From the main car park, make your way to the information board at the top and turn right onto the track to reach the Entrance sign.
If you are parked in the Additional Parking area, make your way to the bottom and turn left to reach it.
Follow the path from the Entrance sign until it emerges on a track next to the ticket hut.
There has been a settlement at Godolphin which has been continuously occupied since before the Norman Conquest. It's possible that the settlement evolved from a fortified settlement on the hill during the late prehistoric period. The first record of Godolphin was in 1166 as an almost unrecognisable Wotolta. A little later in the mediaeval period it was recorded as Godholkan and it is thought that the name is therefore likely to be from the Cornish words godh and olcan which together mean "tin stream".
The Goldolphin family built a grand manor house from stone quarried from Tregonning Hill. The house today has features dating from the 15th Century and was subsequently expanded on the profits from tin and copper mining and the materials from shipwrecks. The dining room ceiling is carved from the remains of a Portuguese boat that sank in Mounts Bay in 1526. By 1640, Godolphin was the largest house in Cornwall with two courtyards.
By 1785 there were no male heirs in the Godolphin family and the focus of the family shifted to London in the early 1800s. As the price of tin fell, less was spent maintaining the house and the dilapidated southern courtyards were demolished. When the Earl of Godolphin title passed to the Duke of Leeds (hence nearby Leedstown and Leeds Shaft in Great Work Mine) the stagnation of the estate continued until it was eventually sold off in the 1920s.
A deer park was created in mediaeval times which stretched out from the manor house to include most of the hill. This was surrounded by a hedge low enough from the outside for deer to jump over, but a ditch along the hedge made it difficult for deer inside to escape again. The last members of the deer herd survived until the mid-19th Century but were exterminated by farmers and hunting.
The Godolphin Estate was purchased in 1929 by the artist Sidney Schofield who devoted the rest of his life to restoring it. In 1970, the family committed to passing the property to the National Trust but it was not until 2000 that the wider part of the Godolphin Estate was finally sold to the National Trust. The Schofield family retained the house and gardens which they continued to restore and open to the public. Then in 2007, the house and gardens were also sold to the National Trust to secure their ongoing conservation.
During mediaeval times, rabbits were not common in Britain and were considered a great delicacy. Wealthy families imported rabbits from the Mediterranean and farmed these in warrens, such as the one located on Godolphin Hill, both for their meat and their fur. Flat, rectangular (pillow-shaped) mounds were created with stone tunnels in which rabbits could shelter from wet weather and then dig their burrows into the mounds. The mounds were built on the slope of a hill so that water could drain out of the tunnels to keep the accommodation dry.
At the summit of Godolphin Hill, there are remains of a fortified enclosure and six hut circles. It's thought that the site may date back to the Bronze Age.
The low stone walls remaining as hut circles were once the foundations of a round house. The granite foundations were likely to have been set into cob (mud and straw) walls which provided insulation and draft exclusion over bare-stone walls. A conical thatched roof on a timber frame rested on top of the walls. Heating was via a central fire which required some care with the thatched roof - presumably roof fires were not unheard of! These buildings varied in size from a just over a metre in diameter up to 10 metres. Some had walled enclosures attached and a few also had internal partitions.
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.
Many of the bushes alongside the path are blackthorn.
The expression "Blackthorn Winter" is a rural expression for a final cold snap in late March or early April when the blackthorn is in flower. It was generally used in the context of not getting too carried away (e.g. planting crops) if there was a warm week in early March as more frosts may still be yet to come.
German miners (whose traditional outfits now appear on garden gnomes) introduced the use of gunpowder for mine blasting in Cornwall in 1689 (as well as gnomes). This was first carried out in one of the mines of the Godolphin estate, quite possibly Great Work Mine.
Gunpowder represented a great technological breakthrough, as beforehand, rocks had to be cracked by heating and rapid cooling, or by soaking wooden wedges in water. An amount of granite that would take 6 days of work to break with a pick could be broken in one blast.
Gunpowder was discovered by accident by Chinese Alchemists attempting to make an elixir of life to render themselves immortal. A text from the 9th Century documented the event which quite literally backfired:
smoke and flames result, so that their hands and faces have been burnt, and even the whole house where they were working burned down.
