Original subtitles

Narrator: A ghostly house built for a brutal dictator.

This is clearly something that is out of place.

This is a very strange design, and it doesn't really fit.

Narrator: A colossal piece of engineering

Left to rust in the wilderness.

This huge, metal tunnel floating in midair

Just sort of arches down the mountain

And disappears into the trees.

It looks like it goes on forever.

Narrator: And towers battling violent storms

On the edge of the earth.

You've got the waves of the atlantic ocean

Crashing beneath,

And it's just like at any moment,

They could collapse

And just fall into the water below.

♪

Narrator: Engineering marvels now abandoned.

Ruins shrouded in mystery.

Within these decaying structures are the echoes of history.

They speak of death and destruction,

But also human ingenuity and endeavor.

Each haunted shell ready to be unmasked

And tell its own unique story.

♪

-- Captions by vitac -- www.Vitac.Com

Captions paid for by discovery communications

♪

In the east of the mediterranean sea

On the greek island of rhodes

Is a building that's been under attack for decades.

♪

It's a rather grand, impressive mansion,

But clearly has been abandoned or misused

For a great many years.

It has been meticulously vandalized

From top to bottom in such a way and so purposefully

That it suggests that it was done

With a real sense of aggression or even hatred.

♪

Narrator: High above the towns and coastline below,

This building feels strangely at odds

With the rest of the island.

This is an alpine lodge, not something one would expect

To see on a hot, mediterranean island.

Narrator: This structure is not alone in its unfamiliar design.

Curiously, next to the house itself is an abandoned hotel

With abandoned barracks.

And then off in the distance, not too far away,

Is an abandoned village.

So it's not an isolated case.

Whatever happened here in this house

Also happened in the surrounding area.

♪

Narrator: Hidden away in the woods,

This building might appear insignificant and forgotten,

But it contains evidence of a defining moment

For rhodes during the 1930s.

As local expert chorafitis eleftherios

Knows well.

It is really unique and it was built at a period of time

Where it was still kind of a peaceful

And romantic mixture of cultures.

It's sad because this kind of thing

Suddenly is going to change dramatically.

In a few years' time, everything is going to become darker.

♪

Narrator: Over 500 miles from mainland Italy,

Rhodes sits within a group of islands

Known as the dodecanese that for 400 years

Had been under the rule of the ottoman empire.

The strategic advantage that these islands afford

Has been coveted for centuries,

And come the 20th century, that hasn't changed one bit.

In 1911, Italy will go to war with the ottoman empire,

And some of the islands off the turkish coast

Are seized by the italians and become italian territory.

♪

Narrator: Following the first world war,

Italy fell under the fascist leadership of benito mussolini,

And soon, expansion in the mediterranean

Became a priority.

Overlooking the island and its people,

This is villa de vecchi,

A prized possession

Of the feared italian governor of rhodes.

De vecchi actually was a very strict ruler.

He was a kind of a man that he wanted to control everything.

He actually didn't allow the people

To talk their own language.

He forced them to speak italian.

You know, all of our grandpas speak perfect italian today.

Here we have this italian fascist governor,

And he's built his own personal palace and castle.

It's a monument to the vanity of what is really

A small-time, petty politician.

Narrator: Begun in the years leading up to his arrival,

De vecchi would ultimately leave

His own mark on this residence.

But right from the start, as every detail shows,

This place was built for the elite.

Like every other part of the house has been designed

And made and constructed in Italy.

This specific wood, for example, the beachwood and the parquet

Was all made in the north of Italy.

The materials, the designs, everything --

Completely italian.

And the detail, very luxurious.

It has to be somebody

Who was really number one on the island, right?

And that means definitely a commander,

A very luxurious person,

A very rich person, or even a king.

Narrator: This italianization was also seen in the towns

And all across the island,

But the villa was the jewel in the crown.

What this villa is saying

With its quintessential italian design

Is that "this is now the new Italy.

"rhodes is really important to us,

And it's part of our plans for the future."

Narrator: As the world sped toward the second world war,

Mussolini felt rhodes needed a more domineering governor.

So at this point, de vecchi stepped in to rule the land

And add his own finishing touches to this project.

He was someone with an all-together more obsession

About power, more obsession about fascism,

More obsession about being a dictator.

And we see that in the refined architecture

And the additions that he brought to the villa.

