Heartlands

Heartlands is a free heritage and arts park at Pool, between Redruth and Camborne, created on the site of the old South Crofty tin mine within the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape, a World Heritage Site. At its heart are the Diaspora Gardens, which tell the story of the Cornish mining migration. Between 1815 and 1915 something like a quarter of a million people and more left Cornwall to mine the world, carrying their skill in hard rock mining to South Africa, Australia, the Americas and beyond. They became known as Cousin Jacks. De Lank granite was chosen for the gardens. Great boulders of the silver-grey stone were carved with a poem and inlaid with cast bronze plaques, each one set flush into a recess cut by hand. The lines run across the rock: "Wise in ways of water, steam and beam engines, seeking ore"; "Followed lodes around the globe"; "Shared kinship in deep shafts in Moonta"; "Spoke of Mexico in epic letters home". The plaques carry the emblems of the places the miners reached, from a South African coin to communities founded a world away, like Moonta in South Australia, which became known as Little Cornwall. Using Cornish granite to tell a Cornish story, on the ground the industry was built on, was the whole point. The stone the miners cut, and that built the engine houses still standing behind the gardens, now carries their memory.