A mining village, surrounded by the ruins of former
mines. From the village, a steep valley winds down to
Trevaunance Cove. There is a steep stepped terrace of
miners cottages, Strippy Strappy, which descends
a hill beside the spired church. St Agnes was the model
for St Ann in the Poldark books. Mines in the area were
Wheal Coates, Wheal Kitty, Wheal Friendly and Blue Hills.
There are a couple of pubs at the centre of the village,
with some craft shops, old cob cottages and pretty
gardens. The Cornish artist John Opie was born in
"Harmony Cot" in 1761, a thatched cottage to
the east of St Agnes.
Tin ore from local mines was shipped from a small 18th
century quay at Trevaunance Cove, and this was eventually
swept away by a gale in 1934, as the four previous
harbours had been
High above St Agnes is the St Agnes Beacon, owned by the
National Trust, and from which on a clear day you get
fantastic all round views. Trevellas airfield was a World
War Ii fighter station, but is now just used by the local
flying club.
And in the attractions area there is a local Museum in
the town and St Agnes Leisure Park (with attractions set
in landscaped gardens)
St Austell
The town grew with the discovery of china clay deposits
in the area by William Cookwirthy, a Plymouth chemist,
who discovered them in 1748. To extract one ton of usable
china clay results in the creation of five tons of waste,
hence the moonscape of white mountains around St Austell.
The clay is exported by sea from Fowey, Par and
Charlestown. The process is explained in the Wheal Martyn
China Clay Museum.
All the streets in St Austell radiate from the Holy
trinity Church, with its delicately carved 15th century
tower. The large Market hall opposite the church has a
magnificently timbered roof. Among the old inns of the
town, the most notable is the White Hart Hotel.
St Buryan
Named after St Beriona, daughter of an Irish chieftain,
who established an oratory on the site of what is now the
church. The church has a four-staged tower that is used
still as a landmark by fishermen entering Mounts Bay.
A mile to the north of the attractive village is the
Neolithic Stone Circle of Boscawen-Un which has 19 stones
and a leaning central pillar. It is over 5000 years old.
The first meeting of the Bards of Cornwall was held here
in 1928.
St Cleer
On the edge of Bodmin Moor, north of Liskeard, the
village is thought to have got its name from St Clarus.
The village is at 700 feet, and the surrounding area has
historical connections with both mining and prehistoric
times. The village church has a Victorian stained glass
window with eleven female saints. A rather Gothic looking
open sided chapel has been built over St Cleer's well.
Trehevy Quoit, an impressive Neolithic chamber tomb with
a massive capstone, is in a field north east of the
village. Doniert Stone, a granite block with intricate
carvings, dedicated to a 9th century Cornish king who
drowned nearby is north west of the village. There is an
ancient packhorse bridge at Redgate, and from here a
footpath runs along the River Fowey to Golitha Falls.
Siblyback Lake, with visitor centre and sporting
facilities is close. As is Dobwalls Family Adventure
Park.
St Clement
A pretty hamlet south of Truro, on the wooded tidal
Tresillian River. it has thatched whitewashed cottages,
and a 13th century church which has a lych gate with a
upper story room, used as a schoolroom in the past
St Colomb Major
The name comes from St Columba, a Christian martyr. The
town has a medieval feel with tall slate hung buildings,
narrow wynds and connecting alleyways
The church was considered as the site for Cornwall's
cathedral, but lost out to Truro. The tower of the church
has a through arch.
James Polkinghorne, a champion Cornish wrestler, was a
former landlord of the Red Lion. And another inn, the
Silver Ball, is named after the Shrove Tuesday game of
hurling, played with a silver ball over a two mile street
pitch. this game used to be played all over |Cornwall,
but is now confined to St Colomb and St Ives.
West of the town is Castle-an-Dinas, an Iron Age
earthwork.
St Day
St Day was the mining centre for Cornwall before Redruth
took over the role. it has terraces of miners cottages
and mine captains villas. Nearby at Busveal is Gwennap
Pit, a deep hollow, turned into an amphitheater and used
regularly by john Wesley. It is still a regular place of
pilgrimage for Methodists from all over the world.
