Beware the Knockers

It has been too long since I posted, lets just say there have been software issues and leave it at that. Between then and now, the Tin Mining areas of Cornwall and Devon have been granted World Heritage Status.

The image here was formed as a result of mineral deposits leaching from the walls of mine buildings. Some might see these as the faces of mine spirits known as Knockers. These mischievous creatures were the constant companions of miners, warning them of imminent danger, woe betide those who chose to ignore them. Now mining has all but ceased have these mischievous spirits appeared on the surface to keep a watchful eye?

I seems to me that, like most so-called Heritage projects, the social history is too often obscured. It often favours the wealth creators at the expense of those who laboured to create it. The folklore is regarded as quaint but within it there lies an insight to the psyche of those who laboured in the dark reaches in search of tin and copper.

A local councillor, Henry Eva, told me his uncle was killed in a mining accident here in West Cornwall. On a death in the mine, the men would gather underground and sing hymns, their voices rising to the surface from the many shafts.

When it was decided to 'Tidy Up' the old mining areas with the use of Contaminated Land grants there was much outcry. A unique landscape with its associated rare fauna and flora along with mining archaeology, was set to be irreparably damaged, according to some.

Henry felt they should tread carefully, "To me these places are sacred ground" he said, "When I walk over them I hear the voices of the miners singing for all the lost souls."

This is what sits at the back of my mind and guides me when I am out with my camera, I see the faces of the forgotten and their silence is deafening.

The road is paved with good intentions

I set out to keep a regular flow of photos on this blog but events have conspired against me.

Today's picture is a companion to 'Lost Horizons.' Both were taken at the same event, a 'Fayre', (dis) organised by a now defunct environmental trust, who were later dumped, unceremoniously, by their parent organisation, Groundwork.

The event was ambitiously spread over an area the size of half a dozen football pitches. The mist came down, the local radio station's helicopter was grounded and those few who did turn out to participate were simply lost in the empty space.

To me it summed up the vacuous nature of the 'environmental regeneration' that was taking place, a bandwagon that minority political organisations were riding to death, and still are.

The stall in this image is fundraising for the 'Nationalist' Mebyon Kernow, a political organisation with an irrational separatist agenda.

It is not surprising that, with the introduction of Regional Government, there are genuine fears of a loss of identity among some communities. With respect to the 'environment' the fear raised by 'regeneration' is that even the landscape will lose its identity. A process the artist Andrew Lanyon calls "The Surreyfication of Cornwall".

Lost Horizons

I do not want this blog to become an online diary, a sort of, Home Truths confessional. It is meant to be a place for my photographs to be seen together with the occasional, brief, contextual comment.

Disliking the constraints of sponsorship, I am a fiercely independent photographer in the documentary/reportage style, adding the occasional whimsical and pictorial image just for good measure.

The main body of my later work is about a 'sense of place', documenting events in and around where I live and along a valley, exploited for its mineral wealth, for hundreds, and probably, thousands of years.

This work is not meant to be definitive, it is my very personal relationship with a landscape, in which I spent my adolescence and where, with occasional bursts of enthusiasm, I have wandered with my camera for the past two decades.

There have been many changes to the area, not all sympathetic, traditional industries have declined and the demands of a growing local population have put serious pressure on both rare habitats and important industrial archaeology.

The environment may be unique but the story of this place will be familiar to many.

Peter Dewhurst