♪

When you come to this point, not only that you

Feel the absolute... [ speaks indistinctly ]

But you can see the whole of the coastline --

Asia minor, the coastline of turkey, the northeast sea,

Actually the city of rhodes.

If I was in his shoes, I would feel like zeus above olympus.

You are the god of the gods, and this is how he was feeling.

The commander, the absolute commander.

He was above all the people.

He was the god of them.

♪

Narrator: With war looming and weaker countries

Appearing vulnerable,

Mussolini was looking to expand italian control east,

Giving rhodes an elevated position.

Any empire requires fort operating platforms,

Staging posts, and bases from which to consolidate,

Command and control the areas away from home.

And for mussolini, rhodes was to be that place,

Which would act as the area to command

The new eastern roman empire.

Narrator: So with a new focus on rhodes,

Was this villa actually meant for someone

More important than de vecchi?

♪

Narrator: With the italians looking to build an empire

During the 1930s,

This once lavishly decorated villa in occupied rhodes

Appeared to be the perfect residence

For the guiding force behind it all.

This was not just another villa and in fact,

Is part of a larger complex.

There is space for soldiers.

There is space for visitors.

This is clearly a guarded environment.

This is somewhere where very senior people,

People like mussolini, could be.

You can see that there is a desire

To make rhodes into an important center

For the new italian fascist empire.

Narrator: But although de vecchi

Had increased the fascist hold on the island,

Life on rhodes was about to become even worse.

♪

The second world war swiftly ended

The idea of a new roman empire.

And when the italians signed an armistice in 1943,

They were now pitched against their former allies,

The nazis, who quickly moved in to secure rhodes.

Under the nazis, the amount of war crimes, atrocities,

Brutality that the nazis will visit on the greek islands

Is pretty horrendous.

They murdered, they executed, they tortured,

Just to make it really clear, "we are in charge now."

♪

Narrator: Following the war,

The villa was kept ready for the arrival

Of any important figures, but no one ever came.

And in 1955, it was abandoned for good.

♪

While mussolini never set foot here and de vecchi

Had left the island,

This villa came to represent those violent years

Of oppression and suffered as a result.

Pretty much as soon as the villa falls into disuse,

The people take revenge.

They deface it.

They try to humiliate it.

It's their way of getting a piece back at those

Who had oppressed them.

♪

Narrator: In the thick forests of west virginia,

Deep in the appalachian mountains,

A river snakes through the formidable new river gorge.

♪

You're deep in what feels like a jungle or a tropical forest

And you're heading into the middle of nowhere.

As you go through the trees, you see these bits of rusting iron.

There seems to be a scattering of abandoned machinery.

And then scattered amongst all of this machinery

Are foundations of buildings, suggesting that, once,

There must have been some kind of community there.

Narrator: Delving deeper,

Objects all-together stranger begin to emerge.

One of the most impressive sites in the gorge

Is almost hidden by trees.

You have to get up close to it,

And then you realize there's this massive structure

Going up the side of the gorge.

This huge, metal tunnel floating in midair

Just sort of arches down the mountain,

Disappears into the trees.

It looks like it goes on forever.

Narrator: What is this bizarre contraption?

The answer is linked to a giant of industry

And his stubborn obsession.

♪

This tale begins in the mid-19th century

With a man of extraordinary ambition.

Born in England and driven by an american dream,

His name was john nuttall.

The story of john nuttall is a classic example

Of an ambitious young man who, from the age of 11,

Was working in the mines, saves his money,

And leaves England to seek his fame and fortune

In the promised land.

Narrator: Tragedy struck soon after arriving on american soil.

Nuttall's wife died,

Leaving him to tend to their three young children alone.

Yet, his thirst for adventure was undimmed.

And one night, he spotted something

That would change his life.

While standing in a tavern, john nuttall noticed

That they were using a particular kind of high-grade,

Smokeless coal.

Then he discovers that the railways are gonna be

Coming through and he says, "you know what?

There's a fortune to be made here."

Narrator: At one dollar an acre, nuttall snapped up

As much of this rugged mountainside as he could.

When the chesapeake and ohio railway line

Was completed through the gorge in 1873,

John nuttall and the town were ready and waiting.

♪

This is nuttallburg.

Its arrival began in an era of rapid transformation.

For a millennia, the new river gorge

Was a wild, natural area, and then coal was discovered.

It turned into this booming, industrial zone with rail lines,

Coal trains rumbling through, mines operating day and night,

Towns growing up up and down the gorge.

♪

Narrator: But what made new river coal so easy to access?

