One of my favourite collecting localities is West Wheal Towan Mine (aka Wheal Lushington) at Porthtowan. In particular the large dump at Vivians Shaft that marks the last trial working of the mine in the 1920's has proved very productive for me. It is quite a scenic location perched on the cliffs overlooking the Atlantic and makes a nice evening walk as the angle of the light is ideal for finding specimens on the face of the dump.


Vivians Shaft dump - the cliff edge lies to the right hand side of the wooden fence, as can be seen in the view below.



During just such a visit in July of 2013, I found this specimen:


A lovely example of a vug of Quartz crystals that has a rim of crystalline Cassiterite, several small Anatase crystals are also present on the specimen. Apart from a clean in oxalic acid to remove some iron staining this specimen is as I found it. The specimen came from a point roughly mid way along the dump.


A detail view of part of the vug showing the crystalline Cassiterite.

Moving forward a year, one sunny August evening in 2014 I decided to take my dog for a walk at the site and just happened to take my collecting bag with me as well.

My objective initially wasn't Vivians Shaft dump but to look at the old gunnises on the outcrop of Wheal Tye Lode - these are very impressive examples of early surface workings. After examining these old workings I wandered back in the direction of the big dump at Vivians Shaft.

Just as I approached the western end of the fence that can be seen in the location photo above I spotted an interesting looking specimen sitting on a small patch of mine waste. Although it was filthy and coated with iron oxides, the weight of the piece indicated it likely contained Cassiterite, so into the bag it went:



Upon giving it a clean, again with oxalic acid to remove the iron oxides, it revealed the specimen is rich in Cassiterite with some Pyrite and a few small Anatase crystals:



Following cleaning and examining the specimen I added it to my other specimens from this locality and noticed it was similar to the original specimen shown above. What came as a big surprise was when directly comparing the two specimens, I found they joined together perfectly.

Now I had not broken the specimen when I found the first piece and the other piece I found around 20 metres from where the first specimen was located on the dump and just over a year apart - now what are the chances of that happening?


The two halves of the specimen, orientated along the break where they 'jigsaw' together perfectly.

This isn't the first time I have found two halves of a previously broken specimen, however in all other cases the parts of the specimen have been lying in close proximity to one another and were picked up at the same time. It is interesting to speculate on how this piece got broken then quite widely dispersed on the dump.