Name: MINIONS
Council: Caradon District Council
Main period of  industrial  settlement growth: 1863-1880
Study Area: Caradon/Liskeard
NGR: SX 43504 68643 (centre)
Main industry: Tin and copper mining. Granite quarrying.

Industrial history and significance

• Settlement totally created for industry, on a virgin moorland site. This is actually relatively rare in Cornwall.
• Industrialisation based on three major activities – mining, quarrying and railways; Minions is not a typically single-industry settlement as are many others in the county.
• The related industrial sites (Caradon mines/Cheesewring quarry/railway/Looe) were amongst the most significant and widest known in Cornwall.
• Almost entirely built in just a few years (1863-80), unusually late in the 19th century in the overall Cornish context.
• The variety of housing, especially the contemporary development of cottage rows and smallholdings, runs contrary to much established opinion on the relative dating of these different settlement patterns.
• Fossilised morphology preserves much visible evidence of its industrial past – tin streaming, mining, quarrying, railways.

This settlement forms part of the proposed Cornwall & west Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage Site Bid, and is considered an important part of the context for the Bid.

Downloads:

The downloads offered below represent the different elements of the CISI Minions Report including the core text and the four illustrative map figures.
 

Title	Description	Format	Size
CISI Minions report	Report text.		902kb
Figure 1	Location map		186kb
Figure 2	Historical development map		319kb
Figure 3	Surviving historical components map		290kb
Figure 4	Gazetteer sites, existing designations and recommendations map		268kb

Last Updated: 16/12/2004. © Cornwall County Council, Historic Environment Service.