The Cotehele Estate, now owned by the National Trust, was strategically situated alongside the River Tamar for trade.
The name Tamar is documented in the second century and likely to be substantially older. It is thought it might share a common origin with the River Thames and both might stem from an ancient Celtic word meaning "dark". The source of the river is within 4 miles of the North Cornish Coast and the river flows 61 miles south across the peninsula forming the majority of the historic border with Devon. Work is being done by the Environment Agency to improve the water quality of the Tamar and its tributaries by reducing the amount of run-off of phosphate fertilisers into the rivers.
A quay at Cotehele was first recorded in 1731, located slightly closer to Cotehele Bridge than the main area of the present quay. The quay once served both the Edgcumbe family's Cotehele estate and also the mines in the area. Copper ore and arsenic were exported whilst timber and coal were imported.
Cotehele House belonged to the Edgcumbe family for nearly 600 years before being donated to the National Trust in 1947, together with over 1000 acres of land. The house is largely Tudor, and by the 1750s it was already attracting tourists seeking to visit a historic building.
Cotehele house includes a turret clock which is powered using weights on a rope wrapped around a capstan, rather than a pendulum. The clock has no face and instead strikes a bell on the hour. It is the earliest turret clock in its original position and still working, and possibly the earliest working turret clock in the world. The design was relatively common in the 14th Century but most were replaced and scrapped.
The gardens at Cotehele were constructed during Victorian times and are now Grade II* listed in the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historical Interest. The formal Italian terraced gardens around the house are connected by a tunnel to the Valley Garden, which is planted with trees including rhododendrons and azaleas which produce profuse amounts of brightly-coloured flowers in spring. Within the Valley garden is a Victorian Summerhouse and former mediaeval elements including an exceptionally well-preserved dovecote and a pond which was originally used to farm carp to supply fish for the kitchens.
Beechwood ageing is used in the production of Budweiser beer but beech is not the source of flavour. In fact beechwood has a fairly neutral flavour and in the brewing process it is pretreated with baking soda to remove even this. The relatively inert strips of wood are then added to the fermentation vessel where they increase the surface area available for yeast. It is the contact with yeast that produces the flavour in the beer, not the beech itself.
Danescombe Sawmill was opened in 1878 and used a 43 foot waterwheel to drive the sawing machinery. Power from the waterwheel was also used to haul carts up the tramway, which is now the track. These were loaded with timber grown on Cotehele Estate land that was landed on the quay at the bottom of the track. Using just the power from the waterwheel, the mill could saw 2000ft of timber in an hour. Even the sharpening of the saw was mechanised using water power. Despite its efficiency, the mill was relatively short-lived; by 1905 it was disused and had lost its iron roof, which was presumably sold as scrap. Its demise is thought to have been brought about by the closure of the nearby mines as much of the sawn timber was used in the mines.
The small holiday cottage where the track up the Danescombe valley opens out by some buildings is an engine house thought to be built in the mid 1830s for a pumping engine. At this point, it was known as Danescombe Mine. However, it's thought that the mine was first worked for copper and arsenic from the 1820s as Wheal Calstock. The larger engine house slightly further up the valley was built in 1881-2 as part of Cotehele Consols but by 1884 the engine was put up for sale. In 1973, this engine house was converted by the Landmark Trust into a holiday cottage.
The ruined building beside the footpath from Danescombe Cottage was a paper mill which is thought to have been built in the 18th Century, and was recorded as being in production in 1788. Water from the stream was used to fill a header pond and then a leat ran from this to a waterwheel around 14 feet in diameter. The mill closed in 1857 after a larger one opened further up the valley.
Some estimates suggest the UK has up to half of the world's total bluebell population; nowhere else in the world do they grow in such abundance. However, the poor bluebell faces a number of threats including climate change and hybridisation from garden plants. In the past, there has also been large-scale unsustainable removal of bulbs for sale although it is now a criminal offence to remove the bulbs of wild bluebells with a fine up to £5,000 per bulb!
A mature tree can absorb tens of kilograms of carbon dioxide each year adding up to a tonne over a number of decades. However, burning one litre of petrol produces just over 2kg of carbon dioxide so it takes about half an acre of trees to absorb the average amount of carbon dioxide produced by one car in a year. When trees die and decompose, the majority of the carbon is gradually released back into the atmosphere depending on how fast the various bits of tree rot (the woody parts take longer).