Turn left into the car park and follow the path ahead with the Great Work Mine sign to reach the engine houses.
Follow the path round the back of the engine house then keep right to follow the path to the right of a walled mineshaft.
Continue a few paces further to reach a junction of paths with the path to the left leading out onto the road.
Great Work Mine started as Godolphin Bal - a tin mine on land leased from the Godolphin estate. By 1584, the mine employed 3,000 people. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the mine expanded to annex those nearby, forming a large complex with at least 15 shafts - hence the name. There were originally 3 engine houses for the mine. The surviving one was used for pumping water from 1000 feet below the surface up to the deep adit at 180 feet below the surface. The other two - for winding (hauling material from the mine) and stamping (crushing ore) - were demolished.
The massive gain in efficiency by breaking rocks with explosives rather than hand tools resulted in increased profits for the mine owners but it was less good for the miners themselves. When gunpowder burns, it produces copious amounts of acidic sulphurous gasses which attack the respiratory system - far from ideal in the poorly-ventilated confined space of a mine. A quill or reed filled with gunpowder was used as a fuse which worked most of the time but burnt at an unpredictable rate, and burning material from the fuse could drop and prematurely ignite the main body of gunpowder. Consequently there were many horrific accidents and fatalities.
In 1830, William Bickford devised a way of making blasting safer, based on his observations of the activities of a rope maker. His safety fuse consisted of a core of gunpowder surrounded by twisted yarns, bound in twine and sealed with tar to make it waterproof. Since gunpowder contains everything it needs to burn without the need for oxygen from the air, it would burn reliably inside its waterproof container at a predictable rate of 30 seconds per foot.
The name is from Granny Polglase who lived in a cottage on the lane. It's relatively common for Cornish surnames to be place names (quite a few start with Tre) and her surname was probably the name of the place where her family came from. In Cornish pol is "pool" and the word glas can be used to represent either blue or green or even grey! The colours in Cornish are quite different concepts from English colours as they are based on the landscape: blue-green-grey is a single colour and so is grey-brown.
Ore from a smaller mine on Tregonning Hill was transported down this track to be crushed at Great Work Mine.
In order to be processed, ore-bearing rock mined from mineral veins needed to be crushed to a powder. In earlier times, millstones were used to grind down lumps of ore but later it was done using a process known as "stamping" where the ore was crushed by dropping heavy granite or metal weights to pound it against another hard surface (often a piece of granite known as a mortar stone - as in "pestle and mortar"). The crushing was automated first with waterwheels and later with steam engines. The process was far from quiet and could often be heard from a number of miles away.
Bracken releases toxins into the soil which inhibit the growth of other plants, and the shade created by its large leaves and its thick leaf litter also makes it hard for other plants to compete. This and avoidance by grazing animals makes it quite difficult to control, particularly in steep areas where mechanised cutting or ploughing is difficult. Treading by livestock can reduce bracken's competitive advantage, particularly during winter when frost can attack the roots.
Somewhat buried beneath the bracken are some bilberry bushes.
Bilberries (known in Cornwall as 'erts) are closely related to blueberries. The fruits are much smaller but the flavour is more intense.
Like heather, bilberry is a member of the Ericaceae family and fungi in its roots help it extract nitrogen from acidic soils. Bilberries are therefore typically found on moorland where there is less competition from other plants.
Although Cornwall is home to the village of Bilberry (near Bugle), the name is not thought to be anything to do with the plant - more likely the "bury" relates to some form of ancient earthwork.
It is thought that rumours that the RAF used bilberries and carrots to improve night vision of bomber pilots were an elaborate decoy to conceal that Britain had radar which is what in reality made the pilots more effective.
Clay from Tregonning Hill was used to make bricks which were needed for the mine flues and furnaces.
The granules of ore were heated in a furnace to remove impurities such as sulphur and particularly arsenic. By heating the ore in air, the arsenic impurities could be driven off as a vapour. As the impurities escaped as gasses, the particles of ore melted into grey crystalline lumps of tin oxide known as "black tin".
