On Christmas Day 1724 Sir Francis Vyvyan of Trelowaren leased a decayed stamping mill in Trewellard to Sibella Hichens, John Ustick and John Dennard. The property was known as Sir Vyell's Stamps......

"A pillar of fire, exceedingly vivid and apparently the thickness of a man's arm" between sea and sky where it spread out with “splendid coruscations followed by a terrific peal of thunder”. Not a performance of Elijah in the St Just Wesleyan but an electrical storm.....

Stalking is not a new offence it seems thought the term was not used to describe what happened to St Ives MP T.B. Bolitho in the early 1890s.

The name Batten had been synonymous with Levant since the reopening in 1820 but in 1849 John Batten IV brought the association to an end.....

There's something fishy about the closure and reopening of Levant Mine in 1871, and it's nothing to do with being under the sea..............

The second worst accident in the history of mining in Cornwall happened at Levant Mine on 20^th October 1919. Thirty one men were killed and 19 were recorded as injured when the Levant man engine rod crashed down the shaft carrying with it its human cargo of miners coming up to grass from the morning core.

On the 9th October 1821 Joseph Carne presented a paper to the Annual Meeting the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall on the Mineral Productions and the Geology of St Just. The paper included the first mineralogical map of the St Just Mining District.

The St Just Wesleyan Chapel is a huge place, in its day it regularly hosted congrations in excess of 1000 people. Opened in 1833 it is a monument to a cultural moment which has now passed in into history but the iconic building still seems to draw the people......

100 degrees fahrenheit, high humidity, low oxygen, quarter of a mile out under the Atlantic ocean and about 1500 feet beneath the ocean floor. Why would anyone want to go to such a place...............

Today is the 100th anniversary of the day Richard Trathen was called up to serve in the army. Not the British Army, Richard Trathen was a Pendeen boy who gone to Grass valley, California in search of work and the joining the U.S. Army. 

M.V. Alacrity ran aground at Portheras Cove on 13 September 1963. She has remained a topic of interest ever since.......

In his history of Levant Mine, Cyril Noall provides a brief outline of the wreck of the William Cory

on 5^th September 1910. The wreck proved to be a bit of a windfall for the mine but how did the William Cory come to run aground on a calm day with excellent visibility?

Between 1498 and 1508 the itinerant Stannary Court at Lelant registered at least 10 St Just tinbounds. While an Cruen ton Gwynn was registered on 3^rd September 1502.

Francis Oats died in Port Elizabeth aged 69 on 1^st September 1918. In St Just today his most lasting monument is the the house he build overlooking Cape Cornwall – Porthledden House – built in the years 1907-1909.

On Sunday 30th August 1931 the St Just War Memorial was dedicated. Why did St Just have to wait so long for a public memorial to its war dead?

Private John Leggo of St Just was killed on 23 August 1914, the British army's first day of fighting on the Western Front. He was 24 years old, one of the first of many Cornishmen to die in World War One, a war which saw 7.2 million battlefield deaths.

When R.M. Ballantyne, celebrated author of boys' adventure stories such as Coral Island, went underground at Botallack on 17th August 1868 he was just one of many to visit the wonder mine of the west and sign the sign the Vistors Book.

On 5 August 1836 the West Briton advertised the sale of Wheal Cock Mine, St Just, drained by a water pressure engine with a 40 fathom head of water.

On 4th Auhust 1914, as clocks around the country struck 11pm, Britain entered into a state of war with Germany. At 11.02pm First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, send a telegram to the Fleet, “Commence hostilities against Germany”.

In 1744 it was said that St Just  was "so very populous…..it is impossible to know the exact number..” Rapid expansion in mining was attracting lots of incomers to the district, but not all were miners......

Miners in St Just have a tradition of doing a bit of fishing to help put food on the table but a man who can find his way around underground in virtual darkness can be hard pressed on an ebb tide in a thick fog and so it proved for four pards fishing out of Priests Cove......

The Wesley brothers visited St Just on more than 30 occasions but John Wesley's encounter with Squire Stephen Usticke of Botallack is one of the more bizarre events to arise from these frequent visitations of west Cornwall.....

