This now derelict area, once occupied by a lucrative Industry is now a place in limbo without purpose. Wheal Maid otherwise known as Wheal Maiden, lies about three quarters of a mile east-southeast of St. Day in Cornwall.
It is better known these days as the start of the Poldice Valley of the Mineral Tramways. It's lunar like surface where plants struggle to grow are quite an eye-opener to how metals from mining can 'poison' the ground.
Wheal Maid dates from about 1790 and had a stop-start existence. The mine raised small amounts of tin, arsenic and a little lead ore. It became part of St. Day United Mines when Carharrack Mine and Poldice were amalgamated in 1852.
It is now caked in a crust of ochre orange that shifts with the ebb and flow of the lake.
The fleeting visitors today leave traces behind similar to post-apocalyptic scars upon the landscape. This powerful sense of past life and present abandonment shaped by the will of nature leaves this disused site in a state of flux.
