Sending children down the mines....

Half way up the Great Orme there's a pit in the ground, about the size of a couple of tennis courts. In 1987 there was a plan to make this into a carpark, and then preparatory works uncovered evidence of old mine workings - which they investigated.

     

The assumption was that the mine was a left-over from the 19th or maybe18th centuries - modern industrial times. But soon they started to discover old tools left behind, and these were made of stone, and animal bone. This was a previously unsuspected copper mine dating back 4000 years, in the middle Bronze Age. Its full extent is still to be uncovered, though they have penetrated down 9 layers, some 180 metres in depth. Only the first two layers are available for public visits, well lit and explained, but still - narrow, damp, dark and full of mysteries.

  

They think that copper would originally have been visible on the surface - malachite rock or other stones stained green or blue, so at first they'd have been able to scavenge on the ground, but gradually started to work their way down. Their pursuit - using their hands and rocks as tools - led them to gouge out a maze of tunnels and caverns, tiny, claustrophobic, and only accessible to children. 

   

As one of the display signs says, this was all about the creation of wealth and power... new ideas in the world.   The older ways - which had seen the spreading of mankind all over the world - were all about understanding how to wander with cattle and goats, and possessing skills, knowledge.  People were nomadic. The goddess governed matters of life and death, according to her own seasons, dancing with the sun and the moon, the weather, the sea... nothing which could be owned. 

But the mining of metals meant a complete change in everything...  Now everything was up for grabs. Men seized control and authority.

Contemporary with the Great Orme copper mines is the amazing gold cape found at Mold, now in the British Museum who accept it was probably associated with the works at Orme.  How about that for a statement of wealth and power?  (The gold probably came from Ireland).

So, this power came from the copper mines.  You have to ask, which children went into the tiny shallow narrow holes in the rock in the pitch dark to bash away and scrape out more of the green-tinged rocks? Were they slaves? Who sent them? How long did these little scraps live? How were they paid? In food? In being allowed to live, at all?  Children died in the copper mine, as young as 5, or 6.  And women too, and men.  Their grandfathers and grandmothers had been herders, wanderers.... but these people were destined to grub into solid rock.  It's dark and cold down there. What stories did they tell? What did they believe?

Stones were hauled up from the beaches a mile or so away to be used as hammers and spades. And animal bones were fashioned and abandoned and left behind and became stained green from the metallic water flowing round them.... 

The scale of the excavations is amazing... not just the extent and depth of the tunnels, but the occasional ball-room-sized space, one of which is thought to be the largest man-made ancient hole in the ground in the whole world.   Wealth and power.   Not tribe and knowledge.

Whatever changes we are witnessing now, as the internet and artificial intelligence and dark data penetrate every aspect of our lives, I think it that is nothing compared to what rippled out from the Great Orme. Here they must have had many many people, over many generations - more than 1200 years - going down into that pit to pulverise the rock and drag the metal out into the open.  They mastered smelting too, jettisoning iron as they didn't know what it was, and their fires were not hot enough to melt it... The copper was fantastically valuable - influencing technology, trade, power, mapping, politics.  It was made into tools - axes, and spears, and these were now to be used as weapons against people, to establish ownership and territory...  Kings created themselves.  Is this the age of King Midas?

    

The very excellent booklet sold at the Copper Mine mentions the Dover boat in the context of trade with the continent... some of the photos from that booklet are used here. 

If you get a chance, do go and see this extraordinary place. Until it was found, everyone thought that copper and bronze making was a matter for the Mediterranean, the Middle East... but this pit on the Great Orme has meant the re-writing of the entire history of that period for the British Isles. Much more is waiting to be uncovered.