On the fiftieth anniversary of it being in the care of the National Trust, East Pool Mine has received the gift of a former mine building which was most recently used as an innovative recycling site.

The Miners' Dry has been donated to the trust by Christine Smith who, with her late husband, ran their pioneering business Cornwall Paper Company from the site.

The building was very important building to the men and boys who went down the mine, as it was where they showered and changed before and after shifts; and where they left their personal belongings. It takes its name from the period when steam engines powered Cornish mines, and hot steam pipes in the building provided a place where the miners could dry out their working clothes, whereas previously they often had to walk home with them wet.

Mrs Smith said: "I am delighted to make this gift to the National Trust and to see the Miners' Dry take its rightful place in the industrial heritage of the area. I look forward to seeing the building restored and reunited with the mine it once served."

Ian Marsh, general manager for the National Trust in west Cornwall, said: "I am really proud to have accepted the gift of the Miners' Dry from Christine and her late husband. It is a very generous act and continues the legacy left by the Trevithick Society who gifted East Pool Mine to the National Trust in 1967, 50 years ago this year.

"This kind of generosity and commitment to our heritage secures special places like East Pool Mine for ever, for everyone. The work now starts to conserve the building with a new slate roof and vital repairs to the masonry.

"I will always remember the first time I saw the Miner’s Dry at Geevor. I found it very moving and the way the Dry is presented today gives visitors an emotional understanding of what it was actually like for miners, the risks they took, and how some paid the highest price of all with their lives."

Kingsley Rickard, Vice Chairman of the Trevithick Society, said: "We’re delighted that this acquisition will now bring all the old buildings of the last development of East Pool Mine under a single ownership again."

Julian German, chair of the World Heritage Site Partnership Board, said: ‘East Pool Mine is one of the engineering jewels of the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage Site. Owned and cared for by the National Trust since 1967, East Pool Mine has the distinction of being the only metalliferous mine within the World Heritage Site to retain Cornish vertical cylinder pumping and winding engines in their original houses."