Altarnun
Sheltering in a wooded cleft just below the windswept heights of Bodmin Moor, Altarnun is a lovely village with a fine 15th Century church. Sometimes known as the Cathedral of the Moors, the church has one of the tallest towers in Cornwall. The old bridge below the church, with a roadway just seven feet wide, is probably fifteenth-century; beside it is a much older ford across the lesser Inney. The great Cornish historian Charles Henderson believed that ‘no prettier picture can be found in Cornwall than Altarnun Bridge.’ Look out for the early Wesleyan meeting house with a relief portrait of John Wesley carved over the doorway by the gifted local sculptor Neville Northey Burnard who was born in the adjoining house.
Blisland
A village green in Cornwall is rare indeed, and at Blisland, high on the western edge of Bodmin Moor, is the finest of the few that exist. Dotted with tall trees and fringed with granite cottages, it gives the place a spacious and timeless air. Below its southern slope is the church of St Protus and St. Hyacinth, a favourite of John Betjeman. It was, he wrote in 1948, ‘the first really beautiful work of man which my boyhood vividly remembers... it looks over the tree tops of a deep and elmy valley and away to the west where, like a silver shield, the Atlantic shines...’ A mile to the north, near the hamlet of Pendrift, stands Jubilee Rock. Having dined at Pendrift in October of 1810, a certain Lieutenant John Rogers and his recruiting party of the 65th Regiment carved Britannia and the royal and other arms, including those of the Rogers family of Blisland, upon this moorland rock in celebration of the Golden Jubilee of George lll.
Bodmin
Cornwall’s old county town is strewn with grand buildings which tell of its important past. Bodmin’s history began in the sixth century when Cornwall’s chief patron saint, St Petroc, arrived here from Padstow and founded his famous priory. By the time of Domesday Book in 1086 a town had grown up around the priory, the only one in the county recorded as having a market. Nothing remains today of the priory, but the 15th Century church which probably occupies the same site is the largest in Cornwall. The Assizes have been moved to the County Court in Truro, but the splendid neo-classical court building still dominates Mount Folly at the lower end of the town. The town’s Victorian prison is now a dramatic semi-ruin, although parts of it are open to the public. High on Bodmin Beacon, dominating the scene for miles around, is the 144ft Gilbert monument, erected as a tribute to a famous son of Bodmin, Sir Walter Raleigh Gilbert, who was a general in the British Army in India.
Boscastle
Boscastle harbour, despite being a narrow and tortuous inlet, is one of the few natural harbours for refuge and trade to be found along Cornwall’s forbidding north coast, and as such it has had a long and busy history. Until the 1890s there was a regular import trade in coal, limestone, ironwork and general merchandise, with 200 ships calling in one year and cargoes of timber coming directly to Boscastle from Canada. Local slate, china clay and oats were the main exports. Today the National Trust owns the harbour and much of the dramatic coastline to either side. Look out for the famous blowhole, known as the Devil’s Bellows, below Penally Point. which is active for about an hour on either side of low water.
Breage
Pronounced to rhyme with ‘Haig’, and sometimes to rhyme with ‘league’ the village of Breage is renowned above all for the mediaeval wall paintings in its sturdy granite church. Soon after its completion in 1466, the church’s limewashed walls and window splays were painted with a series of figures, including St Christopher and Christ of the Trades, which today loom vaguely at you out of the gloom in softly dappled colours. They are thought to be the work of monks who travelled the country decorating churches in this way as a form of religious education. They have survived being painted over countless times since the Reformation, the final coat of emulsion having been applied as late as 1950.
Bude
Bude developed in the last century as an agricultural trading port, serving the large, remote, rural area around it, and, in late-Victorian and Edwardian times, as a genteel holiday resort. It was linked to the inland farming communities by the 35 miles of the Bude Canal, built between 1819 and 1826. Today Bude is a popular family resort and surfing centre, famed for its beaches. The Bude Surf Life Saving Club, formed in 1953, was the first of its kind in the country. Sir Goldsworthy Gurney, inventor of the earliest steam road-locomotive amongst other extraordinary things, built the small castle by the canal entrance which is now council offices.
Cadgwith
One of Cornwall’s loveliest villages, Cadgwith is crammed with cottages built of rough lumps of serpentine – the gloriously variegated local stone – and roofed in thatch. Such a concentration of thatched roofs is a rarity in Cornwall, where slate has been in general use for so long. Cadgwith has a long history of pilchard fishing, crabbing and smuggling, and a lifeboat was stationed here until 1961. The bright-painted boats on the beach, the wires, chains, blocks and winches and the tell-tale smell of fish about the place are reminders that there is still a small fishery here, catching mostly crabs and lobsters.