Ferns produce neither flowers nor seeds and rely on the tiny spores for their reproduction which are most commonly distributed by the wind. This allows them to colonise some quite random places such as rocky ledges that heavier seeds might not reach. Since the spores come from just one parent fern, the offspring is a genetic clone.
Navelwort is a member of the stonecrop family which are able to survive in barren locations by storing water in their fleshy leaves. In dry conditions, the plant takes emergency measures to conserve water, producing fewer green chloroplasts (so it goes red) and loses it succulent fleshiness. Leaves with red tinges are therefore not the ones to forage.
The Tamar Valley Donkey Park is roughly three-quarters of a mile up the lane to the right, signposted St Anne's Chapel.
There are about 30 donkeys at the Donkey Park which are rescued from a range of places. Some are from Ireland, where they are bred to work in the peat fields; others are from Bodmin Moor. A few are donations from other farm parks or farmers who didn't have enough donkey company to keep them from getting bored and causing mischief. At the Tamar Valley Park, the donkeys are trained to provide rides for young children which provides stimulating activity for the donkeys as well as income for their upkeep.
Postboxes are a Victorian invention. The first pillar boxes were erected in the 1850s and by 1857, the first roadside wall boxes were in place. Early postboxes were green and it wasn't until 1874 that some in London were painted red. Over the next 10 years this was applied elsewhere. Postboxes are initialled with the reigning monarch at the time which allows them to be approximately dated. For example Edward 7th (marked as E VII) was only on the throne for 10 years so these date from the 1900s before the First World War.
There are 2 sparrow species in the UK but only the house sparrow is common in Cornwall.
Sparrows are quite versatile in their diet. Insects are an important source of nutrition, especially for young birds. Their favourite food is seeds, particularly cereals. They will eat bread if they are hungry but whole seeds are preferred as they are more nutritious.
Daffodils contain chemical compounds which are toxic to dogs, cats and humans and ingestion of any part of a daffodil is likely to cause a stomach upset e.g. when unsupervised children have eaten leaves. The bulbs have both higher concentrations and a broader range of toxins than the rest of the plant and can be mistaken for onions (although don't smell of onion).
The more widely accepted theory for the name is that it is based on the way that the gate touches either side of the enclosure which is a key feature of the design. The word "kiss" is in the sense of "light touch" as used in e.g. billiards.
The effect of ivy on buildings is controversial as it depends a lot on the properties of the surface it adheres to. The rootlets wedge into any cracks in the surface and so on surfaces that are fragile, ivy will cause damage. A study for English Heritage found that on hard, firm surfaces, ivy did little damage. The blanket of leaves was also found to have beneficial insulating effects and protect the masonry from water, salt and pollution.
Blackbirds begin singing from around the end of January but it is normally the overkeen young males initially - the older, wiser males wait until March, pacing themselves for the singing period which continues into the early summer. Blackbirds have been shown to sing more during and after rain but exactly why is not yet known.
The Carpenter's Arms is named after the carpenters who built Cotehele House in the 15th Century, and the pub here is thought to date from the same period, although the current building is more recent.
The settlement of Metherell was first recorded during mediaeval times, in 1298. The name is thought to be mean "middle hill", from the dialect of English in use during mediaeval times.
Lady's thumb, also known as "redshank", grows on moist, disturbed ground often along field edges and tracks. It is related to water pepper and has similar long leaves but the lady's thumb leaves have a dark blotch (hence the thumbprint basis of the name). Its flowers are also in bigger clusters of pink rather than the puny white strand that water pepper produces. It is edible but without the chilli-like heat of water pepper (which provides a more memorable way to tell them apart).
The plant has a plethora of local names in different parts of the UK but East Anglia deserves a mention for its baffling "saucy alice" and - an alternative suggestion for how the leaves got their markings - "devil's arse-wipe".
You are now re-entering the Tamar Valley AONB.
The Tamar Valley Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty has a similar conservation status to a National Park. It encompasses an area of 75 square miles around the rivers Tamar, Tavy and Lynher, partly in Cornwall and partly in Devon. This also includes an area of Cornwall and West Devon mining landscape World Heritage Site, 41 county wildlife sites and over 1700 hectares of woodland. It was first suggested in 1963 that the Tamar valley area should be designated but this was only eventually granted in 1995.