The exhaust gasses were cooled and condensed to form a white powder deposited in the flues or purpose-built condensers. The white powder - arsenic - was collected and sold. A few grains of pure arsenic are enough to be fatal but the majority of arsenic workers managed to protect themselves by stuffing cotton wool up their noses and painting their faces and any other exposed areas of skin white with fuller's earth to prevent arsenic being absorbed through the pores of their skin.
Heather plants can live up to 40 years and over time they form woody stems. This provides them with a way of excreting heavy metals that they absorb by locking it up in the layers of dead wood (found by researchers as the areas in the plant with the highest concentrations). Their woody stems have also found many uses over the centuries including fuel, thatch and ropes. One other use has made it into the genus name for heather - kallune is Greek for "to brush".
The sun looks white in space. Here on Earth it looks yellow because colours from the blue-violet end of the rainbow are scattered more so the rays of light reaching us directly from the sun are missing more of those colours.
On the top of Tregonning Hill are the remains of an Iron Age hillfort which was surrounded by a pair of ramparts. Within the enclosure are thought to be the circular remains of roundhouses. The fort is known as Castle Pencaire (pencair is Cornish for "top fort"), perhaps to distinguish it from the other two fortified settlements on the slopes of Tregonning Hill. The hill was formerly known as Pencaire Hill. In 1540 the site was recorded as "Cair Kenin, alias Gonyn and Conin, stood in the hill of Pencair there yet apperith two ditches".
There is a topograph on the trig. point showing the locations of features in the surrounding landscape.
The Preaching Pit is an old quarry used for services, commemorating John Wesley's visits to nearby Kennegy Downs and Breage during the mid-1700s. The pit was used for Sunday School meetings on Whit Sundays and is still used at Pentecost.
The pure white porcelain used by the Chinese was discovered millennia ago and has always been a valuable material, appearing in many stately homes. Despite many attempts to find it elsewhere, it remained elusive until a few deposits were found in parts of Europe and in America early in the eighteenth century.
In 1746 William Cooksworthy noticed the miners repairing the furnaces with clay at Great Work Mine and how this was fired by the furnace. He developed a way to process the clay to separate the kaolin from the gritty rock and fire this into fine porcelain.
The cottage at the end of the hill was built during the Napoleonic era as a signal station to warn of an approaching French fleet. If a landing army was sighted, a beacon would be lit and the people were instructed to burn their crops and the food reserves they could not carry, and move inland with their cattle so that the landing army would be starved of food.
The overgrown area above the field to the right is the remains of Tregonning Hill China Clay works.
China clay in Cornwall and Devon resulted from a sequence of events that began over 300 million years ago; molten rock cooled into granite: a mixture of quartz, feldspar and mica. As it cooled, the feldspar reacted with other minerals to form china clay.
The clay from Cornwall was found to be a much finer quality than elsewhere in Europe and also turned out to be the largest deposit in the world. By the mid-19th Century, 7,000 workers were employed in the St Austell area alone and by 1910, Cornwall was producing 50% of the world's China Clay.
At the time of writing, the UK is still the third largest producer of China Clay in the world: Cornwall produces approximately 1 million tonnes of kaolin each year. Due to increasing mechanisation and large amounts of production being moved to Brazil, the industry now only employs around 1000 people.
The word kaolin is thought to be a corruption of the Chinese for "high ridge" where it was presumably found.
The circular hut in the field on the right below the hill is the remains of a beehive kiln for firing bricks from a brickworks operated in the 1870s and 1880s. As well as being used locally, firebricks were exported from the port at Hayle to New York.
The first record found of the settlement of Tregonning is from Tudor times but it is thought to be much older. The name is a reference to the hillfort on Tregonning Hill, originally known as Cair Kenin, then Conin which became Gonyn, and subsequently renamed Castle Pencaire. The Tre was added to indicate a farm and Cair to indicate a fort.
The word "farm" has the same origins as (e.g. law) "firm". Both words are related to the mediaeval Latin word firma meaning "fixed payment". Its original use in English was to do with contracts and leasing (which is why "to farm out" means "to subcontract"). In fact the word "farm" had no association with food production until the 19th Century. In the 16th Century it began to be applied to leasing of land and the association with farmland developed from this.
