Towednack [Parish Circuit Or Chapel], Towednack, Cornwall

Conservation surveys

A number of properties were surveyed for the National Trust to identify the historic resource and provide guidance on management and presentation. Among these were Rosewall Hill and Little Trevalgan Hill, in the parishes of Towednack and St Ives. There are references to mining operations on Rosewall Hill as early as the seventeenth century and mining may have begun even before this. Wheal Ransom was in operation by 1775, and saw alternating fortunes through much of the nineteenth century; closure was finally forced in 1876 as a result of the low price of tin. Many of the nineteenth-century mining features on Rosewall Hill are particularly well preserved and include buddles, tanks, shafts, leats, wheel pits and remains of an engine house. There are also surface quarrying remains. Prehistoric activity in the area is represented by a Bronze Age cairn on Rosewall Hill and a possible cairn on the summit of Little Trevalgan Hill, around the slopes of which the low banks of possible prehistoric or medieval field systems were also recognised