Callington
This small market town, which once stood at the gateway to one of the richest copper mining districts in the world and an area of intense industrial activity in the second half of the last century, is much quieter today. Behind the town, and dominating the scene for miles around, is the mighty swell of Kit Hill, a wonderful 1000ft hill crowned by an 80ft-high stack built in 1858 for the winding and stamping engine of Kithill Consols mine. Rumour has it that every known mineral in the world may be found on, or under, Kit Hill. Prince Charles, the Duke of Cornwall, gave the hill to the county in 1985 and it is now a country park.
Dupath holy well, a mile from the town, is enclosed in a fine granite building of 1510. The water in the basin was believed to cure whooping cough.
Calstock
An important river port since Saxon times, Calstock clings to the steep Cornish bank of the Tamar 14 miles upriver from Plymouth Sound. The scene is dominated by the splendid viaduct of 1908 which carries the branch line from Plymouth to Gunnislake. Calstock’s zenith as a port came when it served an area of intense industrial and mining activity, of which many remains still exist, and a rural parish renowned for its cultivation of fruit and flowers. A mile downriver by footpath lies the enchanting mediaeval house and estate of Cotehele, owned by the National Trust since 1947, together with its river quay, watermill, estate workshops and glorious woodland walks.
Camborne
Camborne was just a village until it was transformed by the mining boom which began in the late 18th Century and saw the Camborne and Redruth district become the richest mining area in the world. Although a considerable number of ruinous stacks and engine houses remain, they cannot begin to convey the scenes of 150 years ago when scores of mines transfigured the landscape. Camborne is particularly associated with a number of great engineers and inventors who helped to transform the industry and economy of the county and made Cornish mining engineering famous throughout the world. Richard Trevithick, responsible for the high pressure boiler and the first true Cornish beam engine amongst many other things, was born here in 1771. There is a fine statue of him outside the public library, the cottage in nearby Penponds in which he spent his early years is owned by the National Trust, and his birthday on April 26th is celebrated in fine style every year as Trevithick Day.
Camelford
This small, attractive town on the northwestern edge of Bodmin Moor takes its name from the River Camel (probably ‘crooked one’ in Cornish). Thanks to the proximity of Tintagel (and to the unfortunate identification of Camelford with Camelot), Arthurian associations abound in the area, particularly at nearby Slaughterbridge which is said to be the site of Arthur’s last battle. Tennyson came here twice to visit the seventh-century inscribed stone which was incorrectly believed to refer to King Arthur.There is a good museum and art gallery in Camelford, and Roughtor, Cornwall’s second highest peak, is just a couple of miles away at the end of a rather thrilling roller-coaster of a road. Down by the ford beyond the car park you will find the stark and lonely memorial to Charlotte Dymond, murdered there by her lover in 1844.
Cape Cornwall
This dramatic headland, crowned by a handsome mining stack, is the only one in the country to be known as a cape (i.e. a promontory that marks the meeting-place of two oceans or channels). As far as mediaeval navigators were concerned, this was the true Land’s End, the most westerly point of Britain and the point where the English Channel met St. George’s Channel. Although it is now known that the two channels actually divide at Gwennap Head (known as the Fisherman’s Land’s End) eight miles to the south, Cape Cornwall keeps its proud appellation nonetheless. The Cape was bought for the nation by H.J. Heinz Ltd. in 1987 and given to the National Trust. It now forms the central point in a four-mile stretch of magnificent Trust-owned coastline, rich in archaeological and mining remains.
Cardinham
This small village and its surrounding parish on the southern edge of Bodmin Moor, where steep wooded valleys plunge down from the moorland heights, is unusually rich in relics of the past. The lovely church has two of Cornwall’s finest Celtic crosses in the churchyard, one of which is well over eight feet tall and beautifully decorated. Nearby is the privately-owned site of the important early-mediaeval Cardinham Castle; a little further away is a Romano-British inscribed stone. The Forestry Commission provides a series of forest trails in Cardinham Woods to the south of the village.
Charlestown
The harbour village of Charlestown was a Georgian ‘new town’, a port development planned by local landowner Charles Rashleigh (after whom it was named) and built between 1790 and 1810 for the export of copper and china clay. Throughout the 19th century the little dock was packed with ships and the harbourside sheds and warehouses thronged with complementary businesses: boatbuilding, ropemaking, brickworks, lime burning, net houses, bark houses and pilchard curing. Today there are two remarkable things about Charlestown. One is that, against all the odds, it has survived as a working port and a small amount of china clay is still exported in an average of 30-40 ships a year. The second is that – again, against all the odds – it has largely escaped ‘development’ and remains one of the finest and most fascinating places on the Cornish coast.
Coverack
This lovely village on the east coast of the Lizard, with its tiny harbour wall of 1724 made from local hornblende and serpentine, seems a peaceful and sheltered place on a sunny summer’s afternoon – but the photographs in the bar of the Paris Hotel show just how devastating a storm here can be. The hotel is named after an American passenger liner which ran aground off Lowland Point in 1899. There was no loss of life on that occasion, but only a year before that the steamship Mohegan was wrecked on the dreaded Manacle Rocks beyond Lowland Point and 106 people were drowned. Soon after that a lifeboat was stationed at Coverack (and the stout lifeboat house built just by the harbour) because, as was said at the time, ‘the fishermen at this village are familiar with the Manacles and the boat could be launched in all waters’.