Although it's obvious that you should ensure any gates that you open, you also close, what about gates you find that are already open?
If the gate is fully open then leave it alone as it may well be providing livestock access to a water supply, and by closing it you could end up killing them.
If the gate is ajar or swinging loose and not wedged or tied open then it's likely that the gate was left open by accident (possibly by another group of walkers). Properly closing the offending gate behind you will not only bring joy to the landowner but you can feel good about saving lives in a car swerving to avoid a cow in the road.
If you encounter a gate doubly-secured with twine that can be untied or a chain that can be unfastened, it's normally there because naughty animals have managed to undo the gate themselves at some point (e.g. by rubbing against the bolt), so retie/fasten it afterwards.
The Ramblers Association and National Farmers Union suggest some "dos and don'ts" for walkers which we've collated with some info from the local Countryside Access Team.
Do
Don't
Both the flowers and leaves of the common daisy are edible and are high in Vitamin C but the flavour is bitter and medicinal so they are unlikely to appear on the menu of many restaurants.
Cows are very gregarious and even short-term isolation is thought to cause severe psychological stress. This is why walking along the hedges of a field to avoid splitting a herd is so important to avoid a cow bolting in panic to rejoin its friends.
Every part of the dandelion plant is edible and is high in Vitamin A and higher still in Vitamin K. The leaves can be eaten in salads, though their bitterness is not to everyone's taste. However, the bitterness can be reduced by blanching: drop the leaves into boiling salted water and remove after a minute and quench in ice-cold water to prevent the leaves from cooking.
Cows are thought to have been domesticated in the Middle East around 8,500 BC. By about 6,400 BC they were being traded into Neolithic Europe. This is just about the point where the land bridge between Britain and Continental Europe (known as Doggerland) flooded with rising sea levels, so the first few cattle may have just managed to walk across.
This area is known as Afterwashes as this was where the fine rock residue from the tin separation process (known as tailings) at Great Work Mine was dumped.
Once rendered into a powder, the tin ore was separated from fragments of less useful rock, usually using water and taking advantage of the heavier tin ore sinking more quickly out of a suspension than the other minerals. The slurry was sometimes run slowly down an inclined wooden board: the heavier tin fragments would settle near the top and could be scraped off whereas the fragments of lighter rock could be discarded from the bottom, and the material in the middle could be recycled into the next batch. Conical structures (known as "buddles") with rotating brushes were also used. It's possible that the Cornish mining word for the waste sludge of rock fragments - gange - is the origin of the English slang word "gunge".
Rooks roost in the tall trees surrounding the road and can often be heard.
Rooks nest in colonies and are one of the most social members of the crow family. Scientists have found that rooks are happy to work cooperatively to solve problems (e.g. each pulling on a separate string to release food).
The settlement of Herland was recorded in 1283 as Hyrleyn. The name is from the Cornish words hyr (meaning "long") and lyn (meaning "lake"). This could well refer to the long, thin pool in the stream at the bottom of the woods.
In folklore, the bluebell is a symbol of constancy, presumably based on the fact that they flower in the same place every year. It was said that anyone who wears a bluebell is compelled to tell the truth. This could be the origin of the "…something blue…" that a bride should wear on her wedding day.
Most of a large tree's trunk is actually made of dead wood known as "heartwood". Only the outer layers (known as sapwood) are actually active. The sapwood transport water and minerals up the tree from the roots to the leaves. The sapwood next to the heartwood gradually fills up with resin and then dies to create another strong layer of heartwood which supports the increasing weight of the tree.
If there are sheep in the field and you have a dog, make sure it's securely on its lead (sheep are prone to panic and injuring themselves even if a dog is just being inquisitive). If the sheep start bleating, this means they are scared and they are liable to panic.
If there are pregnant sheep in the field, be particularly sensitive as a scare can cause a miscarriage. If there are sheep in the field with lambs, avoid approaching them closely, making loud noises or walking between a lamb and its mother, as you may provoke the mother to defend her young.
