Our class went to visit the Bronze Age mines on the Great Orme, Llandudno, where people mined copper 3 to 4 thousand years ago.

    It was a tiring walk up the Orme to get to the mines. First we saw two videos and heard about smelting and how they mixed copper and tin together and heated it in a crucible to make bronze. A man poured the molten metal into a mould to make axes.

    Once we each had a helmet we went into the mines. It was damp, narrow, cold and slippery. We were really glad that we didn’t mine or live in those days. Nick, the man who was taking us into the mines, told us to imagine that we were little kids 5 or 6 years of age working in the caves. It was spooky and in those days they didn’t even have lights.

    Eventually we stopped at a huge underground cavern. We reckon you could put at least 6 double-decker buses in there. We read a sign that said they found a black cat that was dead but with blackberries around it. People are not sure whether it was a sacrifice or not.

    After that we tried to find some of our own copper ore (malachite) on a sort of rocky field. Most of us finished with a piece of malachite. Some of us walked away with a fossil or huge, fascinating chunks of rock.

                   Year 5/6