The area of the Atlantic between North Cornwall and Ireland is also known as the Celtic Sea - a name first suggested in the 1920s. The newfangled name has caught on more in academic and surveying circles. The public generally use "Atlantic" where "the bit of it near here" is automatically implied.
Lizards are cold-blooded so they need to bask in the sun to warm up to their "operating temperature" which is around 30 Celcius. They usually do so with an area of cover nearby which forms an escape route from predators. You're therefore likely to encounter them in sunny spots on footpaths and footbridges. Once they spot you, they will usually make a hasty escape - they can move pretty quickly once they are warmed-up. During winter they hibernate as in cold temperatures they are too slow to catch any food (insects, spiders etc. which are also less numerous over the winter).
Stonechats are robin-sized birds with a black head and orange breast that are common along the Cornish coast all year round.
During the summer months, stonechats eat invertebrates. As temperatures drop and there are not so many of these about, they make do with seeds and fruit such as blackberries. Quite a few die in cold winters but this is offset by their fast breeding rate during the warmer months.
Vertical holes leading into a mine are known as shafts whereas horizontal tunnels are known as adits. Adits were created both as a way to get into the mine (a portal adit) and also to drain water out of the mine from the tunnels above the adit. Tunnels deeper than this needed some sort of pumping mechanism to raise water up to the drainage adit.
Choughs sometimes nest along this stretch of coast.
The chough is a member of the crow family, with striking red legs and a red beak. They are also recognisable from feathers, spread like fingers, on their wing tips. It was known as the "Crow of Cornwall" and appears on the county coat of arms. The birds have a loud, distinctive "chee-ow" call which is perhaps best described as resembling a squeaky dog toy! Once you've heard it a couple of times, you'll be able to recognise them from the sound long before you can see them.
In February 1899 the steel sail/steam ship "Umbre" was on a voyage to Liverpool to Amsterdam with a mixed cargo including soap, margarine, palm oil, distillery equipment and battleship portholes. The crew encountered thick fog off the coast of Cornwall and stranded on the rocks at Greeb Point, tearing a hole in the ship. Within 10 minutes the upper decks were awash. The crew escaped in the ship's two lifeboats. An account from the time states:
Within minutes, the fore hatches burst up, and as she listed over to port, Captain Stubbs gave the order to abandon ship. The smaller boat landed at Portheras, and by 8am her crew were enjoying breakfast at the commercial hotel in St. Just. The Captain, two officers, the stewardess, nine sailors, the ships dog & cat, and a pet parrot were landed at Newlyn.
Quite a lot of the cargo was salvaged. Some of the portholes are reported to remain concreted into the rocks and wreckage.
In 1851, the ship "New Commercial" ran aground in a storm on the reef of The Brisons and was wrecked. The crew managed to climb onto the rocks but six of these were swept off the rocks by the huge waves. Of the three remaining, one managed with great skill and courage to build a makeshift raft from the wreckage and paddle this into Whitesand Bay where he was rescued by local fishermen. The remaining two on the rocks were the captain and his wife who couldn't swim and was wearing only a nightdress. They remained there for two days until a rescue boat reached them and fired a rocket line. Both were rescued but the captain's wife - Mary Sanderson - sadly died of exposure in the rescue boat before she could be brought ashore, and is buried in Sennen churchyard. As a result of the tragedy, the Sennen lifeboat was established.
In December 1919, the "Ravenshoe" was on its way back to Cardiff from Lisbon loaded with ballast having delivered a cargo of coal. As it was passing around Land's End on New Year's Eve, the engines failed as it approached Cape Cornwall and it ran ashore near Gribba Point. A line was secured to the ship and the crew were rescued by the Sennen Cove brigade using a breeches buoy suspended on wires between the ship and shore.
The Longships Lighthouse is located just over a mile off Land's End on the highest of the islets known as Carn Bras. The original tower built in 1795 was 40ft high, perched on the 39ft high rock but despite the lantern being nearly 80ft above the sea, it was sometimes obscured by the huge waves off Lands End. A new taller tower was therefore constructed starting in 1869 and completed in 1873 and was manned until 1988. The current lantern emits a white flash seaward, but red-tinted glass colours the light for any vessel straying to the headlands to the north or south.
The granite outcrops on the headlands give rise to names beginning with carn which means "rock outcrop" in Cornish. The outcrop you climb up to is Carn Polpry (Polpry is the name of the cove). As you descend, the rock outcrop beside the walled mineshafts has a name with a less obvious origin - Carn Ding Dong.
The rocks provide a holdfast for lichens.
One in five of all known fungi form lichens. Studies suggest that many species of fungi that form lichens started out from ancestors that lived on organic waste. Fossils have also revealed that the symbiosis between algae and fungi dates back more than 400 million years roughly to the time when plants first evolved from green algae.
The beach is known either as Nanquidno or Nanjulian beach. There are some grassy areas just above the rocky beach which make good picnic spots. According to some sources, the beach is reported as being sometimes popular with naturists. Given that the beach consists entirely of granite boulders, this seems unlikely to be comfortable, especially in strong sunshine when the rocks can get rather hot.
