. Inside the mines: one of the narrow passages back-filled in the Bronze Age and not yet re-excavated.

THE Great Orme was extensively mined for copper in the 19th century, and the miners constantly reported that: they were breaking through earlier workings. In 1849 the miners broke into a large cavern containing stone hammers weighting from 2 to 40 lbs, bone tools from ox, swine and deer, a few items of bronze, and charcoal remains from fire setting. The cavern was soon quarried away, but the finds were enthusiastically reported in the Archaeological Journal for 1850 as being “Roman or the Old Welsh or Celtic miners”. In 1938-9 Oliver Davies carried out a limited excavation of a Roman surface site down by the shore and concluded that the subterranean workings were Roman — though he did not go underground (Arch. Camb., 1948).

However in the mid 1980s attention once again turned to the ancient copper mines. The Great Orme Exploration Society was formed in 1985 and began to explore the quarry and mine workings using modern caving techniques and they too entered the earlier workings. In the 1980s interest revived in the possibility that Bronze Age minings still survived — (see Current Archaeology 99, followed by letters in CA 101 and 103). However from 1976 onwards Duncan James, a local amateur, began exploring the ancient workings in the belief that they were Bronze Age. He excavated some galleries leading off a winding shaft known (misleadingly) as the Roman shaft, and obtained a radiocarbon date of 990 ± 80 bc from charcoal. Eventually he published his results in 1988 in a Symposium on Ancient Mining published by the British School at Athens: the Bronze Age date was established.

General view of the site showing the rocks exposed by the removal of the 19th century overburden. In the middle distance are the buildings of the Visitor Centre; in the far distance, on the other side of the green field and to the left, the mound of a megalithic tomb can be seen by those who know where to look.

Right. Something of the extent of the Bronze Age mining is revealed by this huge cavern. At first it was thought to be 19th century. However the discovery of stone mauls, together with two radiocarbon dates, reveal that it was all dug out in the Bronze Age. Photo: Kevan Fadden

At this point the story is taken up by Tony Hammond. Tony Hammond is a mining engineer who had spent 20 years travelling the world as a trouble-shooter for the Anglo-American Corporation. In the course of this he was able to indulge his interest in archaeology. He visited the Pharaonic copper mines in the Nubian Desert, he explored Inca mines in Peru and he saw the Bantu in Swazi land mining haematite for their personal ornamentation. However in 1986, now married and with four young children, he decided it was time to return home and settle down. He therefore joined Robertsons, the biggest firm of consulting mining engineers in the world who had their headquarters Deganwy, a suburb of Llandudno in North Wales. He had never been to Wales before, but he soon joined the GOES and was taken down the shafts by Andy Lewis to explore the early workings and share in the exhilaration of Duncan James’ recent discoveries.
However the Great Orme was changing. The Great Orme itself is a Country Park and as such is meant to be green and full of flora and fauna; Thus the Welsh Development Agency which is charged with the task of tidying up Wales and removing all the unsightly debris of the industrial revolution, began tidying up the Great Orme Head. They proposed to cap the shaft down which access had been obtained, and to bulldoze over all the remains of the 19th Century mineworkings, spread topsoil and put it down to grass. It seemed a pity to remove all the traces of the industrial archaeology in this way, so Tony Hammond pleaded for a stay of execution and persuaded them to cap the shaft 4Oft down to allow access to the early workings as well as inserting a manhole cover for those who wished to explore the Victorian workings 500ft below.

The extent of the network of Bronze Age tunnels is revealed in this plan by Andrew Lewis. The vertical shaft at the centre is Vivian’s shaft, of the 18th and 19th centuries; the Bronze Age workings were entered from the sides of this.

At this point Tony Hammond dreamed his big dream, to set up a company to explore the Bronze Age mines and present them to the public. In this he was joined by his wife Anne as co-director and by two colleagues who are also enthusiasts in the exploration, Andy Lewis, a geologist, and Edric Roberts who was an accountant, and together they set up the Great Orme Mine Company Limited. A crucial step was to negotiate a 40 year lease of the area from the Aberconwy Borough Council who own this part of Great Orme Head. They negotiated a loan from the bank, failed to penetrate the Byzantine complexities of the Welsh Tourist Agency and on 31st March 1990, gave up their jobs to found the Great Orme Mine Company. They built a Visitor Centre more or less by themselves with the all important public conveniences adjacent and erected a temporary hall for the video. Meanwhile they bulldozed away quantities of 19th century spoil to reveal the main Bronze Age entrances. Eventually, on 23rd April 1991 they opened to the public.

