When I was there I met a very helpful bloke who was the part time warden, and he showed me a rock he was carrying in his bag, hand sized but heavy – from Porth wen (near bull bay) it had been fashioned into a hand tool. Because of this I asked him, wasn’t the area mined in the copper age and long before the Romans, but he wasn’t keen to agree with this. Yet he was showing me the evidence of pre-history mining in that area.
It’s a great place to visit just after the rain as the colours are amazing.