♪

The river course cuts through the appalachian mountains,

Such that it could only have been there

Before the mountains themselves rose.

The rivers cut down through all of the geology,

And in doing so, it's actually exposed

Four very nicely preserved coal seams,

Which makes it also easy to get at.

Narrator: Easy to access, but grueling work for the miners.

This particular layer of coal was actually very shallow --

Just 3 1/2 feet deep.

And so the conditions were actually really dangerous.

The miners were often just lying horizontally on the ground

Just chipping away at the coal.

And the deeper they got, the more danger there was

Because the ceiling, essentially,

Was becoming more and more fragile.

And if there was a collapse, they had no way of getting out.

♪

Narrator: Despite the dangers,

This coal was highly profitable.

And though hard to imagine now,

By the time of nuttall's death in 1897,

The town had developed into a vibrant and diverse community.

Nuttallburg was the most productive mine

In the gorge for a time,

And as such, it attracted workers from all over the world.

You had italian-americans, eastern europeans,

African-americans, all working in this area

And in many cases, buying land and building homes.

Narrator: But their lives were about to change.

A famous pioneer was set to arrive

And put his own unique stamp on the town,

Bringing with him national attention.

♪

Narrator: Amongst the thick forests of the new river gorge

Is a memorizing tunnel of steel

That seemingly floats up the mountain.

Its creator was none other than henry ford,

Who arrived here in 1920.

When henry ford bought up nuttallburg, the reaction --

It was largely dismissive.

In fact, one of the local journalists

Sarcastically wrote that he would have been better off

Using the old workings he had just acquired

For storing auto parts as opposed to mining.

Narrator: Some felt the coal seams

Had been largely worked out,

But ford was undeterred.

He wanted to get coal from the seam hundreds of feet

Above the river corridor down to the railway below

In a faster and more efficient way.

The coal was extremely friable, or brittle,

And so it had to be handled with care,

So henry ford built this conveyor belt

To transport it down to the river.

And that conveyor belt was one of the longest in the world.

Narrator: It became the beating heart of the town,

As park ranger david fuerst explains.

This is the most prominent feature in the town.

It's the conveyor system,

Which is the heart of nuttallburg.

And as you look up the hill here,

You can see it runs 1,400 feet down from the mine portal,

Which is above, down to the tipple.

And the way it operated was it carried the coal down a chute

Using what's called a rope-and-button system,

Which was a very advanced technology at that time.

Narrator: This rope-and-button conveyor belt

Was part of a cutting-edge process.

Loaded coal cars exited the mine and entered the head house.

The cars were dumped,

And the coal transferred to the conveyor.

The brittle coal was transported downhill

Slowly and gently to avoid and risk of damage.

At the bottom was the tipple, where the coal was sorted

And loaded into waiting rail cars.

125 tons of coal were moved

By this efficient system every single hour.

So why would ford's high-tech venture go down in flames?

At this time, henry ford's plant in dearborn

Was turning out model-t cars at a terrific rate.

It took a huge amount of energy to run what, at the time,

Was one of the largest mechanized production facilities

Ever built.

Narrator: Ford wanted to control the supply of this energy,

The fuel that would power his factories.

Henry ford wants to control

Every aspect of the car-making process,

Whether that was the rubber for tires,

The steel for the body work,

And even the coal for powering the factories.

Narrator: His desire to monopolize

Every stage of production

Was known as vertical integration,

But ford faced one crucial obstacle.

He bought the mine,

But he couldn't afford to buy the railroad,

And the railroad was what he needed to get the coal

To his plant in dearborn, michigan.

If he couldn't predict exactly

When the deliveries were gonna come,

If he couldn't control the price,

He realized that controlling the mine

Really didn't help him that much.

Narrator: Once ford realized he could neither control

Nor buy the railways,

He swiftly abandoned nuttallburg, selling up in 1928.

The mine finally closed for good in 1958,

And the last of the residents of nuttallburg moved away.

They left their homes,

And the forest and the vegetation

Began to creep back in and take over once again.

♪

Narrator: Today, the national parks service is engaged

In a constant battle with mother nature to prevent her

From consuming nuttallburg's industrial heritage.

Today, the new river gorge

Has returned to being a near wilderness.

Most of the visitors are people coming to enjoy wild nature,

Rock climbing, and white-water rafting,

And the mines are silent.

♪

Narrator: Near the west coast of portugal,

High in the hills of sintra is a beguiling mix of structures

Set within a fantastical landscape.