The simplest design for a waterwheel is known as an undershot wheel where the paddles are simply dipped into flowing water. This works well in large rivers where there is a strong current.
However, in hilly areas with smaller streams (such as Cornwall), the overshot design is more common where the water is delivered via a man-made channel (leat) to the top of the wheel where it flows into buckets on the wheel, turning the wheel through the weight of the water. An overshot design also allowed the mill to be located slightly further away from the main river which had obvious advantages during floods.
The settlement of Nanjulian was recorded in 1428 as Nanshelen and is thought to be from the Cornish word elin meaning "elbow", as well as the word for "valley". The name perhaps refers to the bend in the course of the river and its associated valley near Nanjulian Mill where it turns to meet the sea.
The settlement of Nanquidno was first recorded in 1327 as Nansgwynyou. The name is based on the Cornish words nans (valley) and gwynn (white).
In the field on the right are the remains of a prehistoric settlement from the Bronze Age or Iron Age. Not much is now left - just a few earth banks and hut circles.
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.
Despite the proximity to a prehistoric settlement, the rocket-shaped standing stone in the centre of the field is much more likely to be a cattle rubbing stone erected in the 19th century. There are a number of these in West Cornwall. In particular, near Lamorna Cove, there is a group of fields with one in the centre of each.
Until the Industrial Revolution, hay making was a very labour-intensive task with low output which involved cutting with a scythe, turning with a pitchfork and gathering with a hand rake.
During Victorian times, the invention of the horse-drawn mowers, hay turners and rakes allowed hay production to be increased as much as tenfold.
Hay was transported loose by horse and cart and layered into towering ricks for storage which were an iconic feature of the rural landscape. At the end of the 19th Century, the hay baler was invented, initially powered by horses on a treadmill.
Granite mostly contains slightly acidic chemical compounds, and consequently there is nothing to neutralise acids arising from plant decay and carbon dioxide dissolved in rainwater, resulting in acidic moorland soils.
The stink from decaying cabbages is due to sulphur compounds which it stores in its leaves, ready for the production of seeds later on. The compounds are also more concentrated in the plant if it has been deprived of water. These compounds are also released from the plant when leaves are boiled - the longer it's cooked, the more cabbage smell. The silver lining is that it's thought that the smelly compounds may possibly have anti-cancer properties. Whilst that's being researched a bit more, blanching or braising cabbage is a less smelly way to cook it.
The efficiency of the chemical processes that plants use to metabolise nitrogen compounds varies with pH (acidity). In soils that are too acidic, many plants have trouble absorbing nitrogen (apart from specially-adapted ones known as "ericaceous"). The ongoing decomposition of plant matter into humus within the soil creates acidic compounds. Some soils contain rocks such as chalk and limestone which will react with the acid and neutralise it. In Cornwall, the beach sand includes a high proportion of seashell fragments which contain the same chemical compound as limestone.
Blackberries are closely related to raspberries and technically neither is a berry but an aggregate of many individual tiny fruits, each containing a tiny stone like a miniature cherry.
The growth rhythm of brambles is so steady that it can be used in forensics to work out how long remains have been at a crime scene.
Since prehistoric times, a year of fallow was used to allow soil nutrients to recover before planting a crop the following year. By the end of the Middle Ages, a three-year scheme was in use with alternating crops allowing production two out of three years. In the 18th Century a four-crop rotation was introduced (wheat, turnips, barley, and clover) which not only resulted in continuous production but included a grazing crop and a winter fodder crop, providing food for livestock throughout the year.
In spring, some of the fields here are sometimes planted with daffodils as part of the crop rotation. Even in years they are not planted, a few stray ones often grow amongst the crops.
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.
In Celtic times, fields were small and surrounded by banks or stone walls. The fields were used both for growing crops such as oats, wheat or rye, and for keeping livestock. The field shape was round or square, rather than rectangular, so that the stones didn't have to be carried further than necessary. The small size was because they needed to be weeded by hand, in many ways similar to a modern-day allotment.
The stile you pass in the right hedge is for a path leading to Kelynack.
In English we often add a -y ending to a noun to turn it into an adjective; for example "rock" becomes "rocky". For many of the nouns imported from French, we add "-ic" (acidic, magnetic, artistic...). The equivalent in Cornish is to add -ack or -ek to the end of the word. Thus meynek is "stony" (men is stone), stennack means "tinny" (sten is tin).
Kelynn is the Cornish word for holly which means that kelynnek is ... harder to express succinctly in English ("abounding in holly" or possibly "holly-tastic").
The settlement to the left is called Hendra.
Hendra is a common Cornish place name meaning "home farm" (from the Cornish word hendre which itself is based on the words hen meaning old, and dre is equivalent to tre). Hendra was also used as a boy's first name with the meaning literally "from the family farm".
The red campion produces a blaze of pink flowers along hedgerows in the spring with the most intense flowering period occurring between late April and the end of June. A scattering of flowers continue throughout the rest of the summer. In the mild Cornish climate, a few plants can often be seen flowering during winter months.
