Cornwall: The Evocative, Mystical, Brutal, Perfect Backdrop for Thriller & Suspense Fiction (Part 1)

Wheal Coates:

As you stroll down the stony shingle pathway towards these historical mining monuments, you can be forgiven for thinking that you’d just descended upon another world. A Tolkienesque realm, maybe, of orcs, and trolls, and wizards. And in a way, you have. Okay, no orcs or trolls, but the odd wizard of the medieval past…

The other world you are entering existed in our where, though not in our when.

As these crumbling relics of a long-ago industry loom closer, the winds of our when carry the roar of the raging Atlantic, crashing menacingly against the foot of the cliff; the occasional call of a dog owner, summoning the return of their faithful friend. Maybe the happy sounds of children, out rambling with the family. Yet cast back to the eighteen-hundreds and the whipping winds carry a different sound. Still the Machiavellian conspiring of the waves plotting against the rocks, but with a cacophony of accompaniments: metal striking mineral; hearty cries of merriment mingled with anguished cries of hardship and pain. Rumbles of machinery and underground explosions that may have just taken a life in Man’s desperate pursuit of prosperity.

Look ahead today and you’ll see seabirds swooping and dancing between the structures, while crows and jackdaws stand like sentinels, watchful from the pinnacle of the chimney and the melancholy windows. In a time past you would see a hive of human activity, with bal maidens and children busying themselves with hammers, processing and shifting ore sent up by the men underground. Take in that lad approaching his twelfth birthday: your heart will grow heavy to learn that he’s counting down the days until he’s ordered into the blackness below ground, where his lungs will become vulnerable to diseases such as bronchitis, silicosis, and tuberculosis. In approximately thirty-years’ time he’ll be thought of as old. Worn. That’s if he even makes it that far. Health and Safety at Work Act? There’s plenty of time for him to be killed in an explosion or rockfall, or by a piece of shoddy machinery. He may even drown in a flooding tunnel. God knows, if he is lucky enough to survive, he won’t be lucky enough to grow old with the complete group of kowetha he started his working life with.

So, if you find yourself on the South West Coast Path by the old Towanroath Pumping Engine House, and you hear haunting wails wafting from the opening of the six-hundred-foot shaft, do you dismiss them as the raucous huffs of the slamming sea at the pit of its cavernous throat, or do you deliberate whether they could perchance be the blood-curdling pleas of the tragically long lost?

Wheal Coates is one of the most famous and photographed sites in Cornwall. It is owned by the National Trust and has limited parking off Beacon Drive, which gives access to the mines and the Wheal Coates Tin Mining Walk. The walk takes approximately thirty minutes to one hour. Parking costs from £2 per hour, up to £8 for the day (correct May 2022). Parking for Blue Badge holders, and National Trust Membership Card holders is free. Alternatively, you can access the mines via the South West Coast Path, between St. Agnes Head and Chapel Porth Beach.

Please take care when walking this route, and don’t venture too close to the cliff edge. This ancient county can be equally as unforgiving as it is alluring.