Cassiterite

Unknown Owner

This is a lovely crystallized miniature Cassiterite specimen from Cornwall - despite one of the earlier labels recording Great Work mine as in Wales! For the record Wales doesn't have any tin deposits, but Great Work mine is, as the name suggests, a famous historic tin mine successful very early in the history of tin mining in Cornwall. Mined from at least 1540, as Godolphin Bal, it reputedly employed 3,000 people in 1584 - a colossal figure for British mining at that time. This fine specimen of glossy Cassiterite crystals (to 5 mm across) on killas (a local term for metamorphosed sedimentary rock) comes with an old handwritten card label and other typed collection labels, one of which notes that it was in H.B. Goodenough's collection, a collector based in Connecticut in 1900. Ex Malcolm Southwood collection, no. MS 2016.061.