When you think of gold mining, places like South Africa or the American prospectors might come to mind, but according to archaeological evidence found on a mid Wales hillside, gold mining in the UK might have been going on since the Romans were last here.
Interest is mostly sited around the Dolaucothi Gold Mines in Carmarthenshire, Wales, which were worked from the the mid 18th Century right up to 1938. It was only in the 1930’s after the mine closed that archaeologists began to wonder if the mines were significantly older based mostly on tools found around the area. Further research in the 1960’s took this back as far as the Roman period and in the late 90’s this was confirmed.
It seems likely that any Roman gold mines were rather crude simply due to the lack of suitable drilling tools to access much of the gold, but techniques such as hushing and hydraulicing are known to have been used by the Romans in other parts of Europe and would be usable to a limited degree here.
Today you can visit the site of the mines and take a tour underground to see what mining was like during the Victorian period, as well as details about the Roman mining in the area.
