Boscastle is a small fishing village located on the North Cornish coast, just north of Tintagel. Boscastle is one of the few sheltered inlets on the North Cornish coast and therefore a likely landing point for tin traders of ancient times, possibly as far back as Phoenician traders in 2000 BC. The river also provided power for a number of mills which date back at least as far as the 12th Century. In more recent times, as well as being a fishing harbour, Boscastle was a small port (similar to the others on the north coast of Cornwall) importing raw materials such as limestone and coal, and exporting slate and other local produce. In Victorian times, as many as 200 vessels came each year, mostly from Bristol and South Wales.
In 1302 the name was recorded as Boterelescastel which meant "castle of the Botterels". It's possible this became shortened to bos because this was the Cornish word for dwelling ("bos-castel" would have been understood by Cornish speakers as "village with the castle" as the word kastell also existed in Cornish).
Streams from the marshes of the Otterham Downs give rise to the River Valency which is then fed by five more rivers on its way to Boscastle. The name "Valency" has been explained as a corruption of the Cornish Melinjy (i.e. "Melin chy" = Mill-house) from the mill which existed in Boscastle in mediaeval times.
The steep Valency Valley acted as a funnel for the dramatic flash flood in 2004 that put Boscastle on (and nearly wiped it off) the map. Over 1.4 billion litres of rain fell in the course of 2 hours which is thought to have been caused by the Brown Willy effect, where the high tors on Bodmin Moor cause the repeated formation of rain clouds which blow along the prevailing wind and then dump their rain. Around 50 cars were swept into the harbour, the bridge was washed away and roads were submerged under 9ft of water. A total of 91 people were rescued in the largest peacetime rescue operation ever carried out in the UK.
In spring, wild garlic grows beneath the trees.
Unlike their more versatile narrow-leaved cousins the three-cornered leeks, ramsons grow mainly in shady places such as woodland. Their broad leaves are solar panels that have evolved to capture the weak winter light early in the year before the trees are in leaf. They are an indicator that woodland is ancient and has provided a shady environment over a long period to colonise.
The broadleaf trees in the valley include sycamore.
Since its reintroduction, sycamore has spread widely as the seeds are extremely fertile and able to grow just about anywhere where the ground is sufficiently wet. In particular they can grow within the shade of the parent tree, creating dense cover that crowds-out other species. In some areas it is regarded as an invasive weed.
Minster Wood, in the Valency valley, is an ancient broadleaf woodland which has had continuous tree cover for at least 400 years, providing a habitat for many fern species. The woods consist of native trees but are not entirely wild, having been managed since Norman times by the monks of the priory of Minster. Up to the 19th Century, bark was collected for tanning, and charcoal was generated by burning coppiced trees.
Just before you go through the gate into the churchyard, at the end of the fence to the left is the grave of a "witch".
Joan Wytte, known as the "Fighting Fairy Woman of Bodmin Town", was unjustly condemned as a witch in the 18th century and died in Bodmin Jail. For many years, her skeleton hung unceremoniously in the Museum of Witchcraft at Boscastle. When the museum was taken over, the new owner wanted to give her a proper burial. However, as an alleged witch, the Church would not allow her to be buried on consecrated ground. Therefore her grave is just outside the perimeter of the churchyard.
The path leading off to the right passes Minster Holy Well.
Minster Holy Well is situated alongside the path through the churchyard from Peter's Wood to the church. Due to the tree cover and its position below a steep bank, the Holy Well tends to collect leaf litter and mud washed out by the rain, and is therefore somewhat unglamorous in appearance. However it is probably closer to the original Celtic form than many other sacred springs which have been "improved" by the Christian church either in Mediaeval or Victorian times.
Minster (St Merthiana's) Church, in a valley on the outskirts of Boscastle, is on a site which dates back 1500 years to Celtic times. It was originally known as "Tolcarne" which means literally "rocky hole" and has been interpreted as meaning a chapel made from rocks. Parts of the church there today dates back to 1150, built by William de Bottreaux. The church was restored twice after falling into disrepair, so there are some features that date back to the Tudor period and others to Victorian times. Look out for the mysterious carved scissors on the tower wall. No one knows why they're there! Suggestions include a trademark of the stonemason, or an homage to the wool trade which funded the church restoration. In early spring, the church is surrounded by a carpet of daffodils and wild garlic.
The church building at Minster and surrounding countryside in the Valency Valley provide ideal habitat for the endangered species, the Greater Horseshoe bat which forages for moths and beetles in the nearby woods and pastures. The colony at Minster is the largest known in Cornwall, containing around 5% of the entire UK population. The bats can be seen in summer emerging from their roosts about half an hour after sunset.
The gnarled trees on the right are hawthorn.
