THE Kit Hill, Tamar Valley and Mary Tavy mining districts could be part of a new Cornish Mining World Heritage Site if a unique bid for the status is accepted.

The bid will put the mining landscape on a par with such international treasures as Stonehenge, the Great Wall of China and the Taj Mahal.

The unique bid is the first multi-landscape World Heritage Site nomination in the UK and will be the most complicated and extensive bid the Government will have submitted to UNESCO.

Cornwall County Council is undertaking the bid on behalf of 73 organisations and 126 individuals.

Project officer Ainsley Cocks said the status would bring tangible social and economic benefits to the region, drawing down conservation funding, providing a major asset to international tourism marketing and assisting in the regeneration of former mining communities.

'It should make people aware of their own environment and realise they have a heritage to be proud of,' he said.

Explaining why sites in Devon were being included in the Cornish bid, Mr Cocks said mining practises were the same in West Devon as in Cornwall. 'It would be unrealistic for a bid to be put forward with just the geographical area of Cornwall,' he stressed.

'At Devon Great Consols in particular the mines were recorded as producing the largest amount of copper during the period, later changing to arsenic production.' Wheal Friendship and areas around Weir Quay, together with Wheal Betsy at Mary Tavy are among other sites currently included on the Devon side.

On the Cornish side of the Tamar, a large area around Kit Hill, Kelly Bray, Calstock, Gunnislake, Harrowbarrow and Luckett is outlined.

The Objective One funded project began in April 2001 and is based at the Cornwall Archaeology Unit. There are nine proposed boundary areas, which are still undergoing change.

But it is hoped the final boundaries will be fixed by January 2003, when nomination documents will be made available for public consultation and will be submitted to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It will then go to UNESCO in February 2004.

An enthusiastic team of archaeologists and historians is collecting evidence and electronic mapping has been used to define the current landscape in each area and identify the extensive range and extent of surviving mining heritage. The database currently contains 920 mine sites.