- Padstow
- Padstow has had a long history and a number of names. It has been called
Loderick and Aldestowe in the past. The Saints Way covering 30 miles
from Padstow to Fowey was part of a Bronze Age and iron Age trading route
between Ireland and Brittany, that avoided the dangerous passage by boat round
Lands End.
-
- St Petroc, landed from Ireland, founded his monastery here in the 6th century,
but this was later destroyed in 961 AD by a Viking raid. The town grew as
a port in the Middle ages as it offered one of the few harbours on the North
coast of Cornwall, It was a major shipbuilding centre and even a terminus
for Trans Atlantic passenger ships including emigrant ships, until the silting
up of the Doom bar sandbank at the mouth of the harbour stopped larger ships
entering the port.
-
- The attractive medieval town has remained largely unspoiled. The Court House
of Sir Walter Raleigh is on the North Quay, and Abbey House, dating from the
15th century is on the South Quay. A popular tourist resort today, probably
best known for the number of Rick Stein's (the oft appearing TV cook) enterprises.
There is a foot ferry to Rock on the other side of the estuary. The May Day
Hobby Horse Festival (said to hark back to pagan fertility rites) is believed
to be one of the oldest dance festivals in Europe.
-
- Just outside the town are Prideaux Place (an Elizabethan mansion, home of
the Prideaux family since 1588)and Trenouth Rare Breeds Centre.
-
- Par
- Developed as a mineral port by Joseph Treffry between 1829 and 1841. The
harbour has been owned by English China Clay since 1964, with around a million
tons of clay now being exported through the port, though the port is now in
decline.
-
- Shipbuilding was a major industry here, with schooners being built for the
Newfoundland trade. Today it is perhaps best known as being the railway junction
for the Newquay branch line.
-
- Around Par, at Biscovey are the Mid-Cornwall Galleries and Craft Centre.
The Village of Tywardreath or houses on the strand , which used to
be on the sea before the port of Par was built, and which is featured in the
Daphne du Maurier novel of the same name. At Polmear there is a well preserved
row of almshouses.. The sandy cove at Polkerris has a small pier and Elizabethan
pilchard cellar. There is a red and white striped beacon on Gribbin Head
-
- Pendeen
- It is part of a mile long string of small mining communities of Carnyorth,
Trewellard, Boscaswell and Bojewyan.Each of these villages has a famous coastal
mine in the last century. In fact the last working mine, Geevor finally closed
in 1991, though there is a mine centre and visitor facilities there today.
The Levant mine had a major disaster with its man engine in 1919, when it
crashed out of control down the shaft killing 31 men. Though the mine closed
in 1930, the Levant engine house has been restored by the National trust and
is now a working steam engine that can be viewed by the public. The whole
area is rich in industrial archaeology - mine stacks and engine houses cover
the coast over about two miles. The ore deposits still there cause a slight
red discolouration of the sea.
-
- The Pendeen Lighthouse stands along a road, on a rocky headland, about a
mile to the north of the village. St John's parish church in Pendeen is model
on the cathedral on Iona. The stone came from the Carn Eanes quarry above
the village, and it was constructed in the 1850's under the direction of the
vicar, Robert Aitken.
-
- Penryn
- Penryn is now part of Falmouth, but started as a monastical establishment,
Glasney College founded in the 13th century, which was later closed during
the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII. The old town is now a
conservation area, and the Jacobean and Georgian buildings have been restored.
-
- Penryn was a medieval port and exported granite. It eventually lost out
as Falmouth grew in importance. There is fishing for brown and rainbow trout
on the Argal and College reservoirs just to the west of Penryn
-
- Penzance
- From the Cornish pen (headland) and sans (holy).Penzance
suffered from the Spanish raid of 1595, and later in 1646 from raiding parliamentarian
troops in the Civil War. There were Algerian and French privateer raids during
the 18th century. The long arms of the piers in the harbour were built in
the 17th century to help protect the town from raids. The railway came in
1859, which helped export fish, flowers and vegetables to London.
-
- The town grew as a fashionable resort, and large Georgian, Regency and Victorian
terraces and squares still exist on the south side of the town. The main street,
Market Jew Street, has a name that comes from the Cornish for Thursday market
Marghas . Chapel Street has the old inns, The Turks head and the
Admiral Benbow, it is also the street where Elizabeth Branwell, the mother
of the Bronte sisters was born. The town naturally has a statue to Sir Humphry
Davy, the inventor of the Davy lamp, who was born here. The statue stands
in front of the Market Hall. The Maritime Museum holds items recovered from
wrecks around the Cornish coast, and also in a maritime vein is the National
Lighthouse Centre.
-
- Nearby are Tregwainton gardens (National Trust) and Drift Reservoir.
-
- Ferries and helicopters run to the Scilly Isles from Penzance.
-
- Perranporth
- The name means Piran in the sands. Originally a mining community,
now a holiday resort with a three mile sandy beach. Winston Graham wrote the
first of his Poldark novels here, weaving a real and fictitious story of 18th
and 19th century mining families. The sand of Perranporth beach have now engulfed
the mine buildings , and the lost church of St Pirans oratory (founded by
the saint in the 6th century) was another casualty of the creeping sands.
-
- To the east, near the village of Rose is Piran Round, an Iron Age fort,
later used for medieval miracle plays.