In Mediaeval times, bringing hawthorn blossom into the house was thought to bring death and it was described as smelling like the Great Plague. The explanation for this is thought to be that the hawthorn blossom contains trimethylamine which is one of the first chemicals formed when animal tissue decays. Young leaves of the plant can be used in salads as the chemical is not present in the leaves so these taste nutty rather than of death.
St. Symphorian's Church, on Forrabury Common above Boscastle, was originally built over 900 years ago and featured in the poetry of J.S. Hawker as "the silent tower of Bottreaux". According to legend, it has no bells because the ship carrying them was hit by a freak wave and went down just off the coast, with only one survivor. In Victorian times, the main part of the church was rebuilt and extended significantly, but the original Norman tower was left intact.
To make blackberry wine, combine 2kg blackberries + 4 litres of boiling water in a plastic container with a lid. Once the water has cooled to lukewarm, mash blackberries and add red wine yeast and pectic enzyme (blackberries contain pectin so this is needed to stop the wine being cloudy). Cover for 4-5 days then strain through muslin.
Transfer the liquid to a demijohn and add 1kg of sugar. Top up with a little more water to make it up to a gallon. After fermentation, the wine should clear by itself; in the unlikely event that it doesn't, use some finings. Rack off from the sediment and bottle; it's worth allowing the wine a year or two to mature as it massively improves with age. As a variation, you can add 500g of elderberries and increase the sugar content for a more port-like wine which will need a couple of years longer for the elderberry tannins to mellow out.
Bramble roots are perennial but its shoots last just two years. In the first year, the shoots grow vigorously (up to 8cm in one day!). In the second year, the shoots mature and send out side-shoots with flowers.
The stream is known as Treforda Water and is a tributary of the River Jordan.
Gunnera looks like giant rhubarb but the leaves stems are spiky. It tends to favour damp places as quite a lot of water is needed to supply its huge leaves.
The plant has a symbiotic relationship with cyanobacteria which live between its cells. The cyanobacteria, also known as "blue-green algae", are photosynthetic and also supply the host plant with nitrogen which allows it to colonise poor soils.
Below the confluence of the Treforda Water and another stream, the river is known as the Jordan.
The River Jordan joins the River Valency at the Bridge in Boscastle and collects water from another steep-sided valley, doubling the floodwaters that descend on Boscastle in heavy rain. The name is thought to be a corruption of the French - jardin - from Norman times, and may refer to the gardens surrounding Bottreaux Castle, which could conceivably have run down to the river. The River Jordan was originally the dividing line between the separate parishes of Forrabury and Minster until they were united in 1702.
Where the path meets the road, a short diversion up the hill to the left, just on the other side of the crossroads, is the Napoleon Inn.
The Napoleon Inn is a public house located in Boscastle, just uphill from the junction between the old main road and the road to Camelford. The inn is Boscastle's oldest pub, built in the 16th Century. It was a recruiting office during the Napoleonic wars. The landlord joined up with Wellington to go to Waterloo and so was called "Napoleon man" on his return - hence the name of his pub.
The Wellington Hotel is located at the bottom of the old main road in Boscastle, across the road from the harbour. "The Welly", as it's known locally, is the old village coaching inn. Some parts of the building are 4 centuries old, but most of it dates from 1853 when the number of travellers to the area increased. It was once called the Bos Castle Hotel, but was renamed on the death of the Duke of Wellington in 1852. The lamps are originally from St Juliot Church and were quite possibly designed by Thomas Hardy.
The steep-sided valley of the river Valency forms a sheltered natural harbour at Boscastle. The two stone harbour walls date back to Elizabethan times, built in 1584. The outer breakwater was built in 1820, but destroyed in 1941 by a drifting mine and then rebuilt by the National Trust.
The harbour was very difficult to approach in a sailing ship and it was not safe for ships to enter under their own sail. On a ship's arrival, a boat with eight men, known as a "hobbler", would go out to tow them into the harbour, whilst men on the shore held the ship in the middle of the channel, using ropes.
The Cobweb Inn is a public house located in Boscastle at the south-east edge of the village, opposite the public car park. The inn was previously a wine cellar and flour store dating from the late 1700s. It has traditionally always had cobwebs hung from the roof beams as apparently this was thought to keep flies off stored wines and spirits. It was converted to a pub in 1947 when tourism to North Cornwall surged after the end of the war. The cobwebs remained on the beams until the 1990s, when Health and Safety inspectors required that they be removed.
The Methodist chapel in Boscastle is about 200 metres downhill from the Napoleon Inn on the old main road, opposite Boscastle Primary School. The chapel you see today was built by Thomas Rosevear and opened in 1825 on a day that was recorded as "uncommonly wet". The tower was added in 1904 (just after the Mission Chapel across the road was built, which may hint at some rivalry). However this wasn't the first chapel on the site. This replaced the previous chapel which the Methodist congregation had grown too large for by 1823.
