Florence Mine Heritage Centre - Europe's last iron ore mine

The Florence Mine is the last working iron ore mine in Europe, part of the rich mining history of West Cumbria. The rich iron ore deposits, known as haematite, are found in abundance in the limestone layers of West Cumbria. The red ore is the distinctive colour of the mine, its buildings and the people who still work there.

At the Mine Heritage Centre you can learn about miners and how they lived and worked, and extracted the ore from the ground. The Museum contains the clothes they wore, the shovels they used, and the clay pipes they smoked. You can visit a reconstruction of a drift, and find out what life was like down Florence Mine at the beginning of the century.