Tony Hammond (1eft) and Andy
Lewis outside the Visitor Centre.

The “Little People”
The miners were very superstitious. They believed that the mines were inhabited by the “little people” whom they called knockers because when they were working down the mines they sometimes heard strange noises or knockings as the knockers indicated to them the rich seams. When they followed a seam that proved infertile they sometimes left behind a pair of boots as a gentle hint to the knockers to guide them more productively next time.
They were also very superstitious about cats for a cat was considered to be a bad omen down the mines. Thus whenever a cat entered a mine by mistake, they sacrificed it. Three skeletons of cats have so far been discovered, neatly laid out for sacrifice. One of them was surrounded by a circle of organic material and when samples were taking to Bangor University they turned out to be blackberries.

The Great Orme Head is a great mass of limestone that projects northwards from the north coast of Wales. In its lee, the town of Llandudno was formed by the Mostyn family in the 1850s; today is the biggest visitor resort in North Wales and one of the finest surviving Victorian resorts in the country. Arnold Bennett’s novel The Card paints an unforgettable picture of the town at its height.
The Great Orme Head towers over the town, and can be reached in three ways. Those with strong nerves can drive up it by car; then there is the Victorian tram; and finally a cable car which gives superb views.

Frank Jowett (left) one of the local volunteers and resident archaeologist on the site discussing some of the finds with Steve Clarke, from Monmouth. On the table in front are some of the stone mauls and bone tools found down the mines.

The geology however is unusual. There are fissures in the limestone up which hot gasses have penetrated from the molten core of the earth, bringing with them veins of metalliferous ore, and at the same time disintegrating the limestone and turning it into a soft rock, soft enough to be scraped away by the fingernail or indeed by a bone tool. Geologists call this soft rock dolomite, and the process is called dolomitisation. This is the only case in Britain where veins of copper are accompanied by dolomitisation and it was very attractive to the Bronze Age miner because they could mine the rock extremely easily, and in comparative safety, for the surrounding Carboniferous limestone remains very solid. In this way the Bronze Age miners were able to penetrate deep under ground using only animal bones for their tools.
The copper occurs in veins and four main veins have been identified running north-south, with a number of parallel lodes. The Bronze Age miners tended to follow along these veins, twisting and turning, unlike the Victorian miners who drove straight shafts down, and then straight adits along. But the extent of the Bronze Age mining is still only just being recognised; the tunnels go at least 300 metres into the hillside and go down 70m that is 200ft below the surface. Indeed there appears to be a network of at least 10 different levels of tunnels.
Three methods of mining were used. The simplest were the bone tools, over 8,000 of which have been discovered, many of them stained green by the malachite or copper ores. Some of these were antler picks but the majority of them were ordinary animal bones of cattle, sheep and pig. Many of them were rib bones or leg bones, but some were of more unusual and fragile bones which have even led the excavators to wonder whether they might not have been brought in as food and when the food was eaten off, they were then used as tools.
The other main tool was the stone hammer. These are beach pebbles brought up from the beach and quite distinctive. Many of them have signs of hammering on one end. They vary greatly in weight, the heaviest of them being over 64 lbs (29 kgms) which would seem to be rather too heavy for normal use. Nearly 900 stone tools have been found so far, the majority of them hammers, though some appear to be anvils or mortars and pestles.
In addition to the bone tools and stone mauls, fire setting was used to loosen the rock. Fires were built up against a rock and the effect so weakened the rock that it was then possible to mine it. Evidence for fire setting has been discovered up to 200 ft down in the tunnels suggesting that there must have been a strong system of ventilation. It is the fire setting which has produced some of the radiocarbon dates, the remainder being on the bone tools.