The previous chapel was built by Thomas' father John Rosevear as a thanksgiving offering after one of his merchant ships carrying valuable cargo escaped from French Privateers. As his ship was chased on its way into Boscastle harbour, they hid from the French privateer in the lee of Meachard rock. Whilst the French launched a boat to search for the "disappearing" ship, a number of women from the village went out on the headland in red shawls, and mistaking this for the redcoats of the British Army, the French ship fled.
Despite the names, The Old Mill by the bridge in Boscastle is newer than Newmills (situated further up the Valency valley). The Old Mill is an 18th century building, replacing an earlier 17th century mill on the same site. The mill wheel is 19th century as the wooden structures would eventually rot and need replacing. Newmills dates from Tudor times.
A stone drinking trough and well house is located on Gunpool Lane. Although constructed in mid to late 19th Century, it was made by reusing materials from Tudor times, which were possibly from the demolished chapel of St. James.
Another architectural fragment from what appears to be a chapel window has been used as a buttress for one of the houses on Old Road. Square holes can be seen where the window mullions (upright supports) would have been secured.
Boscastle village hall is located on the corner of Gunpool Lane. It was originally The Mission Chapel built in 1900. Before this, the mediaeval chapel of St. James probably stood on or near the site of the Mission Hall. No-one knows exactly when St James was built, but certainly before 1400 when it was granted a licence. The tower of St James was still in use as late as 1837 and the ruined tower was shown in a sketch in 1846. The Reverend A. G. L'Estrange, who visited Boscastle in 1864, wrote that "the very Church St James" had fallen down and "its fair corner stones and adornments may be traced in the walls of the adjoining cottages."
Jordan Mill is located in Boscastle at the bottom of the Jordan Valley, about half way down the old main street. The mill is thought to be the site one of Cornwall's oldest, possibly corresponding to one mentioned in the Domesday book. It is known a mill existed here in 1234 and a stone dated 1309 was found when the building was renovated in the 20th Century.
The site of Bottreaux Castle is located on the west side of the Jordan Valley in Boscastle, about half way down the old main road; there is a signposted path to the old castle site. Bottreaux Castle was the 12th century fortress of the de Botterells which included extensive dungeons. Very little apart from the mound now remains, as over the centuries the residents of Boscastle "reused" stones from the castle to build their houses, but it provides a good view point over the village and harbour.
Rose Cottage is located on High Street in Boscastle. It is the surviving part of what was originally a row of 18th century almshouses. Almshouses provided a place of residence for poor, old and distressed folk. It's likely that in this period there would have been a fair amount of old-age sickness including metal poisoning from working in nearby lead, antimony, arsenic and copper mines and the manganese mill down on the harbour, as well as disabling injuries from mining and quarrying.
The Old Forge is located in Boscastle next to the end of Valency Row. Now it's "The Old Forge Gallery" but was, as you may have guessed, originally a blacksmiths shop which was built in mid 1800s. However it was not the only one: there were also two other blacksmiths in the village, though apparently the blacksmith on the harbour was the best one at making stoves.
The house on Valency Row in Boscastle known as the Ship was an inn built in 17th century when a series of developments occurred in Boscastle, following the building of the new harbour quay. In fact, Boscastle is reported to have had 22 pubs at one point! The adjoining house - the Old Brewhouse - was the brewery for the inn. Until it closed at the end of the First World War, The Ship was the oldest pub in the village and is reported to have been the rendezvous of the ships' crews for centuries, where many of the men recounted the experiences of their trips.
The Shippen is a house located between the hairpin bend and the harbour in Boscastle. The word Shippen (meaning cow barn) is still in common usage in Devon and was imported into Cornwall as part of the Saxon influence which extended a little into this area. The equivalent name in Cornish is Bowgie, which appears in place names further west. In this case, The Shippen was originally a cow barn with an adjacent stable and pigsty. The former farmyard is now the garden.
The Museum of Witchcraft is located in Boscastle, on the north bank of the river, close to the harbour. It's just past the Visitor's Centre and before the Harbour Light café. The 50 year old museum is the largest of its kind in the world. It was badly damaged by the flood in 2004 but has been fully restored.
The Harbour Light café is located in Boscastle, close to the harbour on the north bank of the River Jordan, near the witchcraft museum and youth hostel. The Harbour Light was originally built in the 16th Century. After many years of being used to house pigs, it was bought in the 1950s and carefully renovated using local materials for use as a gift shop. During a subsequent round of renovations in the 1990s, a "time capsule" (a glass coffee jar) was embedded in the wall of the shop. The beautiful old building was one of the most photographed in Boscastle. Then sadly in 2004, the Harbour Light was almost entirely swept away by the flood. After the flood, the time capsule was found, still intact, washed up 60 miles away on Woolacombe Beach near Ilfracombe. The building has been rebuilt as a fairly faithful copy of the original, and is now a café.