Sheep may look cute but if provoked they can cause serious injury (hence the verb "to ram"). Generally, the best plan is to walk quietly along the hedges and they will move away or ignore you.
From December until the spring, celandine leaves are quite noticeable along the edge of paths. They have a shape similar to a "spade" in a pack of cards and are patterned with lighter green or silvery markings.
There are over 280 species of hoverflies in Britain. As the name of the family implies, they are very good at hovering completely stationary in flight and can switch from very fast flight to a perfect hover in the blink of an eye.
A thick outer bark on a tree helps to protect it from frost damage during the winter. The bark, which is often textured to trap air, and forms an insulating "buffer zone" that shields the living part of the tree, keeping this above freezing when there are sub-zero temperatures outside. The mass of dense wood inside the tree also acts as night store heater, absorbing heat during the day which is gradually released at night.
The growing conditions for trees varies from year to year (e.g. there might be a drought one summer). The "bad years" and "good years" are reflected in the widths of the rings. The pattern of good and bad summers is the same (more-or-less, depending of the location) for every tree so this forms a calendar - the known sequence of wide and narrow rings can be used to assign an exact year to each ring. This can also be done with dead and even fossil trees both to date them and get an idea of what the climate was doing at the time.
It is thought that the gardens at Godolphin might be the oldest surviving formal gardens in the the country, with parts that are around 700 years old. The gardens include mediaeval pathways, 16th and 17th Century ponds, and an Elizabethan side garden with a compartmentalised layout that has remained unchanged since it was created.
The ditch along the hedge was once a leat that transported water to the manor's fish ponds and powered waterwheels in the farm. The leat was fed by the shallower of two drainage adits within Great Work Mine.
An adit is a roughly horizontal tunnel going into a mine. In Cornwall these were important for drainage as many of the ore-bearing veins are close to vertical, through which water can easily seep. Drainage adits were sloped slightly upwards to meet the main shaft, so water trickling into the main shaft from above could be diverted out of the adit. Below the adit, engines powered by waterwheels or steam were needed to pump the water up to the level of the adit where it could then drain away.
The process of placing trig points on top of prominent hills and mountains began in 1935 to assist in the retriangulation of Great Britain - a project to improve the accuracy of maps which took three decades.
A plate (known as a "flush bracket" and marked with an ID code) on the side of each trig point marked a known measured height above sea level. The brass plate on the top with three arms and central depression (known as a "spider") was used to mount a theodolite which was used to measure the angles between neighbouring trig points very accurately. These angles allowed the construction of a system of triangles which covered the entire country and provided a measurement system accurate to around 20 metres.
Dragonflies were some of the first winged insects to evolve, around 300 million years ago in the "age of amphibians" before the dinosaurs. Fossils of early dragonflies have been found with wingspans of up to two feet across.
Dragonflies are named after the way they hunt, as both the larvae and adults are carnivorous predators. Mosquitoes form a large part of their diet both for adults and particularly for the larvae (nymphs). One dragonfly can eat tens of mosquitoes in a day and an average of over 100 per day has been recorded for the nymphs of some species. It is thought that this is an important factor in keeping the mosquito population under control. Dragonfly nymphs have a massive lower jaw to engulf their prey (a bit like an Angler Fish) and are also able to propel themselves by shooting a jet of water out of their anus.
Their two sets of wings beat out of phase, and the frequency, amplitude and the angles of each set of wings can be controlled. This allows dragonflies to hover in a completely stationary position for over a minute, perform extravagant aerobatic manoeuvres and even fly backwards.
Cuckoos are migratory birds that overwinter in Africa and are first seen, or more often heard, in Cornwall during the spring. The cuckoo is well-known for laying its eggs in the nests of other bird species. The adult cuckoo is a mimic of a sparrowhawk - a predator; this causes other birds to abandon their nests, allowing the female lay her eggs. Although cuckoo eggs are larger than those already in the nest, cuckoos produce eggs in several different colour schemes to match those of several species of bird. Since the cuckoo chick is a much larger than even the full-grown foster parents (which they seem not to notice, assuming their offspring is just a bit portly), it needs to monopolise the food supply. It therefore methodically evicts all other eggs and chicks from the nest.
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