Parys Mine - Parys Mountain, Anglesey, North Wales, UK
Posted by: 
Dragontree
N 53° 23.122 W 004° 20.921
30U E 410299 N 5915988
This large mine is a magnificent example of both open cast and underground mining.
Waymark Code: WM6N5Z
Location: North Wales, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 06/24/2009
Views: 7
We found this mine thanks to GC1FXNQ the fantastic Earth Cache by grufftymilo who has a lot of information on his cache page.
Parys Mountain has been mined since the Bronze Age and during the 18th and 19th centuries this was the largest copper mine in the world. Today the mountain is still mined with a modern shaft sunk on the western side. Mona mine is a hillside open cast on the eastern side of the mountain.
The enormous open mine you can see from the viewpoint opened up after the shallow shafts collapsed early on in its history. The mine reached depths of 300m with 130m below sea level being flooded.
Today Anglesey Mining plc, formed in 1984, have sunk a 300m shaft and formed tunnels of over 1km mining over 2000 tonnes of ore. In 1995 mining began again extracting zinc, copper, lead, silver and gold. It is still mining now and extends to 80-600m below the surface.
Several programmes have been made about this famous mine including this one detailed on Channel Four: (
visit link)
Parys Mountain has a public walk taking you round the mine workings and giving everyone a chance to appreciate it.