The small ruined building in the field next to The Forge is St Helen's Oratory.
St Helen's Oratory is thought to be on the site of a 6th century church and the font in St Just church might have originally come from here. In the mid-19th Century, an ancient cross was discovered on the site with markings that were in use during the 4th and 5th centuries. A small stone basin was also found and this is now inside St Just church. The cross has since been lost; according to one account, it was thrown down the St Just vicarage well! The cross that is now on the chapel is another ancient one that was found nearby.
Choughs nest in the area and are fairly regularly seen.
In the 1800s, many choughs were killed by "sportsmen" and trophy hunters. Also around this time, grazing livestock were moved to inland pastures where they could be more easily managed. The result was that the cliff slopes became overgrown and choughs found it increasingly difficult to find suitable feeding areas. By 1973, the chough had become extinct in Cornwall. In recent years, clifftops have been managed more actively which has included the reintroduction of grazing. Choughs have returned to Cornwall by themselves from colonies in Wales or Ireland.
The name "chough" is from the bird's call although this is not that accurate as "chough" is more like the sound a jackdaw makes (a very short "chu"). Locally, choughs were known as "chaws" which is a better representation of their (much longer) sound.
The old Cornish name for the bird is Palores, meaning digger, which is thought to be a description of it rooting for invertebrates.
The scientific name (Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax) means "fire crow" which is likely to be an allusion to its red bill and legs. This possibly also relates to the birds' mischievous reputation during the Tudor and Elizabethan periods for stealing lighted candles or embers and dropping these onto roofs, which were generally thatched in Cornwall at this time.
A tax on refined tin was introduced in mediaeval times that was known as Coinage Tax as it was charged based on the purity of tin ore. From 1337-1837, the Cornish tin industry was effectively double-taxed because Cornwall was deemed "foreign". The additional taxation rates levied on Cornish tin compared to that mined in Devon were paid to the Duchy of Cornwall.
On May 15 2000, the Revived Cornish Stannary Parliament sent an invoice to the Duchy of Cornwall for an inflation-adjusted £20 billion for recovery of overcharged taxation on tin production by the Duchy of Cornwall. The invoice, which had terms of 120 days, has so far not been paid. Statutory interest on a late payment of that amount is over £1.5 billion per year.
The stream in the Kenidjack Valley once powered around 50 waterwheels. The stone wheel pit that can be seen in the lower Kenidjack Valley was enlarged in around 1865 to accommodate a waterwheel of 52 feet and the 65 foot "Great Wheel" of Wheal Call, built in 1837, was the second largest in Britain. Even when five engine houses were installed in the lower part of the valley, only three of these worked full time and the other two were only used in times of drought. The tall chimney further up the valley is the remains of a furnace for the arsenic works. Most of the surrounding walled structures are the remains of waterwheel-driven ore crushing mills.
At the sign, the walk continues uphill to the right.
First, you may possibly want to take the quarter-mile walk ahead through the mining remains along the valley and then back again before carrying on.
Follow the uphill path from the sign until it emerges onto a track at a granite waymark.
Three tidal pools created by miners using explosives are located on the rock platforms of Porth Ledden at the end of the Kenidjack Valley.
The central and largest pool is called "Pullandase" and said to be named after its creator. It is roughly 5 metres across and around 3 metres deep and is exposed by the tide for roughly half of the time.
Two smaller pools are located on the rock platforms either side. One is known as "Sammers Pool" which also seems to be named after its creator. The other is known as "Weedy Pool" which seems likely to be a description of its appearance rather the name of its creator.
From here there is a good view over Cape Cornwall.
Cape Cornwall is the only headland in England referred to as a "cape" and one of the only two in the UK (the other is Cape Wrath in Scotland). According to some sources, Cape Cornwall was once thought to be the most westerly point of the mainland, although most maps from the 16th Century onward clearly show Lands End as protruding further west. The name Cape Cornwall first appeared on maritime charts in Tudor times though on some maps it was marked as "Chapel Just". The Cornish name for the headland is the topographically-inspired Kilgodh Ust which has been translated as "goose-back at St Just" and eloquently describes the view from the headland at the bottom of the Kenidjack Valley.
There is a lookout on the seaward side of Cape Cornwall which is manned by volunteers from the National Coastwatch Institution and during Victorian times, there was a tin mine on the headland which operated intermittently between 1838 and 1883. The mine's chimney near the peak of the cape was retained as an aid to navigation, and during a period in the early 20th century, the former ore dressing floors were converted into greenhouses and wineries. In 1987, the headland was purchased by the Heinz corporation and gifted to the nation, to be managed by the National Trust. The chimney is marked with a commemorative plaque and is now known as the Heinz monument.
