What Are The Great Orme Mines? Where Are They?

The Great Orme Mines are on the Great Orme , Llandudno, Gwynedd, North Wales.
They are now thought to be the largest and possibly earliest Copper mines of their type in Europe.
The mines are re-dicovered in the  1980's during development for a car park on the Orme.
As long ago as the C19 it was recognised that the mines might be pre-Roman but the antiquarians then believed that the native peoples couldn't develop mining skills and attributed ( wrongly) the mining to the Phonecians.
There are still many miles of underground shakts and tunnels to excavated and it is said that 100,000 tons of material would have to be shifted to open up many more passageways underground. Many thosands of stone hammers and bone tools have been found and it is a wonderful credit to the original miners over 3,600 years ago that they achieved the amazing work they did with these tools.
The Great Orme Mines have revealed the largest underground, manmade cavern in Europe which is worth visiting just to stnd and wonder at how they achieved this with the technology available to them.
The work continues  at the site and no doubt lot more suprises are in store for the archaeologists and public alike as work progresses further underground here.