Below Penally Point, the headland which forms the right wall of the natural harbour of Boscastle, is a natural blowhole. Around an hour each side of low tide, when a swell is running (which is most of the time in North Cornwall), the blow hole shoots a horizontal jet of water across Boscastle harbour and emits a thundering sound, hence it is also known as the Devil's Bellows. There is a cave all the way through Penally Point from the blowhole, following a fault in the rock. Inside is a large cavern and when the water rushes through from the outside, it compresses the air in the cavern which vents through the blowhole. Eventually the sea will erode away all the rock along this fault, forming a new island at the mouth of the harbour.
Penally Terrace in Boscastle gets is name from Penally Hill on which it is situated, above the Harbour Light café. Penally Terrace was formerly a fish cellar, purpose-built in the late 18th century when the pilchard trade was at its heyday. The original arrangement would probably have been open sheds on the ground floor and net lofts above, arranged around the central courtyard. They were converted into domestic accommodation in the early to mid nineteenth century. It seems that Boscastle's pilchard industry may have peaked a little earlier than Port Isaac where the new cellars were not built until the 1820s.
Boscastle's Visitors' Centre is located on the north bank of the river, just before it reaches the harbour. The building housing the Visitors' Centre is the former pilchard cellars of the fishing village, which were known as the "Bridge Cellars". By the mid-eighteenth century, the quay had been improved and repaired and was receiving salt from Bristol for the pilchard industry. Around this time, the cellars, that have since been converted to the Visitor's Centre and café, were constructed as purpose-built fish cellars arranged around a central courtyard.
Around 400 million years ago, green algae made its way from the sea to the land and the first liverworts appeared. These ancient, very simple plants are still around today. DNA studies suggest that all land plants and mosses may have originally evolved from early liverworts.
Liverworts are found in damp, shady places but form flat structures that almost resemble soft corals. Their name is based on the appearance of the leaves which was thought to resemble an animal liver. Like mosses, liverworts don't produce flowers but instead reproduce via spores.
Water pepper, as the name implies, grows on wet ground such as on the margins of lakes (it's also known as marsh pepper). It's relatively late to appear, not really getting going until June.
Another of water pepper's common names is "smartarse". As Emma Gunn points out in her foraging book "Never Mind the Burdocks", this is nothing to do with being clever: in the past, the dried leaves were added to bedding to drive away fleas etc. and the name comes from rolling over on a leaf in the wrong way.
Water pepper leaves can be used as a herb and has a lemony flavour similar to sorrel followed by heat which is a little like chilli. Its used in Japanese cuisine, particularly with fish. The young shoots are used to garnish sushi or sashimi.
The plant is unpalatable to livestock but is eaten by some insects which has given rise to a Japanese saying which transliterates to "Some insects eat water pepper and like it" but is used more like "There's no accounting for taste".
Water mint is a wild species of mint which grows in damp places or even in water. It can be recognised by leaves and the strong mint smell when these are crushed. It produces a ball of lilac flowers in late summer.
Water mint will hybridise with spearmint and this creates peppermint (which itself is sterile).
Water mint and peppermint have high levels of menthol whereas the sweeter flavour of spearmint comes from a different chemical called corvone. Menthol creates a cold feeling on the skin by activating the sensory receptors in a similar way that chilli creates a heat sensation.
Damselflies are predators similar to dragonflies but are easily distinguishable by the way their wings fold back parallel to the body when at rest whereas the dragonflies' wings are fixed at a right angle to the body. The Damselfly has a much smaller body than a dragonfly which means it has less stamina for flight. Nevertheless, it can hover, in a stationary position, long enough to pluck spiders from their webs.
Male damselflies have two sets of genitalia. At the start of mating a packet of sperm (spermatophore) is transferred outside of the male's body between the two and then passed on to the female who uses it to fertilise her eggs as she lays them. Female damselflies lay their eggs inside vegetation. For some species this is in water plants and the female can swim underwater for half an hour before returning to the surface to breathe. Males often guard the egg laying female to prevent a rival male from sneaking in and replacing the spermatophore with his own.
Damselfly eggs hatch not into damselflies but water-living nymphs which look a bit like a dull-coloured damselfly with a 3-forked tail instead of wings. The tail is actually a set of gills used to breath underwater. When the larva is fully developed, it climbs out of the water on a stem or rock. Its skin then splits open and a damselfly emerges with wings which need to be inflated and dry before it can fly.
Willow trees are usually found in wet places including riverbanks and waterlogged ground. Common species include grey willow and goat willow but these often hybridise so they are more often known by the more broad-brush collective term "pussy willows" (due to their catkins). In January the fluffy, grey male catkins appear and and turn bright yellow in March when they release their pollen. Then in April, the fertilised female catkins develop into woolly seeds. In early May, air can be filled with the downy seeds that look a bit like dandelion seeds.
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