Left. Some of the stone hammers and bone tools found in the Bronze Age workings

Vivian’s shaft, one of the principal shafts of the 19th century workings

The tunnels are normally backfilled with rubble when discovered and it seems that the Bronze Age miners deposited most of their spoil underground in the mined out tunnels. Some of them were very small, so small indeed that they could only have been worked by children. However in addition to the tunnels they have also found at least one large cavern. When first discovered this was thought to be the result of the Victorian miners, but 2 radiocarbon dates from deposits on either side of the cavern both came out at around 1400 bc, thus suggesting that it must be Bronze Age. This cavern occurs at a spot where three major veins of ore come together and it would seem that thousands of tons of copper ore must have been mined out by the Bronze Age miners.
Nine radiocarbon dates have so far been recovered from the mine ranging from 1800 bc down to 600 bc covering the whole of. the Bronze Age. Interestingly the earliest date comes from surface workings where the Gwynnedd Archaeological Trust carried out excavations in 1990 and 1991. These are still being explored and it would seem possible that yet earlier dates may appear from the surface workings. But the lower end of the dates are just as interesting as the earlier ones for they suggest that the copper mining petered out at the end of the Bronze Age. Scholars have often suggested that the Bronze Age ended due to exhaustion of the copper. Here the same evidence can be seen from the copper mines themselves.
The later mine workings are also being explored. In the 19th century the Great Orme Head was split between two land holdings, those of the Bishop of Bangor and those of the Lords of the Manor, the Mostyn family. In the 19th century there were two principal mining companies, the Old Mine on the Bishop of Bangor’s land, and the New Mine on the Mostyn territory.
The current work is centred around Vivian’s shaft, one of the main access shafts for the underground workings. This cut through a number of the Bronze Age workings enabling them to see that the top 200 feet consists mostly of the Bronze Age workings with the later working in the lower 300 feet.
The first record of mining is in 1692, only 4 years after the repeal of the Mines Royal Act of 1403, which opened the way to the industrial revolution. However, it was not until the 19th century that mining really expanded, notably under the leadership of Samuel Worthington from 1812 to 1846. Some of the miners came from Cornwall, notably William Vivian, who was appointed mine captain in 1854 and attempted to revive the mine, though with little success.
One of the most remarkable projects was the Penmorfa adit. This was a tunnel driven in from the sea shore to the foot of the mine shaft in order to drain it, a total length of 830 yards. Work began in 1834 and was completed in 1842. When they were 6 feet from the flooded mine shaft they drilled a narrow hole through very gingerly, for the shaft was flooded to a depth of 198 feet and the water broke through with the force of a cataract. This not only drained the mines but also provided a means of bringing out the ore; it still keeps the mines dry.
The other unusual aspect is a pump that was used at one time to pump out the mines. It was called a Tom and Gerry, named not after the cartoon characters but after two regency bucks. It was based on a huge tank which was supported on an eccentric crank. The tank was situated on a stream at the bottom of a hill where it filled with water. When it was full it tipped over, pulling with it a chain and rod linkage which ran 1300 yards up the hill and then 250 yards down the mineshaft to work the pump. Traces of the supports for the rod linkage have been discovered by the Exploration Society.
There were three principal mining companies. The major one, known as the Old Mine was based on the common lands of the Bishops of Bangor and comprised both the shafts at the top of the hill and then came down the Pyllau valley to include Vivian’s shaft and the site of the current excavations. Later the New Mines were opened further down the valley on land leased from the Mostyn family. Later a third mine was opened, the Ty Gwyn, which provided the richest ores of all, though difficult to mine. When it closed, the area was thoroughly tied up and landscaped, and re-named the Happy Valley, and recently a ski slope and toboggan run has been laid out. However the GOES has succeeded in relocating one of the adits and exploring some of the underground workings.
The current work by the Great Orme Mining Company concentrates on the Bronze Age mines around Vivian’s Shaft. Here they have constructed a Visitor Centre on top of a 19th century spoilheap. From here the visitor passes through to the auditorium to see a video where the visitor is transported back to the Bronze Age and introduced to the magic of metalworking in the first industrial revolution. After this they are divided up into parties and the guide fits each member of the party with a hard hat. They then penetrate into the Bronze Age Mine. In many ways it is reminiscent of the palaeolithic caves of the Dordogne but in place of the cave art there are the seams of copper workings. The high light is a view of the huge underground cavern which has recently been proved to be Bronze Age.
As in the Dordogne, the floor level of the tunnels has in places been lowered to pro vide visitor access without having to crawl and the tour follows a circular route visiting the top two levels of the ten levels of Bronze Age workings so far discovered. The visitor then emerges back on to the surface to see the surface excavations, to inspect some of the finds displayed by Frank Jowett and to see the top of Vivian’s shaft and the other evidence for the 19th century mine. After that the visitor is ushered into the restaurant area for well earned refreshment. The mines are open from April to October, 7 days a week
Source: Tony Hammond,
Great Orme Mines Ltd.,
Great Orme,
Liandudno LL3O 2XG
Tel: 01492 870447