Cornwall College students will turn pieces of the county's heritage from 'lumps of metal' back to working machinery in a new agreement with Poldark Mine near Helston.

Engineering students from Cornwall College Camborne will be restoring machinery from the tourist attraction and former working mine at Wendron, which is part of the Cornish Mining World Heritage Site and the only tin mine in Cornwall and Devon that remains open to the public.

The plant at the mine, which reopened under new ownership in 2014, has suffered after 14 years of little or no investment, and the engineers are planning to restore it in a project which could take a number of years.

New owner David Edwards said: “Poldark definitely had an impact for us, it brought more people in buying bookmarks and taking a tour of the mine. The challenge now is to restore the machinery we have on display and get it back in order so that it is more interesting to the public. These big lumps of metal are pretty meaningless unless they’re actually doing something.”

Engineering lecturer Luke Bazeley said: “This is the perfect live project to work on; they’ve loved visiting the site and finding out more about Cornwall’s heritage. We’re taking away a water pump to start working on back at Camborne and it should be complete within a month; we need to remove the red and green paint and restore it to its black and brass. It’s mostly cosmetic but the students will need to do some research to find replacement parts.”

It’s estimated that the project will be ongoing for several years, with one piece of equipment removed at a time, giving even more students the chance to be involved.

David added: “Poldark Mine has been open to the public for 40 years this year so we have a lot that needs restoring. A lot of the collection comes from the Holman Museum in Camborne, and we have the last Cornish mine bell left, from Ting Tang mine. This has been a place of industry since the 1400s, one of the oldest industrial structures in the UK, so keeping it going is vital for Cornwall’s heritage and we’re very grateful for the help of these students.”