St Ewe
An attractive village with a 14th century church. The
church of All Saints has a carved octagonal spire, and
inside the church are the village stocks, and a rood
screen that is the only one in Cornwall to have survived
the attentions of Cromwell's soldiers.
Polmassick vineyard grows grapes in the wooded valley
below the church and can be visited by the public.
St Germans
The village is built on high land at the confluence of
the River Tamar and the River Lynher. Augustine canons
founded a priory here in the 1162 but all that remains
today is the church. The massive church has two towers
dating from the 13th and 15th centuries. Inside is a
memorial to the Eliot family, whose home Port Eliot is
beside the church.
There is a Victorian quay below the village, and just to
the south Portwinkle, a small cove with a battered
semi-circular harbour.
St Ives
St Ives is an ancient borough and supposedly got its name
from St Ia, a female saint who crossed from Ireland on a
leaf!, It was one of the main centres of pilchard fishing
in the last century. In 1868, a record 16.5 million
pilchards were hauled in from one seine net off St Ives.
The pilchards were pressed in fish cellars, to remove the
blood and oil, they were then packed tightly into wooden
barrels and exported.
Tin ands copper from the surrounding mines were also
exported through the harbour, and coal to power the mine
engines was imported. Smeaton's pier, the main arm of the
harbour, was built by the architect of the Eddystone
Light. Today the miners and the fishermen have gone, and
droves of tourists have replaced them.
There is still much of the old character in the town,
with cobbled alleys and flowery courtyards, steep streets
and whitewashed cottages. At the foot of The Digey, home
of many of the best cottages, is the old inn, The Sloop -
frequented by fishermen and artists. John Wesley's visits
to St Ives are remembered in the street names -
Salubrious Street and Teetotal Street.
the church, dedicated to St Ia, contains a sculpture by
Barbara Hepworth to the Madonna and Child. More examples
of Hepworth's work can be seen at the Hepworth Museum in
Back Street. Indeed St Ives has been an artists colony
since the 1880's when Turner visited the town. The clear
light attracted Whistler and Sickert, and later Ben
Nicholson and Peter Lanyon. Bernard Leach started the
Leach Pottery in Higher Stennack. The Tate Gallery built
an new extension, opened in 1992.
St Just in Penwith
St Just, the most westerly town in Britain, grew
prosperous from tin and copper mining. Grey granite
houses and inns, two Methodist chapels and a 15th century
church.
The Plain-an-Gwarry, a grass covered enclosure at its
centre, was used to perform miracle and mystery plays in
the middle ages.
Cape Cornwall, owned by the national Trust is a few miles
west. All along the coast are the remains of mines, the
Kenidjack Valley at Levant, the Crowns at Botallack, and
Geevor.
St Just in Roseland
Here you will find Cornwall's most photographed church,
the 13th century St Justus church built right beside the
water. On the site of a 5th century chapel, the
churchyard slopes steeply upwards behind the church. A
19th century vicar brought in many tropical plants, and
the combination of the church on the water's edge and the
wonderful flowers and shrubs in the churchyard are pure
magic.
St Keverne
Known for its church tower, which is used as a marker to
guide boats past the Manacles Rocks (their name comes
from the Cornish "maen eglos" which means
"stones of the church"). The tower was struck
by lightening in the 18th century, and had to be rebuilt.
The rocks have taken a terrible toll of ships over the
years, with 400 victims buried in the church yard. Two of
the worst tragedies were "The John" in 1855
which sunk with the loss of 196 lives, and the
"Mohegan" on which 106 lives were lost when it
hit the rocks at full steam in 1898.
The St Keverne blacksmith, Michael An Gof (Michael
Joseph) and Thomas Flamark from Bodmin, led the 1497
march to London against Henry VIII's punitive tax to fund
his war against the Scots. Both leaders were hanged at
Tyburn.
North of St Keverne are the two former fishing villages
of Porthoustock and Porthallow, which are now quarry
villages.
St Mawes
This community grew up round the castle of St Mawes.
Henry VIII built St Mawes castle to the same design, but
on a smaller scale, as Pendennis Castle opposite it at
Falmouth. In 1541, when they were built, it was deemed
necessary to protect the Carrick Roads, Truro and
Falmouth harbours from invasion. The castle never saw
action until it surrendered to the Parliamentarians
without firing a shot.
