Great Orme is the site of the most extensive Bronze Age copper mines in Europe. Following on the original report in C Jeffrey May went to Great Orme to see how Tony Hammond and his team are getting on.

Signposts around the seaside resort of Llandudno direct visitors to the Great Orme Tramway station, where the only cable hauled street tramway in Britain still uses the original Victorian carriages to take passengers up the mile long track to the summit of the headland.

Halfway between Victoria Station and the summit is the stop for the Bronze Age copper mines. There a path winds down into a vast cam on of fissured rock to a visitor centre, a gift shop, a tea-room where second-hand books are also sold, an audio-visual room and excavation offices. The area buzzes with activity, and parties of children wait their turn to don hard hats and he taken on a tour of the mines by director Tom Hammond or members of his dedicated staff. The mine has been host to over 450,000 visitors since opening to the public in 1991, over 70 students have gained practical archaeological experience on the summer excavations and some have studied aspects of the site for their degree dissertations. The place has become a major visitor attraction — as it needs to be, since although the project has added immeasurably to the tourist attraction of north west Wales, no public money is forth coming to help the great work forward.

Edric Roberts continues the story.

Documentary evidence indicated that copper had been mined intermittently on the Great Orme’s head between 1692 and 1880. In 1831 and again in 1849 miners prospecting in the mine broke through into “old mans workings” reputed to be of Roman origin, with a particularly descriptive journal describing them thus:

“On the Great Orme above Llandudno recently in the copper mines there, miners have broken into a large chamber 6Oft below the surface containing stone hammers, antler picks, quantities of bone, remains of fires, a fragment of bronze and impressive calcite (stalagmite) formations as thick as tree trunks”

Even at this time some authors suggested a much earlier “Old Welsh or Celtic” period for the mine, reasoning that the Romans would have used iron tools. Unfortunately we have been unable to discover the location of the cavern, and it may have been destroyed by the 19th century miners along with the 1831 workings.

The Great Orme mine is situated in a small natural valley called Pyllau, south of the raised ground of Bryniau Poethion. It was re discovered in 1987 during a government funded survey for a reclamation and car park scheme.

As part of this survey the shafts were re opened and charcoal, bone tools and stone hammers were located ten metres below ground level. This discovery gave radiocarbon dates from wood charcoal and bone collagen of 1600—1200 BC.

Continuous archaeological excavation has been carried out over the last ten years, with well over six and a half kilometres of Bronze Age underground tunnels now surveyed, and more than 100,000 tons of mining waste removed from the surface. We estimate that a further 8—10 kilometres of Bronze Age passages remain to be discovered, surveyed and excavated, and on the surface over 140,000 tons of waste dumps will require excavation before the full Bronze Age landscape is revealed.

Below: Copper-stained cattle ribs, used as gouges or scrapers

Excavating the passages

This pioneering work has led to many unique problems for the modern excavation team.

Conditions have often been extreme, but have led to a deep insight into the working conditions of the Bronze Age men, women and children who were so successful in their quest for copper. The difficulties of the underground archaeology and the pain and pleasure that can ensue from excavation is well illustrated by a small section of workings close to the present day visitor route known as Location 21. The passages are so restricted that only one person could enter at a time, and the entire excavation was carried out by resident archaeologist Geoff David. The passage was first investigated by C.A.Lewis, who found a deposit of charcoal which yielded a C14 date centring on 1240 BC. There were also two fragments of bronze which are discussed below. This little working was remarkably narrow — less than 50 cm in places, and had a tortuous entrance passage. Either miners were selected for their small stature, or children were used, like Victorian chimney sweeps.

No evidence has been found underground for the use of wood as pit-props, mainly because of the excellent natural strength of the limestone that surrounds the narrow mineral veins.

The charcoal was certainly used in fire- setting (heating the rock to cause it to crack) and particularly for widening the very narrow veins.

The narrow passages created unusual problems for Geoff David, one of our most experienced excavators, particularly in spoil removal and in surveying. Geoff himself describes the excavation methods. “Taking spoil removal first, it was found by trial and error that the most efficient way was to use a steel ammunition box of the type used by many speleologists. This was filled with spoil at the working face, and then pulled by rope attached to its handle along a plank to the entrance where I could at least rise to my knees. However this was not the end of the matter, because all the spoil excavated had to be examined minutely, both by eye and by metal detector, in the hope of finding more fragments of bronze. So the box then had to be manhandled along the visitor route and out to the surface. There the contents were sieved, then tipped onto a board and examined with the detector”.

Thanks to this, nearly 80 fragments of metal were recovered all less than 2 cm in length, and all jagged in shape, so in no case did they show the original surface.

Analysis of these fragments showed that they were all bronze. Yet how did fragments of worked bronze come to be found so far under ground?

The fragments were scattered through some 2 metres depth of varied deposits, and the actual passage in which they were found is far too constricted to have served as a working area. So the fragments must have been re deposited, probably by natural forces from some other location. They are the only pieces of bronze so far found in the Great Orme mines, apart from two fragments of a bronze tool found in the 19th century and now in the British Museum. Could they belong to be a later phase of the mining, when bronze was replacing bone? There are also a few scraps of iron, the products of the oxidation of chalcopyrite, which can still be seen at several places in the workings.

Apart from these fragments of metal, a quantity of charcoal, four stone mauls, and four fragments of bone tools were found - a very small amount compared with finds in other areas of the mine.

Below: Nick Jowett emerges into a new area of the mine.

Wood, Charcoal and Smelting

In 1997, David Chapman, a local bronze sculptor and a graduate of the Royal College of Art, noticed a site on an eroding cliff face which contained charcoal, bone fragments and copper slags. The site was just below a natural spring, Ffynnon Galchog, just above Marine Drive alongside remnants of an ancient track known as Custs Path. With the aid of a grant from CADW, David and his wife Sue, herself then working for the Gwynedd Archaeological Trust, excavated several features containing smelting debris. Slag from the furnace lining was sent for analysis and proved to be prills of copper metal, malachite and chalcopyrite. The furnace has been dated to cal. 1580 BC, and is the first certain Bronze Age smelting site in mainland Britain. It is surprising that chalcopyrite seems to have been used for smelting. Until recently it was assumed that smiths could not extract the copper from chalcopyrite until later in the Bronze Age due to the complexity of the smelting process.

The reconstruction of a smelting site built at the mine has enabled the recreation of some of the ancient methods and technologies of ore extraction, including processing and smelting of copper.

After analysing the underground charcoal deposits, it was decided to use alder for the charcoal. To recreate the Bronze Age furnace, clay was obtained from the beach at Llandudno and a bucket shaped furnace was formed, with the cracks filled with wet clay. Blowpipes were made for the bellows. The crucible was a small modern clay type used in the iron industry. Malachite from the mine was used, and through a rather slow process over two days, the copper ore was roasted, slagged and blistered. A spider’s web and prills of copper was produced, which were put into the crucible for the final pour into a pre-heated stone mould. The clay furnace was so hot, that around the blowpipes the clay actually vitrified, giving the appearance of a glass- like texture, some of it white like china. After casting, a billet of copper was formed. It seemed a lot of effort for such a small amount of copper, but if the smelting process was continuous, great quantities of copper could have been produced.

Below: Smelting site

The future

The original 1987 team is still working on t site. In March 2002 a new Bronze Age chamber was found with numerous passages radiating out of it. On the floor of the chamber were animal bones and 8 or more stone hammers lying just as they had been left by the Bronze Age miners. The new area will be survey during the coming winter and excavation will begin the following year. On the surface, the search for Bronze Age settlement continues since it is high priority to see the mining activity in its social context.