Why did men come to settle at Kynance Gate during the Middle Bronze Age?  It has been suggested that they came in search of copper. I am not an archaeologist, and would not presume to enter the archaeological lists, but since this question is partly geological I will give some of the geological evidence that we possess, from which the archaeologists may draw their own conclusions.

It is true that metallic copper has been found in the serpentine of the Lizard area. This copper is, however, very widely scattered and usually found only in very small amounts after prolonged searching. Of the localities nearer to Kynance, copper has been found at Holestrow and Pentreath, in or near Lizard Town, at Ruan Major and south-east of Mullion Cove. Further afield copper has been reported from the quarries at Countybridge and Meaver, on Goonhilly Downs and near Traboe, as well as from Coverack and some shafts near Beagle’s Point by Black Head. From this account copper may appear to be plentiful, but this is far from the truth. At most of the localities named there was insufficient copper to warrant an attempt at economic exploitation. Even with the relatively advanced mining, methods and machinery available a century ago no deposit of copper in the Lizard ever yielded a profit. The only serious venture was at the locality near Mullion Cove, which was called Wheal Unity or Ghostcroft. At this mine one piece of copper was raised which measured 7 feet 6 inches in length and weighed about three tons. This specimen is preserved at the museum of the Geological Survey in South

Kensington, in London.

In the rest of Cornwall outside the Lizard peninsula, copper was a very plentiful metal. As early as the period 1726 to 1735 the annual production of copper was about 6,000 tons, by 1806 it was 79,000 tons and in 1838 it reached the figure of 151,000 tons. At this time copper mining was a highly profitable business. This gives some idea of the relative abundance of copper in the Lizard and elsewhere in Cornwall. In the Lizard, copper is little more than a mineral collector’s curio.

If we assume that the Bronze Age men settled in the Lizard for the purpose of making bronze, as well as pursuing agriculture and keeping animals, where would they obtain the tin which they required to alloy with the copper in order to make bronze? There is certainly no tin in the Lizard area proper, although some has been won in the Meneage. The vast majority of tin which has been obtained in Cornwall has come from streams running off the granite backbone of that great county, or later from mines situated on or near those granites.

If the men of Kynance had to journey to some more distant part of Cornwall for their tin, why should they not also obtain their copper from the same source or some where near it? I wonder if the archaeologists would consider it likely that the inhabitants of Kynance Gate were an agricultural community which bartered its produce for bronze with their brothers elsewhere in Cornwall, who would have had the wood and the ores of copper and tin necessary for the manufacture of bronze.