Crackington Haven
Sheer cliffs tower above the beach at Crackington high up on the north coast. This is a remote coastline of dramatic scenery and extraordinary geology, with the horizontally-layered strata bent and contorted by ancient earth movements. Coastal vessels used to run up on the beach here to land limestone and coal and load slate from the local quarries – a hazardous undertaking in any weather on this exposed coast but the one to which the hamlet of Crackington Haven owes its existence.
Crantock
Separated from Newquay by the heavily silted-up estuary of the River Gannel, the ancient churchtown of Crantock has been swollen by post-war suburban housing. The church of St Carantocus is unusual and, in the view of Sir John Betjeman, one of the most attractive in Cornwall. Crantock Beach, which occupies much of the old mouth of the estuary, is a broad expanse of sand; a cave in the deep cleft of Piper’s Hole on the south side of the beach contains carvings of a woman and a horse with some lines of verse, the work of a local man called Joseph Prater in the early 1900s.
Delabole
Within the place-name of Delabole is evidence that the great slate quarry for which the village is famed is more than 700 years old. The Cornish word poll, meaning ‘pit’, was attached to the name Deli as early as 1284. Delabole slate is the best in Cornwall and its quality as a roofing material is easily distinguishable by the untrained eye from the cheaper Spanish alternative, let alone from the artificial asbestos ‘slate’ that has become so prevalent in recent years. The quarry itself is more than 500ft deep with a circumference of 1.5 miles, although still very much a working concern, there is a viewing platform for the public and a showroom selling gifts. Nearby, at Deli Farm, is Britain’s first commercial wind farm.
Devoran
Devoran had a short but glorious career as one of Cornwall’s busiest ports, thanks to the Redruth and Chacewater Railway which linked its docks and quays on Restronguet Creek to the greatest copper mining district in the county, around St. Day and Gwennap. Ironically, the same mines which brought such riches also helped to cause the heavy silting of the Carnon river, which drains the mining area, and Restronguet Creek into which it flows.Today Devoran is a pleasant village, but down on the water’s edge there are still plenty of reminders to be seen – wharves, ore bins, massive granite bollards – of its origins as a substantial riverside port.
Duloe
The name Duloe means ‘two pools’ or, more specifically in this instance, ‘two Looes’, the parish being situated on high ground between the East Looe and West Looe rivers. The village is noted for its stone circle of eight large quartz stones, one of which has fallen. It is the smallest of Cornwall’s stone circles which date from the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age (c.2500-1400 BC). The parish church has a massively-built 13th-century tower topped by a Victorian pyramidal roof and, inside, the splendid carved tomb of Sir John Colshull who, in 1450, was the second richest man in Cornwall.
Falmouth
Falmouth Harbour and Carrick Roads form one of the finest natural havens in the world, and the third largest after Sydney and Rio. The estuary with all its many creeks covers a total shoreline of nearly 70 miles. Falmouth attracts boat-lovers of all kinds. Until the late 16th century, Falmouth was little more than a fishing hamlet known as Smithick or Pennycomequick. The development of Falmouth was orchestrated by the Killigrew family, and its success was ensured by being chosen, in 1688, as a packet station for the Post Office. For 160 years, Falmouth’s packet ships delivered mail to Spain, Portugal, the West Indies, North America and Brazil. Ancillary trades attracted by the packet business, particularly ship repair, enabled the port to survive and grow after it lost the contract in 1851. Falmouth Docks, founded in 1860, today handles ships of up to 90,000 tonnes and has a worldwide reputation for yacht-building. The town has plenty of pubs and restaurants, with beaches and hotels to the south on Falmouth Bay. The National Maritime Museum Cornwall is well worth a visit. A core of working core boats still dredges the oyster beds in the northern part of Carrick Roads and is the last working sailing fleet in Western Europe.
Flushing
Facing Falmouth across the Penryn River, Flushing is a handsome village and still almost entirely unspoilt. In the 17th century, local landowner Francis Trefusis transformed the hamlet of Nankersey into the flourishing little town of Flushing with the help of engineers from Flessinghe in Holland (hence the name) who supervised the draining of low-lying marshland and the building of the fine dry-stone sea walls and quays. With the coming of the packet service to Falmouth, Flushing became the chosen home of packet captains and naval officers; a place of high fashion and gentility where, we are told by James Silk Buckingham who was born here in 1786, ‘ dinners, balls and evening parties were held at some one or other of the Captain’s houses every evening’.
Fowey
The mouth of the Fowey River, with the town of Fowey on one side of the deep-water estuary and the village of Polruan on the other, is breathtakingly beautiful. Even the modern developments on the skyline above old Polruan cannot ma |