♪

The site's a little creepy,

And the thing about it is that everything is hidden.

The gardens are large and lush,

But when you start walking around them,

Things seem a little strange.

Gough: The entire place is like a labyrinth.

You can go off this direction, you can go off that direction.

There's too many options for you to logically sort of figure out.

♪

At the center of it all is a structure like nothing else.

It looks like some kind of mythological entry

To the gates of hell or the center of the world.

It just feels powerful.

It feels purposeful, and you just want to descend.

You want to find out what's down there.

But as you start that journey,

It's absolutely not clear where it's going.

So there are still questions about this place.

We don't have all the answers to the mysteries here.

♪

Narrator: Growing in the shadows of the enchanting mansion

Of quinta da regaleira,

The gardens have a life of their own

And hide a world full of secrets and surprises.

♪

When we walk in the garden,

We are going to see lots of contrasts

Between darkness and light,

The green of nature and the dark stone.

It seems a labyrinth, not only the exterior,

But also the tunnel.

Narrator: So where might this maze end,

And for what strange ritual

May this have been built for?

♪

Narrator: Hidden beneath the trees of sintra, portugal,

Is a mysterious private garden

That was under lock-and-key for most of the last century,

But since its rediscovery, different theories

Of what it was used for have surfaced,

And as local guide matilde almesh knows,

With this place, there's always more than first meets the eye.

There's always something new to discover,

A surprise in every corner.

A cave or a tunnel

Or something dark that I didn't see before.

♪

Gough: There's pathways that lead to nowhere.

You turn the corner, there's a huge tower.

The whole thing feels very surreal,

As though it's a dream sequence from a movie.

♪

Narrator: The theatrics of this environment were no mistake.

Everything here came straight from the imagination

Of this site's two creators,

Both with something to prove.

It was built by a wealthy man

Called antonio augusto carvalho monteiro.

Carvalho monteiro was the heir of a huge fortune.

Meigs: Monteiro worked with an italian architect

And stage designer named luigi manini.

Well, manini must have felt like this was the ultimate.

He had a client with unlimited amounts of money

Who wanted to build some of the craziest,

Most fanciful, most delightful stuff ever created.

♪

Narrator: Born from the melding of these two minds,

This masterpiece of curiosity was completed in 1910,

And the result was something entirely unique.

You see a promenade of statues of greek and roman gods,

You see a chapel,

You see a waterfall with stepping stones.

Everywhere you turn you see a different fantastical element

Borrowed from history with no real rhyme or reason

For how it all hangs together.

Narrator: Dramatic, baffling, and intriguing,

The route through the garden

Continues towards an unusual rock structure,

Which seems to reveal the true purpose of this site.

It's known as the initiation well.

The well is almost like an optical illusion.

It's like looking at a medieval tower in reverse.

Instead of rising up into the sky,

It's a staircase that spirals down into the earth.

Narrator: This spiraling descent into darkness

Makes it apparent this is all part of a journey,

But to where?

We are at the top of the structure

And we need to go down nine levels,

And the idea is for us to find the darkness down there.

You don't really know what you are going to find down there.

You don't know if you need to go up or if you have an exit.

This is a test to make you feel the right way,

To make you listen to your instincts, listen to yourself.

Part of the really interesting symbolism

Is the fact that there's nine levels to the initiation well,

The journey itself, and the number nine

Is reminiscent of dante's "inferno," of dante's hell,

So it's almost a symbolic journey to hell and back.

♪

Narrator: The symbols and references

Appear to obscure the meaning of this journey,

But then one sign starts to unlock the mystery.

♪

Okay, so we end down nine circles into the darkness,

And we find a clue here on the floor.

At first, it seems an eight-pointed star,

But it is a compass.

As you continue to look at the compass,

Another major shape jumps out at you.

It's a large cross.

We believe it is a knights templar's cross,

And this can be related to some initiation rites

Or the idea of initiation rituals.

Narrator: The knights templar were a powerful religious order

In the middle ages

Known for their secret initiation ceremonies.

So, that reference suggests this is linked to a similar ritual.

♪

But if this was all about joining a secret society,

Then which one,

And what would be discovered inside the tunnels?

♪

Narrator: In sintra, portugal,

Carvalho monteiro and luigi manini

Built a convoluted labyrinth that's rumored to have been used

As a site for initiation rituals.

But was this the real purpose?

