South Terras Mine is a disused

uranium Uranium is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Ura ...

and

radium Radium is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol Ra and atomic number 88. It is the sixth element in alkaline earth metal, group 2 of the periodic table, also known as the alkaline earth metals. Pure radium is silvery-white, ...

mine near

Grampound Road Grampound Road () is a village in the parish of Ladock, Cornwall, England, north-west of Grampound. The railway station of that name was opened on 4 May 1859 and closed in 1964. A small village known as Grampound Road grew up around the rail ...

and

St Stephen-in-Brannel St Stephen-in-Brannel (known locally as ''St Stephen's'' or ''St Stephen'') () is a civil parish and village in mid Cornwall, England. The village is four miles (6.5 km) west of St Austell on the southern edge of Cornwall's china clay dis ...

Cornwall Cornwall (; or ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is also one of the Celtic nations and the homeland of the Cornish people. The county is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, ...

. Prior to producing primarily

radioactive Radioactive decay (also known as nuclear decay, radioactivity, radioactive disintegration, or nuclear disintegration) is the process by which an unstable atomic nucleus loses energy by radiation. A material containing unstable nuclei is conside ...

ores, it also produced

tin Tin is a chemical element; it has symbol Sn () and atomic number 50. A silvery-colored metal, tin is soft enough to be cut with little force, and a bar of tin can be bent by hand with little effort. When bent, a bar of tin makes a sound, the ...

iron Iron is a chemical element; it has symbol Fe () and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earth's o ...

, and

ochre Ochre ( ; , ), iron ochre, or ocher in American English, is a natural clay earth pigment, a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand. It ranges in colour from yellow to deep orange or brown. It is also the name of the colou ...

. In 1996, it was designated a

site of special scientific interest A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Great Britain, or an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI) in the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland, is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom and Isle ...

for the variety of unusual and rare

mineral In geology and mineralogy, a mineral or mineral species is, broadly speaking, a solid substance with a fairly well-defined chemical composition and a specific crystal structure that occurs naturally in pure form.John P. Rafferty, ed. (2011): Mi ...

History

South Terras Mine was first worked by the South Terras Tin Mining Company Limited from 1872 to 1888, but returns of tin were small and iron ore and ochre were the main products. Uranium was discovered in about 1885 when a lode was cut that produced an unusual apple-green mineral: at first this was thought to be copper ore, but was later identified as

torbernite Torbernite, also known as chalcolite, is a relatively common mineral with the chemical formula Cu UO2)(PO4)sub>2(H2O)12. It is a radioactive, hydrated green copper uranyl phosphate, found in granites and other uranium-bearing deposits as a s ...

. The adit level where the uranium minerals had been discovered had a door placed on it for security. The torbernite was locally nicknamed "Green Jim" after the name of the then managing director of the mine James Harris-James. The company was reformed in 1889 as the Uranium Mines Ltd and Harris-James stepped down as a director. In 1889 the mine was acquired by the Minerals Research Syndicate Limited and the workforce was tripled to about thirty. All uranium ores were sold to Bettmann & Kupfer in Brunswick, Germany, mainly for

uranium glass Uranium glass is glass which has had uranium, usually in oxide diuranate form, added to a glass mix before melting for colouration. The proportion usually varies from trace levels to about 2% uranium by weight, although some 20th-century pieces ...

manufacture. British Metalliferous Mines Limited succeeded the Minerals Research Syndicate as operators of South Terras in 1905, the objective being to reopen the mine principally for its radium, with uranium as a byproduct.

King Edward VII Edward VII (Albert Edward; 9 November 1841 – 6 May 1910) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910. The second child and eldest son of Queen Victoria and ...

of England developed a skin cancer on his right naso-labial fold in 1906. There were no radium factories in the UK at the time and he was treated and cured with radium from

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

. The King, Colonel Ashley and

Lord Iveagh Earl of Iveagh (pronounced —especially in Dublin—or ) is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, created in 1919 for the businessman and philanthropist Edward Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh, Edward Guinness, 1st Viscount Iveagh. He was ...

through donations helped to establish the London Radium Institute. The "Kingsway Syndicate" purchased ore from South Terras, a contract having been agreed to supply 7.5g of

radium bromide Radium bromide is the bromide salt of radium, with the formula RaBr2. It is produced during the process of separating radium from uranium ore. This inorganic compound was discovered by Pierre and Marie Curie in 1898, and the discovery sparked a ...

worth over £30,000 for the London Radium Institute. The institute began the treatment of patients in 1906/1907, South Terras having supplied the 7.5g of radium bromide from over 100 tons of

pitchblende Uraninite, also known as pitchblende, is a radioactive, uranium-rich mineral and ore with a chemical composition that is largely UO2 but because of oxidation typically contains variable proportions of U3O8. Radioactive decay of the urani ...

