Copper Mine Point

On the headland east of Spanish Town stand the roofless stone engine house, chimney stack and cistern of a copper mine worked by Cornish miners in the middle of the nineteenth century, and probably by the Spanish long before them. It closed in the 1860s and the ruins have been left as they fell, on a cliff of rock stained green and blue with copper salts, with the Atlantic breaking a long way below. There is no gate, no fee and very little shade, and it takes about twelve minutes to reach by taxi. It is the one piece of hard history on an island that mostly sells beaches.