It seems as if monteiro and manini,

They wanted their visitors to rely on their senses.

As you walk through the tunnel, you can't really see anything,

So you have to use your hearing to direct you.

Initiation usually involves journey,

And if you go back to some of the earliest initiatory cults,

They were physical journeys through tunnels

Into different spaces with different experiences,

And here, one gets the sense that a similar journey

Might be being laid out for the visitor.

Any visitor brave enough to venture

Toward the sound of the water is eventually rewarded

By coming out in this lovely garden scene with its waterfall.

♪

Narrator: While the journey of self-discovery and enlightenment

Seems to be part of monteiro's intentions,

If it was meant for an initiation,

Then into which group remains unclear.

Everywhere you look, there's this wild mishmash of symbolism.

You have pagan symbols, tarot, you have symbols

That are associated with the knights templar,

Even greek and roman gods.

Narrator: But finally, as the journey through the garden

Draws to a close, the answer to what it's all about

Suddenly seems to appear up ahead.

Gough: So, you find yourself at the end, in this chapel,

This apparent house of god.

You think, "all right, this is it.

This is where I'm supposed to finish my journey.

It's all about god."

Narrator: Or perhaps, once again,

The real meaning isn't so clear.

This is no ordinary chapel.

It's full of symbols that can have different meanings.

Gough: One of the symbols you notice right away

Is the all-seeing eye.

Now, of course, that's a masonic symbol

That says the eye of god is always watching.

Narrator: But there is another interpretation

Of what this could be linked to.

The ropes around it, a reference to freemasonry,

Or a reference to the portuguese cavalries in the 16th century,

Representing the vessels.

Narrator: While the freemasons are known

For their initiation ceremonies

And their use of a symbol of a rope or tow-line,

The alternative maritime use of ropes

Could be the key to what monteiro was really up to.

It may, of course, have nothing to do with initiation at all.

At the time it was built,

Portugal was going through many changes.

Those could have been felt as very unstable times

By someone like the builder of this place,

And he may well have been trying to hark back to a time

When things felt a little more certain,

When portugal was a stronger, more international country.

This may simply be a reaffirmation of the solidity

Of the portugal he remembered

Rather than anything remotely arcane.

Narrator: Following the assassination

Of the portuguese king in 1908,

The old order was being ripped up.

For an aging, wealthy monarchist like monteiro,

Perhaps this was his own elaborate,

But private tribute to a lost world.

He tried to represent here his ideals, his beliefs.

That is why when we walk around the garden,

And when we visit the chapel and the palace,

It's like to take a glimpse into carvalho monteiro's mind.

♪

Narrator: Following monteiro's death in 1920,

The house and gardens were sold,

And the initiation well forgotten about

For the next 75 years.

♪

Gough: This appears to be an initiation center.

But guess what? We might be wrong.

Monteiro, he never wrote it down,

But what we do know, its real purpose,

He's taken it to the grave.

♪

Narrator: Along the rugged coastline

Of cornwall in southwest England

Is a stark and dramatic sight.

♪

It's an abandoned, isolated,

But quite beautiful scene of these derelict buildings

On top of these high, craggy cliffs with the vast,

Crashing waves down below.

Narrator: Beneath the lush, green hills above,

Man-made structures emerge from the rock face.

It's all a bit dramatic.

You've got these big structures

Precariously balanced on this clifftop.

You've got the waves of the atlantic ocean

Crashing beneath.

And it's just like at any time,

These structures could fall into the sea.

It's a startling and quite dramatic juxtaposition

Between this rolling, gentle, calming,

Poldark countryside just in land,

And then this rough, violent, industrial scene.

Narrator: A mixture of towers and cavernous ruins

Litter the hilltops.

The buildings themselves look

So precarious on the edge of the cliffs,

And you really wonder "why would you need them to be there?

They're not lighthouses."

So were they getting something for the sea?

What was the reason for them being so close

On the water's edge?

♪

Narrator: These structures stand defiantly

Over the atlantic ocean,

Yet the peaceful tranquility today is in stark contrast

To the scene witnessed here centuries ago.

This was once at the center of cornwall's rich mining heritage.

♪

Working in these mines would have just been

An assault on the senses.

It's a cacophony of noises.

This would have been victorian industry at its most intense --

The noise of the stamps crushing the tin ore

Of the vast chains hauling the carts.

This was an extraordinary

Industrial hive of activity.