ore. Societe Industrielle du Radium Limited was registered in 1912 to acquire South Terras mine, working it to provide ores for its subsidiary company - Societe Francaise du Radium - to process in France. There were eight directors, four English and four French. These included Jacque Danne and Sydney Fawns. The outbreak of

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

ended the company's activities. Operations were recommenced in 1921; this time the mine was equipped for radium extraction on site, the first and only mine in the United Kingdom to do so. The mine was managed by Marcel Pochon, an ex-student of

Pierre Curie Pierre Curie ( ; ; 15 May 1859 – 19 April 1906) was a French physicist, Radiochemistry, radiochemist, and a pioneer in crystallography, magnetism, piezoelectricity, and radioactivity. He shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with his wife, ...

, who moved to Cornwall to live in a bungalow next to the South Shaft. A description of the processing plant appears in 1925. The mine had closed before 1928 when the British & General Radium Corporation Limited acquired it from the previous lessee; the company was a German syndicate managed by a Swiss director, Dr I. Strauss. Marcel Pochon remained on site with his family throughout these changes, presumably as a technical engineer and scientist. The mine was abandoned in the early 1930s and Pochon left for Canada in 1932 to establish the radium refinery for the Eldorado Mining Company in

Port Hope, Ontario Port Hope is a municipality in Southern Ontario, Canada, about east of Toronto and west of Kingston, Ontario, Kingston. It is at the mouth of the Ganaraska River on the north shore of Lake Ontario, in the west end of Northumberland County, Onta ...

. Pochon operated that refinery from 1933 to 1945 and it became a key component of the

Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development program undertaken during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States in collaboration with the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the ...

. South Terras was the subject of diamond drilling investigations by the Atomic Energy Division of the

British Geological Survey The British Geological Survey (BGS) is a partly publicly funded body which aims to advance Earth science, geoscientific knowledge of the United Kingdom landmass and its continental shelf by means of systematic surveying, monitoring and research. ...

in 1953.

Site of special scientific interest

In 1996, South Terras Mine was designed a

, particularly for its rare uranium minerals. Those mentioned on th
citation
re: *

Rammelsbergite Rammelsbergite is a nickel arsenide mineral with formula NiAs2. It forms metallic silvery to tin white to reddish orthorhombic prismatic crystals, and is usually massive in form. It has a Mohs hardness of 5.5 and a specific gravity of 7.1. It was ...

* Smaltite *

Skutterudite Skutterudite is a cobalt arsenide mineral containing variable amounts of nickel and iron substituting for cobalt with the ideal formula CoAs3. Some references give the arsenic a variable formula subscript of 2–3. High nickel varieties are refe ...

Gersdorffite Gersdorffite or ''Nickel glance'' (trivial name) is a nickel arsenic sulfide mineral with formula NiAsS. It crystallizes in the isometric system showing diploidal symmetry. It occurs as euhedral to massive opaque, metallic grey-black to silver w ...

* Lollingite * Bismutoferrite *

Native Native may refer to: People * '' Jus sanguinis'', nationality by blood * '' Jus soli'', nationality by location of birth * Indigenous peoples, peoples with a set of specific rights based on their historical ties to a particular territory ** Nat ...

Bismuth Bismuth is a chemical element; it has symbol Bi and atomic number 83. It is a post-transition metal and one of the pnictogens, with chemical properties resembling its lighter group 15 siblings arsenic and antimony. Elemental bismuth occurs nat ...

* Xanthiosite * Aerugite Xanthiosite, aerugite, and bismutoferrite were removed from the

Mindat Mindat may refer to: Places * Mindat District, a district in Chin State, Myanmar (Burma), consisting of two townships and many villages ** Mindat Township, Myanmar *** Mindat, Chin State, a town in Chin State, Myanmar, administrative seat of Mindat ...

listing "due to the high probability of fraudulent recording of discovery by A.W.G. Kingsbury".

Radiation

Measurements of radiation at South Terras mine are amongst the highest for non-nuclear facilities in Europe, owing to uranium ores decaying to form

radon Radon is a chemical element; it has symbol Rn and atomic number 86. It is a radioactive noble gas and is colorless and odorless. Of the three naturally occurring radon isotopes, only Rn has a sufficiently long half-life (3.825 days) for it to b ...

gas. Measurements from inside the adit were taken by Gillmore et al (2002):

References

{{Reflist

External links

* Smale, C. (1993) �
South Terras: Cornwall’s Premier Uranium and Radium Mine
��, ''Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall: New Series II'', 1, pt.3, pp. 304–322.
SSSI Citationarchived
, Natural Englan
listing
an
map

Cornish mining organisations Mines in Cornwall Radium Uranium mines

History

Site of special scientific interest

Radiation

See also

References

External links