Camborne
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Template:GBdot Camborne, (Cornish: Kammbronn, 'Crooked Hill') is a small ex-industrial town located in the far west of Cornwall, UK, forming the western end of the greater Camborne, Pool and Redruth conurbation. Taken together and with an approximate population (including 'satellite' villages) of 45,000, they form the largest urban build-up in the county. Camborne is best known as a centre for the former Cornish tin and copper mining industry, having its working heyday during the later 18th and early 19th centuries.
Dolcoath, (Cornish: Old Ground), the 'Queen of Cornish Mines' was, at a depth of 3500 feet (1067 m), for many years the deepest mine in the world, not to mention one of the oldest before its closure in 1921. Indeed, the last tin mine in Europe, South Crofty, was to be found in Camborne until its closure in 1998.
Apart from the mines themselves, Camborne was also home to many important related industries, including the once world-renowned foundry of Holmans. Holmans, a family business founded in 1801, was for generations, Camborne's, and indeed Cornwall's largest manufacturer of industrial equipment, even making the famous Sten submachine gun for a stint during the second world war. At its height Holmans was spread over three sites within Camborne, employing some three and half thousand men. Despite Britain's industrial decline, Holmans still survives today, albeit in a downsized form, as CompAir, with its HQ in High Wycombe, the countries largest specialists in compressed air equipment.
Camborne is also notable as the home of Richard Trevithick, the miner's son who's work in high pressure steam boilers led to one of the worlds first locomotive engines. His 'Puffing Devil' road locomotive, was first tested in Camborne in 1801, and is still remembered in the popular Cornish folk song, 'Going up Camborne Hill'. However, despite his many achievements and innovations, he died a poor man, much of his work forgotten by the world at large. His statue can be found standing outside the public library, and his achievements (not to mention steam power, mining, and Cornish culture as a whole) are celebrated every last Saturday of April as the town's 'Trevithick Day'.
Despite a poor reputation as a depressed region throughout much of Cornwall, Camborne, Pool and Redruth are at the centre of a £150 million redevelopment scheme which hopes to reverse decades of social-economic decline in this former industrial heartland of Cornwall. 'CPR Regeneration', one of the government's 19 'URCs' or Urban Regeneration Companies, oversee one of the largest urban renewal projects in the country, driving the regeneration of up to 1.5 square kilometres of land with the aim of creating more than 4,000 jobs and increasing wages in the area by 15%.
Because of the importance of metal mining to the Cornish economy, the Camborne School of Mines (CSM) developed as the only specialist hard rock education establishment in the U.K.. It is now part of the University of Exeter in Cornwall, and has relocated to the University's Tremough campus. CSM graduates are to be found working in the mining industry all over the world.
The town name is repeated in Camborne, New Zealand, a seaside suburb of Porirua City developed by an investment company headed by a Mr Arthur Cornish. Most of its street names are of Cornish origin.
In 1921 the ruins of a Roman Villa were found at Magor Farm, Illogan, near Camborne. The only Roman site of any size to be present in the whole of Cornwall.
External links
- CPR Regeneration (http://www.cprregeneration.co.uk/) - An introduction and outlining of CPR and its aims.
- Trevithick Day (http://www.trevithick-day.org.uk/) - Information on Trevithick Day
- Camborne Town Council (http://www.camborne-tc.gov.uk/) - Information on the townkw:Kammbronn