Narrator: Glimpses of powerful machinery

Inside remaining stone towers

Pay homage to this mighty industrial past.

This is botallack and levant,

Two neighboring mines on cornwall's wild tin coast,

The site of tin and copper mining since roman times.

These, however, are no ordinary mines.

What I love about these structures

Is they give a glorious window

Into an incredible feat of victorian engineering.

♪

Narrator: But why were they built on the precipice,

And what catastrophes brought them crashing down to earth?

♪

Narrator: By the mid-1700s, these two mines had established

Themselves firmly on the tin and copper mining map,

But these weren't just your typical mine shafts,

As illuminated by charlotte tomlinson

Of the national trust.

Tomlinson: This shaft is where the skips came up.

It's about 2,000 feet down, and then it does go out

Into the sea about a kilometer as well.

What's incredible about these mines is

They weren't mining land.

They were mining under the sea and half a mile out at sea.

Narrator: These are submarine mines,

Workings that follow seams

Of precious minerals out under the seabed.

Scott: So the way these mines worked was you would start

By digging vertically,

And you'd dig down in a mine shaft,

And then you'd start digging horizontally,

And you'd just keep on digging.

But obviously, these places were full of water,

And that's where the beam engine came in

'cause it would pump the water out

So you could access the rock face.

Narrator: Beam engines were designed

And developed in the early 1700s

Specially to remove flood water from cornwall's

Deep water mines.

A form of steam engine,

An overhead beam would pivot up and down,

Applying force from a vertical position.

The driving motion of this piston powered a water pump

Using the pressure of steam and atmospheric pressure.

The miners could then continue their perilous work.

And so, you could imagine, you know,

Particularly in the early days,

They're just using, you know, sheer brute force

To break the rocks open with pickaxes

And a bit later with dynamite --

You know, going deep down

But then going out with sea above you.

That's a really dangerous and precarious thing to do.

Narrator: Despite the dangers, the market value of tin

Ensured healthy profits for the owners.

The value of tin at the time

Meant that more risks were being taken.

People would go to further and further lengths

To be able to extract that metal.

Narrator: And that meant pushing further and further out to sea.

Now, remember, this is back in the 18th century.

We don't have the mechanical air drills,

We don't have the tunneling machines.

These are people working by hand with chisel, hammers,

And gunpowder.

Narrator: For the miners,

Every day meant descending into the depths

And praying.

This was very dangerous work

And long before health and safety.

The human casualty toll was high,

Not only from the natural dangers --

Falling rocks, injuries, disasters, accidents --

But also the long-term effects

Of working in such toxic environments.

It was dark and dirty and hot,

And the effects on their health of working underground were bad,

And they had very short lifespans.

They didn't really live past 30 quite often.

That was the usual life expectancy of a miner.

♪

Narrator: In the early 1800s,

A pumping engine was set up at the base of the cliffs.

These mines became a hotbed of action,

Producing tin, copper, and arsenic

With hundreds of women and children working on-site.

Botallack alone dumped a staggering 1.5 million

Tons of waste into the sea,

Dyeing it a distinctive red color.

As the industrial revolution roared into

The mid-19th century, new technology was introduced

To streamline production even further.

In 1865,

Botallack became the center of national attention.

At botallack, they had installed a new winding engine,

And it was so cutting-edge and so innovative

That the prince of wales and his wife,

The future king edward vii and queen alexandra,

Came to visit,

And they went down the shaft in the winding engine.

This became such a topic of note and such a tourist attraction

That the mine was even able to charge visitors a guinea

To come in and look around.

Narrator: This new technology vastly increased the speed

And efficiency of moving men in and out of the mine shafts,

Yet dark days loomed on the horizon.

In the late 19th century, falling tin and copper prices

Hit this region hard.

Most of the mines closed, among them botallack,

Which fell silent in 1895.

Then, in 1919, disaster struck at levant.

The engine that powered men

Up and down the main shaft gave way.

A link between the rod and the engine snapped,

Sending 31 men plummeting to their deaths

At the bottom of the shaft,

And that led to the eventual decline of the mine,

From which it never recovered.

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Narrator: Today, botallack is a world heritage site,

And while the age of tin may be over,

The beam engine at levant has been lovingly restored,

And tourists can now see this mighty engine in use once again.

Tomlinson: I think levant as a site is unique

Because it's got the working beam engine

In its original place.

Essentially, it could be doing the job that it was doing,

You know, 178 years ago,

And they can see that working in action.

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