The word crow is from the Old English crawe. Since this sounds a lot like the noise the bird makes, there is a misconception that the Old English is directly derived from this. In fact the word is far older. It's related the the Old Saxon kraia and can be traced back further to a Proto-Indo-European word from the late Neolithic period which is thought to mean "to call hoarsely".
The mounds along the far hedge of the field are associated with mine workings here. About 5 mineshafts have been identified although not much is known about them. They are marked as "old shafts" on the 2nd Edition OS map from the early 1900s. A small tin mine known as Kelynack Mine was known to be in operation in this area in 1901 with an adit down in the valley to drain the mine.
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.
Even up to the 16th Century, magpies were simply known as "pies" from the Old French word pie (related to the Latin word for magpie - pica). The term "pied" meaning "black-and-white" (as in pied wagtail) is from the magpie's colouration. It's also possible that the pastry thing we now know as a pie (which can be traced back to Mediaeval Latin) was named after the magpie. It has been speculated that the assortment of ingredients in the pastry crust was likened to objects collected in a magpie nest. The "mag" in the modern name is a (somewhat sexist) mediaeval slang word for someone who chatters, based on the name Margaret.
The name "buttercup" is thought to have come from a mediaeval belief that cows eating the flowers gave butter its yellow colour. In fact this couldn't be further from the truth as the plant contains toxins which make it taste acrid and is therefore avoided by grazing animals.
Unlike many birds that just sing in spring, robins sing nearly all year round. In fact during winter if you hear birdsong, it's most likely to be a robin. Despite how cute robins look, they are actually very territorial and the chirp is an aggressive warning to any would-be intruders not to even think of trying it. When robins don't sing, this a sign that their body fat reserves are low and they are conserving what little they have left until food becomes more plentiful.
During late winter or early spring, if you encounter a patch of plants with white bell-shaped flowers, smelling strongly of onions, and with long, narrow leaves then they are likely to be three-cornered leeks. Once you're familiar with their narrow, ridged leaves, you'll be able to spot these emerging from late October onwards.
Three-cornered leeks are native to the Mediterranean and are first recorded as being introduced to the UK in 1759. By Victorian times, they had become well-established in the wild. They thrive in the moist, mild climate in Cornwall and are salt-tolerant so will grow almost anywhere, even on the coast.
Although nearly all foxgloves are purple, a fairly rare white form does occur and an even more rare pink form sometimes occurs along with this.
There are over 30,000 miles (more than the distance around the earth) of hedges in Cornwall, many of which are based on distinctive local styles of stone walling. Consequently, often what a Cornish person calls a "hedge", most people from outside the county do not recognise as a hedge, resulting in some foreign translation needed for walk directions.
Around 50% of the hedgerows in the UK have been lost since the Second World War. Although intentional removal has dramatically reduced, lack of maintenance and damage from mechanical cutting techniques such as flailing are still causing deterioration of the remaining hedgerows.
Some Cornish hedges are thought to be more than 4,000 years old, making them some of the oldest human-built structures in the world that have been in continuous use for their original purpose. They act as vital miniature nature reserves and wildlife corridors that link together other green spaces. This supports hundreds of species of plants and tens of thousands of insect species, many of which are vital pollinators for arable crops.
The mediaeval Celtic cross in the garden is originally from Bodmin Moor. In 1896, the cross was recorded at Penvorder in St Breward. By 1950 it had been moved to Tregaddick House near Blisland. In 1990, it was sold and moved to its present location.
Porth Nanven is also known as "Dinosaur Egg Beach" due to the ovoid granite boulders. The boulders were smoothed into this shape by the sea when sea levels were much higher and then trapped on the land when sea levels dropped, becoming buried under the topsoil. The sea has slowly eroded the land and freed the trapped boulders which you can see embedded in the cliffs behind the beach. Souvenir collecting was causing depletion of the smaller boulders so they are now protected; removing them is an offence which would result in a criminal record.
The pair of rocks roughly a mile off the coast near Cape Cornwall are known as The Brisons which is from the French word brisant meaning "reef". They are part of a reef system that extends all the way from Gribba Point (Pen an Gribow in Cornish which is from the word krib, meaning "reef"). The smaller rock has a large protruding "nose" whilst the larger rock is more rotund and consequently the pair have been described as forming the profile of General Charles de Gaulle lying on his back.
The breeches buoy is a piece of life-saving equipment devised in the 1860s. It is essentially a zip-line to which a "cradle" (consisting of a lifebelt with a pair of attached shorts) is connected. The flotation device provided a backup if the line broke or sagged into the sea. The breeches - whilst not glamorous - were an effective way of preventing the person being rescued from being washed off the zip-line by breaking waves.
A lightweight line was first sent from the shore to the wrecked ship possibly via a kite, rocket or mortar. This was then used to haul out a more heavy-duty rope (known as a "hawser") on which the zip-line could run. Lighter ropes were also secured to the cradle from each end so it could be hauled in each direction to bring each crew member ashore and then send it back for the next one.
One of the challenges with the mode of rescue was length of time needed for transferring the crew one-by-one. During this period the vessel could roll, drift away or sink. Training the rescue team to operate at the maximum speed possible was therefore important.
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