Growing daffodils has been an important industry in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly for over a century. When the Great Western Railway reached Cornwall, this provided a means to export perishable goods such as fresh flowers and fish which previously would not have survived the long journey by boat or horse and cart. Out of respect for the dead, coffins were transported by the railway for free. It was therefore not unheard of for coffins filled with daffodils to arrive in London from Cornwall.
The remains of horizontal tunnels beneath the woods and spoil heaps further down the slopes are thought to be from early, possibly mediaeval, mining activity. The steep slope would have provided an opportunity for natural drainage, allowing shallow underground mining to occur near the top of the slope without the need to pump water out of the shafts.
The chestnut tree originated in Sardinia and there is evidence of its cultivation by humans from around 2000 BC. It was introduced into Britain by the Romans who planted chestnut trees on their campaigns to provide an easily stored and transported source of food for their troops.
The small stream collects water from around Metherell and is a tributary of the larger river which is down the bottom of the hill to the right when you reach the junction, and the route will shortly follow. There were at least four mills dotted along the river system here, all of which were used to grind corn.
Watermills were first documented in the first century BC and the technology spread quickly across the Roman Empire with commercial mills being used in Roman Britain. By the time of the Domesday survey in the 11th Century, there were more than 6,000 watermills in England. During Norman times, the feudal system lead to a greater proliferation of mills with each manor being self-sufficient with its own mill.
A leat runs from the weir to the mill to power the waterwheel. The weir was badly damaged and most of it was washed away by a flash flood in December 2020.
The waterwheel is an overshot design, with a wooden channel bringing water from the leat to the top of the waterwheel.
Most waterwheels in Cornwall used the overshot approach which generally requires more construction effort to feed water to the top of the wheel, compared to an undershot wheel which is simply placed in the river. Fairly recent publications in engineering journals have demonstrated that overshot wheels are more efficient at transferring energy than undershot waterwheels. This would have been particularly important during drier months when the supply of water from a small stream can be very limited. An overshot design also allowed the mill to be located slightly further away from the main river which has obvious advantages during floods.
The mill building at Cotehele dates back to the 18th century and was further developed during Victorian times. In the 1880s it was known as Murden Mill after the small settlement just upriver and by 1905 both had changed to Morden. It was originally used to grind flour and after this was used for grinding animal feed until the 1960s. It was restored in 2002 for grinding flour, and the mill bakery has also since been revived. The flour is on sale at the mill.
Cotehele mill is regularly used to grind grain from which the flour is sold in the mill shop. In the interests of science and lunch, a number of baking experiments have been tried with the Cotehele flour. It has a rustic, grainy texture that adds fantastic character to bread. The flour produces beautiful rustic breads when mixed 50:50 with strong white bread flour. When mixed at just a quarter with strong white flour it produces a dough which still has plenty of character and makes excellent rolls. These have been extensively tested in picnics on walks.
By Victorian times, the parish of Calstock had more lime kilns than any other in Cornwall, with many of these along the river at Lower Kelly and Cotehele where coal and limestone were landed. Often culm (a local soft, peaty coal) was used as the fuel. The coal and limestone was loaded into the top of the kilns and was allowed to burn for a week; this produced quicklime which was raked out of the bottom. The lime from the kilns was transported by horse and cart to the nearby farms and market gardens.
The early purple orchid gets its common name from its spring flowering time - it appears at a similar time to bluebells although it lasts a bit longer. It has a Latin name meaning "virile" which is in keeping with the word "orchid" coming from the Greek word for testicle (on account of the shape of the tuber).
Early purple orchid is the con-man of the plant kingdom, with brilliant purple flowers resembling those of other nectar-rich orchids. When the insects arrive and push through the pollen to investigate the promising flowers, they discover that the flowers contain no nectar.
The Calstock viaduct is part of the Tamar Valley railway that was constructed at the start of the 20th Century and still runs between Gunnislake and Plymouth. The viaduct was built between 1904 and 1907 from 11,148 precast concrete blocks. It is 120 feet high with twelve main arches each 60 feet wide, and one mini-arch at the Calstock end. Originally, a steam-powered lift was attached to it which could raise and lower wagons from the quays over 100 feet below.