The convinced, curious, the frankly sceptical:  all have gathered today at Tregeseal to listen to a report of the latest antiquarian enquiries based upon the work of Sir Norman Lockyer.

who was the unfortunate Richard White who was buried in 1840?

William Maddern Eddy, Private 54172 Durham Light Infantry, son of John and Constance Eddy of Carnyorth. Born 1897, missing presumed dead 7 June 1917. 

Reinhold Angerstein was considered to be an industrial spy, no surprise then that he visited Cornwall in 1754 and made a special point of a visit to St Just.

Just as turnpikes were being superseded elsewhere, St Just was finally connected to the rest of the country by one of these new fangled roads, enabled by a Parliamentary bill which received its third reading on 11 May 1863.

Picture this: three little children playing outside at Tregeseal. Imagine the spring sunshine, the usual childish boasts and claims - and that sense of limitless possibility and freedom, the peculiar quality of those moments in early childhood when no grown-ups are about................

Harold Morris was the third of the four sons of Richard and Charlotte Morris of 5 Boswedden Road, St Just. He is one of the forgotten men of World War One, those who survived and whose names appear on no war memorials.

John Oates died at Camp Sherman, Ohio, on April 15 1919, he had just returned from Europe where he been serving in the 112^th Engineers.................

Levant mine reopened in November 1820 after being closed for about 25 years. It was to remain open virtually without interruption until 1930 and the first sale from the newly reopened mine was made on 12 April 1821.

Anyone looking for something a bit out of the ordinary on the weekend of 30/31 March 1930 got a bit of a treat at Porth Nanven. Washed ashore on Saturday 30^th was the British World War One submarine L1.  

At the itinerant stannary court which met at Lelant on 20 March 1498 two tinworks in Truthwall, While an Woth and le Neue Worke were registered................

The last sentence of Cyril Noall's history of Botallack Mine reads, Rodda's Almanack tersely records that Botallack Mine closed on March 14^th 1914, just five months before the outbreak of the first World War.

Raymond Harry is better known as Jack Penhale, author of The Mine Under the Sea, an account of his days at Levant Mine between 1917 and 1921. Raymond/Jack worked at Levant when the disaster took place on 20 October 1919.................

On 4 March 1863 Richard Trevorrow, a miner previously of St Just, came before the West Penwith justices to sue Captains Carthew and Wearne of St Just United Mine for non-payment of his wages.........................

On Tuesday last sennight the last day of February Mr Trevannion of Carhease and Mr Kenipt, Sir Robert Carey's man, Mr Slader with 7 or 8 men came in the copper mines at St Just and took all the tools from the workmen by inventory and said they should work no more...........

......the purser had just declared a profit of £2357 for the quarter with a dividend of £10 per 200^th share.

The closure of Geevor Mine in 1990 brought to an end over 3000 years of mining history for  the Pendeen and St Just district. Though not unexecpected, the end, when it came, was sudden, swift and final.

History, it is said, repeats itself. Be that as it may, today's proceedings were somewhat reminiscent of occurrences in the “Hungry Forties,” when St Just miners marched to Penzance.

William Borlase was born at Pendeen House on 2 February 1696. Pendeen House still stands, one field away from the Atlantic near Pendeen Head.

Cyril Noall describes the collapse as "perhaps, the largest ever known in the neighbourhood. At surface, the effects resembled a minor earthquake."

A boy born in 1895 could be said to have been born at an unfortunate time. By 1914 he'd be 19 years old old and a prime candidate to be a soldier in World War One. This was the destiny fate had in store for Willie Tonkin....

On 11th January 1851 the 250 ton Whitby-built brig New Commercial hit the Brisons ledge off Cape Cornwall in thick fog and a high wind. Bound for the ”Spanish Main” from Liverpool she was immediately dashed to pieces but everyone on board, nine men and one woman, the wife of the captain, managed to get off onto the ledge.......

On 10th January 1893 about 40 men and boys were underground, having descended the Cargodna Shaft which lies part way down the cliff below the Wheal Edward engine house. A cross-cut was being driven at 65 fathoms, at 8.45am charges were fired.............

We tend to suppose that people in the past didn't really have holidays, but maybe that isn't true…. On 8th January 1856 the Reverend Henry Usticke wrote to his brother William, who lived in London, to report on local news including William's mining interests around St Just......