Contact
Opening Times
Pit: daily all year round. Visitor Centre: 1 June - 20 September, Mon-Fri 10am-4.30pm, Sat 10am-1pm. All other times of the year by arrangement.
Facilities
Outdoor preaching place
Access issues
Access for disabled visitors to visitor centre only
Refreshments available
Shop
Toilets
Grade II* listed
Parking
Parking available
Coach parking available with advance notice
Depression in ground, possibly created by mining activities, where John Wesley preached on 18 occasions from 1762 to 1789. Remodelled in memory of Wesley into today's terraced 'amphitheatre' in 1806.
Concrete and mosaic interpretation panels were added near the entrance in 1983–5. Adjoining Busveal Chapel (1836) has pictures, exhibition panels and visitor centre. Part of the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape (aka Cornish Mining) World Heritage Site.
September 1762: 'The wind was so high at five that I could not stand in the usual place at Gwennap. But at a small distance was a hollow capable of containing many thousand people. I stood on one side of this amphitheatre toward the top, with the people beneath and on all sides, and enlarged on those words in the Gospel for the day (Luke X.23, 24)
September 1762: 'The wind was so high at five that I could not stand in the usual place at Gwennap. But at a small distance was a hollow capable of containing many thousand people. I stood on one side of this amphitheatre toward the top, with the people beneath and on all sides, and enlarged on those words in the Gospel for the day (Luke X.23, 24)
-- John Wesley's Journals
Gwennap Pit
Busveal, St Day, Cornwall TR16 5HH, UK