In 1483, Sir Richard Edgcumbe joined a rebellion against King Richard III. The rebellion failed and Edgcumbe was pursued by the King's troops into the woods at Cotehele. Edgcumbe managed to escape by throwing his hat into the river, giving the impression he had drowned, and lived in exile in Brittany until Henry Tudor took the throne. On his return, Edgcumbe built the chapel in the spot where he had thrown his hat into the river to give thanks for his escape.
The six-oared elm boats known as Pilot Gigs were general-purpose work boats, but one of their uses was to transport the pilot to and from a ship, which resulted in the name. The first boat to meet a ship gained the business of transporting the captain (and thus being paid) and thus a "race" came into being, with different boats competing for business. Today, Gig Racing is of a recreational nature, but the boats are still built to the exact well-documented specification of the originals. Elm wood is highly resistant to water, so much so, that town water mains were made of elm before the widespread availability of iron.
Squirrels are rodents, closely related to chipmunks and slightly more distantly to dormice. The word "squirrel" originates from an ancient Greek word meaning "shadow-tailed", referring to the bushy tail of a squirrel. A family group of squirrels is known as a "drey" (also the word for a squirrel nest). A group of unrelated squirrels is known as a "scurry", though squirrels tend not to hang out in groups.
Grey squirrels were introduced to the UK from the USA in the late 19th Century and within decades they had replaced the native red squirrel in most parts of the country.
Compared to red squirrels, grey squirrels are able to eat a wider diet (including acorns), are larger so can survive colder winters, and are better able to survive in the fragmented habitats created by urbanisation. They are also thought to be carriers of a squirrel pox virus which they usually recover from but has been fatal to red squirrels, although red squirrels are now also developing some immunity.
To date, culling of grey squirrels has not reversed their domination of woodland habitat and alternative approaches such as planting food with contraceptives are being explored as a means to control the population. The theory is that infertile squirrels can compete for food against fertile squirrels, whereas culling can create a glut of food resulting in a higher number of squirrels surviving which replace those that were exterminated. Natural predators such as goshawks or pine martens also remove more grey squirrels than red squirrels. This is because red squirrels are more savvy having co-evolved with the predators so for example they recognise the scent of pine martens and actively avoid areas with this.
Squirrels assess each of their acorns before burying them. If an acorn is too light (which suggests it might have a hole), the squirrel will eat it immediately rather than risking it going mouldy.
In order to later find the nuts that they've buried, squirrels need to be organised. Some species of squirrel have been studied and found to structure their hoards by type of nut e.g. burying all their acorns under one tree and all their conkers under another. This is equivalent to us organising all the veg onto one shelf of the fridge to make it easier to remember where to look for them.
As well as forgetting where they buried some of them, squirrels may also lose a quarter of their buried food to birds, other rodents and fellow squirrels. Squirrels therefore use dummy tactics to confuse thieves by sometimes just pretending to bury a nut.
Squirrels eyes are positioned on the sides of their head which allows them to spot predators approaching from behind them. When a squirrel spots a predator, its runs away in a zigzag pattern. This confuses many of their predators but unfortunately it doesn't work well for cars.
Young squirrels suffer a high mortality rate in the wild and less than one in three make it to adulthood. The ones that do, live on average for about 6 years, although a lucky one can live to about 12 years old. In captivity, where there are neither predators, cars nor cold winters to contend with, they can reach 20 years old.
By using their tail as a parachute, squirrels are able to survive falls from high trees. This allows them to attempt risky jumps between treetops that don't always work out. They are one of the few mammals that can (but not always) survive an impact at their terminal velocity i.e. if a squirrel jumped out of an aeroplane, it may well survive.
In urban areas in cold countries such as Canada, a black form of the grey squirrel is more common which is able to withstand the cold better both by retaining more heat and also having a slower metabolism. In wilderness areas where predators are more common, the black squirrels don't seem to do so well, perhaps because they are less camouflaged against trees than the grey ones.
The word "fairy" comes from an older English word faerie which itself is from the Old French faierie meaning "realm of the fays" (similar to modern French patisserie being along the lines of "realm of the cake maker").
faie was an Old French Romantic term for a woman skilled with magic or herbs. The alternative English word for fairy - fay - comes directly from this.
The Landmark Trust was founded in the 1960s to rescue buildings of historic interest by making them available as holiday lets to fund the restoration work. The first properties six properties were made available for rental in 1967 and in 2018, the 200th was completed. The history of each property is researched in detail and an album including photos of the restoration is included in each property.
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