-
- Polperro
- A fishing and smuggling centre dating back at least to the 13th century.
Its notoriety was such that the Revenue men had a permanent base here. The
village was a major pilchard processing town, but although there are still
fishing boats in the colourful harbour, tourists are now the mainstay of the
local economy. Polperro is perhaps the prettiest of all Cornish villages.
Thankfully the car has been restricted in the village, parking being on the
edge. Therefore most visitors approach the maze of little streets and alleyways
on foot. Old inns, cottages, studios, gift shops. The Warren is a narrow alleyway
leading down to the harbour.
-
- The National Trust owns much of the land on either side of the village.
And there are good coastal walks in both directions. Talland Bay and the hamlet
of Talland lies to the east.
-
- Polzeath
- This area was much loved and written about by Sir John Betjeman, the Poet
Laureate. Now the village of Polzeath is pretty grotty, destroyed by the excesses
of pandering to mass tourism. But if you get away from the village, the coast
around is still marvelous. Betjeman is buried in St Enodoc Church to the south
overlooking the Camel estuary.The tiny church is always in danger from the
sands, on one occasion the vicar and congregation had to enter the church
through a hole in the roof.
-
- Porthcurno
- A small sheltered cove of white sand with the little village. On the east
side of the bay is Treryn Dinas, an Iron Age Castle with its landward earthworks
still in place. And seaward of this is Logan Rock, a 60 ton boulder that until
1824 could be moved by the touch of a hand. In that year a young Naval officer,
Hugh Goldsmith (nephew of the poet Oliver Goldsmith), dislodged it with crow
bars. He was forced by the Admiralty to restore the rock at his own expense,
which he did with a remarkable feat of engineering, but the sensitive balance
of the rocking stone was lost.
-
- To the west is the cliff setting of the Minack Theatre, constructed in the
1930's by Rowena Cade, using the natural shape of the cliffs to give a spectacular
setting for the theatre. There are summer plays here every year, and there
is a visitor centre that gives the story of the theatre.
-
- The Main Cable & Wireless transatlantic cable enters the sea here, and
until recently there was a Cable & Wireless training centre in the village
-
- Porthleven
- Since the middle ages this has been a fishing village, and is still a working
port today, with a fishing fleet and a small boat building yard. The port
was expanded in the last century to export tin ore. The long curved harbour
wall is in three sections, and the inner harbour can be seal off in a gale.
-
- The town is a line of Victorian villas along the east side of the harbour,
with a waterside inn, and a series of lime kilns that have now been converted
into art galleries.
-
- To the east, behind a shingle bar pushed up by the sea over the years, is
Loe Pool, Cornwall's largest freshwater lake
-
- Port Isaac
- One of the most characterful fishing villages in Cornwall, the main road
narrows as it twists through the village past whitewashed cottages, fish cellars
and a small working harbour. The narrow alleys are called drangs
, with narrowest named Squeeze Belly Alley. The modern lifeboat station is
in one of the old fish cellars right on the harbour.
-
- To the north, separated by only a few hundred yards, is Port Gaverne, which
used to be the main port for shipping slate from the Delabole Quarry. Now
just a small holiday hamlet, with a pub, recently in the news for selling
cans of Norwegian Crab soup as being Cornish Crab soup.
-
- To the south is Port Quinn, a small hamlet, owned by the National Trust,
at the head of a sheltered inlet. Above Port Quinn is Doyden Castle, a folly
built in 1839. A few miles inland is the church of St Kew, which contains
some of the finest medieval glass in Cornwall.
-
- Portreath
- Portreath was transformed from a small fishing village into a busy port
by the Bassetts, one of Cornwall's richest families in the 18th century. The
Bassetts lived at the nearby Trehildy estate and owned many of the tin and
copper mines in the Redruth area. Copper was exported to Wales for smelting,
and Welsh coal and timber brought back for use in the Cornish mines. The harbour
has a long dog-leg wall, and presents shipping with a difficult entrance.
There is a building - The Pepper Pot - from which ships were guided through
the harbour entrance.
-
- In 1809 one of the earliest railways in Britain, and the first in Cornwall,
was built from Portreath to the St Day mine about 5 miles inland. The final
steep section that lowered the wagons down to the harbour can still be seen.
-
- Probus
- Probus grew as a wool town, which funded the tallest church tower in Cornwall.
123 ft of carved moonstone, it was built in the 16th century and it dominates
the small village. Large Georgian houses and old granite cottages line the
broad main street leading to the church.
-
- Nearby are the County Demonstration garden and Rural Studies centre where
they grow several varieties of plants, flowers and vegetables under different
conditions and regimes. Hence it is possible to see which suits local conditions
best.
-
- Also a mile to the east is Trewithen, whose attractive gardens are open
to the public in the summer. it was formerly the home of the Hawkins family,
and was built in the 17th century
-
- Prussia Cove
- One of those little nuggets of Cornish History. On Mount's Bay, the cove
got its name from John Carter, on of the legendary smugglers and wreckers
who inhabit this coast. he modeled himself on Frederick the great, king of
Prussia, and hence acquired this as his nickname. The cove has continued to
bear the name as a reminder.
-
- The 30, 000 ton Warspite broke its tow off the cove in 1947 as it was being
taken to the breaker's yard. She was eventually pulled off the rocks, but
then floundered again at Marazion, where she broke up.