The Levant Mine engine house, perched, apparently precariously, on a cliff above the Atlantic Ocean, houses the oldest working beam engine in Cornwall, a 24 inch (0.61 m) winding engine designed by Francis Mitchell, made by Harveys of Hayle, and installed in 1840. The mine extended to a considerable distance and to a depth of 350 fathoms (640 m) under the sea, and over the many decades of its history some 130,000 tons of copper ore, 24,000 tons of tin ore and considerable quantities of arsenic were extracted from its workings. A man engine was installed in 1857 to help the miners to reach the distant workings, but it collapsed in 1919, killing 31 miners.

The mine closed in 1930 but five years later the engine was purchased for preservation in situ by a group of private individuals who subsequently formed the nucleus of the Trevithick Society. Some of the Levant galleries were opened up and worked from the nearby Geevor Mine between the 1960s and the closure of Geevor in 1991. The Levant Engine is now owned by the National Trust, and the engine is steamed daily in the summer season between March and October.