St Mawes today is a popular yachting centre.
St Mawgan
A picturesque village in the wooded Lanherne Valley
consisting of cottages, the Falcon Inn, church, two
bridges and the 13th century manor house of the Arundell
family (which has been a convent since 1794)
St Merryn
A cluster of grey slate cottages round the church of St
Marina. Around is trevose head with its lighthouse, and a
number of good surf and swimming beaches. Mother Ivy's
Bay is the home of the Padstow lifeboat, and Ric Stein,
the TV cook (his house is a white art deco building with
a prominent glass staircase on the side. Between this bay
and Harlyn Bay is Cataclews Point, which was quarried for
the greenstone used for church fonts and windows. On the
other southern side of Trevose Head is a golf course and
Constantine bay and Booby's Bay.
St Michael's Mount
The story goes that the archangel St Michael appeared to
a group of fishermen at the mount in 495. Edward the
Confessor granted the mount to the Benedictine monks from
mont St Michel in France, and by 1135 they had built a
priory on the summit of the mount. They also constructed
a harbour and causeway. Henry V granted it to the Abbey
of Syon in Twickenham. Then of course henry VIII grabbed
it when he dissolved the monasteries. It changed then
from a church to a fortress, and was a Royalist
stronghold during the Civil War. The commander of the
Parliamentarian forces that captured the mount during the
Civil War, one Colonel John St Aubyn, bought it from the
state, and one of his descendants, Lord St Levan, still
lives there. Lord St Levan gave the mount to the national
trust in 1954, but still lives there. Today around half a
million visitors a year visit the site. It can be reached
by causeway at low tide, or from a passenger ferry at
high water.
St Neot
A small village in a deep wooded hollow, just south of
Colliford Lake, Bodmin Moor's largest reservoir. St Neott
himself, said to have only been 4 feet tall, appears on
one of the stained glass windows of the church. The
stained glass windows of the church are said to be some
of the finest examples of medieval stained glass in
England. The village well is also dedicated to St Neott.
The village originally grew up on wool, tin and slate,
but that has all gone now.
A few miles to the west is the hamlet of Warleggan, known
for its eccentric rector, Fredrick Densham, who was the
parish priest from 1931 to 1953. Disliked by his
parishioners he built a high wall round the rectory and
withdrew from the world, as no villagers would go to his
church he preached to an empty church and filled it with
cardboard cutouts for a congregation.
A settlement and ferry crossing have existed here since Roman times. Today
Isambard Kingdom Brunel's last engineering masterpiece, the 1859 iron railway
bridge spans the River Tamar, with the 1961 road bridge beside it.
Being close to Plymouth, Saltash produced many sailors for the navy, including
Raleigh and Drake. The birthplace of Mary Newman, Drake's first wife, is
a cottage in Culver Street. There is a 17th century pillared guildhall in
the town centre,and the parish church has an unusual 17th century clock
in its church tower
Sancreed
An attractive inland village in the Lands End peninsula. It has a 15th
century church with a carved rood screen and two noteworthy crosses in the
churchyard.
Above the village is Sancreed beacon with extensive views. A little to
the west s the Iron age fort of Caer Bran, reached by footpath from Grumbla..
There is a well preserved Iron Age courtyard village at Carn Euny, reached
from Brane.
Seaton
A notorious smuggling area in the last century because it was wild and
remote. Brandy, silk and spices were brought in from Brittany.. Today the
sheltered coast between Looe and Nare Head has a number of sandy tourist
beaches..
There is a monkey sanctuary at Murraytown a mile east of Seaton which
has the first protected breeding colony of Amazonian Woolly monkeys in the
world.
Sennen Cove
Complete with lifeboat station (opened in 1853) and surfing beach, Sennen
is the most westerly village in England Legend says that King Arthur and
seven Cornish chieftains defeated the Danes here, and held a feast to mark
their victory at a large rock known as Table men. Sennan Cove harbour has
an old wooden building that houses the original ropes and windlass for hauling
boats out of the water.
There is an Iron Age fort at Maen Castle just west of Sennan