In 1889, the steamship Malta ran aground at full speed on the rocks offshore of the Kenidjack Valley, in dense fog. The crew and passengers were all rescued by the Sennen lifeboat. A court found the captain's navigation to be substandard and suspended his licence for three months. The cargo included copper, tin and iron and has been heavily salvaged but copper ingots still turn up occasionally.
The engine house on the left was an ore crushing ("stamping") engine house. The area around the engine house was originally a small mine known as Wheal Edward but was later combined into West Wheal Owles.
The engine house ahead with the spoil heaps housed the pumping engine for West Wheal Owles.
In 1783, the mine was known as Crackegodna. In the 19th Century, this was taken over as part of the Wheal Owles complex and renamed West Wheal Owles although the old name still survives as Cargodna shaft. The surviving engine house was for the pumping engine. The corner of a wall is all that remains of the winding engine house which was used to power a double track tramway leading down to a shaft on the cliffs.
The West Wheal Owles pumping engine house was used for filming both Wheal Grace and Wheal Leisure in the BBC's Poldark series. There was a real mine called Wheal Leisure at Perranporth where Winston Graham lived.
The Cornish name for Botallack Head is Lae Maen Veor, meaning great stone ledge. The two engine houses perched on the ledges were part of Crown mines, named after The Crowns rocks off the headland. The mine was built in 1815 and the workings extend for a quarter of a mile under the Atlantic ocean; the deepest shaft is 250 fathoms below sea level. In 1863 the chain which pulled the mine gig suddenly broke, causing eight men and a boy to plummet to their deaths down the shaft. The mine finally closed at the outbreak of the First World War.
The tall chimney to your right was part of an arsenic labyrinth. A path leads up to it via the building with the arched brick doorway. Once you have finished exploring, return to the path alongside the dressing floors and continue until it forks.
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.
A short distance to the right along the track is the Botallack Count House - a large building with a lawn.
The Count House at Botallack was built during the 1860s when the dressing floors were expanded on the cliff top, replacing a previous Count House on the track leading down to the engine houses on the headland. As the name suggests, it was where the miners collected their pay but it was also the hub of the day-to-day running of the mine. It was restored by the National Trust and is now open to the public with a café and an information centre about the history and wildlife of the area (no entry fee). The building is now heated geothermally, by bore holes in the ground below it to heat water using the same hot rocks that made the mines unpleasantly hot to work in.
The conical structures in the old dressing floors are the remains of devices known as "buddles". These were used to separate the ore from the rock (known as gange) in the ore slurry created by the stamping mill. The slurry was trickled onto the centre of the dome and a rotating set of brushes, suspended from wooden spokes, smeared the slurry around the circular structure. The heavy ore fragments would deposit near the central dome whereas unwanted rock fragments would travel further and end up in a pit around the outside.
Peregrine falcons nest on the cliffs here so you may see one flying overhead or perched on a rocky outcrop as you walk along the coast to Levant.
The peregrine falcon can reach over 322 km/h (200 mph) during its hunting stoop (high speed dive) making it the fastest member of the animal kingdom. In 2005, a peregrine was measured at a top speed of 389 km/h (242 mph). The air pressure at this speed could damage a bird's lungs. However small bony tubercles on a falcon's nostrils guide the powerful airflow away, enabling the bird to breathe more easily while diving. In Cornish dialect, these falcons are known as "winnards" and local expressions include "shrammed as a winnard" (meaning chilled) and "rumped up like a winnard" (meaning huddled).
Choughs nest in the area and are fairly regularly seen.
After several decades of extinction, a pair of choughs settled in 2001 on the Lizard Peninsula. Since then, the birds have successfully bred and been joined by a few more incoming birds, and the population has steadily grown and spread further across Cornwall. Each Cornish chough is fitted with one leg ring in the colours of St Piran's flag and two other colours on the opposite leg to identify them.
Heather can grow in soils which have concentrations of metals normally considered toxic to other plants and they are also tolerant of salty (high sodium) environments on the coast. Their symbiosis with fungi restricts metal uptake through their roots.
The temperature of the rocks increases by 1 degree roughly for each 15 fathoms that a mine is sunk so mines were unpleasantly hot places to work. The deepest mine in Cornwall was Dulcoath where air temperatures of 43°C were recorded at the 550 fathom level.
Extra shafts were sunk into many mines to improve the ventilation and bring down the temperature. You can see these on OS maps marked as "Air Shaft". Under the sea, shafts to ventilate and cool the mines were not an option so most submarine mines were particularly uncomfortable with temperatures of 32-38°C being common.
The gully is part of the inlet known as Whealcock Zawn.
According to "The Z to Z of Great Britain", there are just over 40 place names in Britain that begin with the letter Z; over three-quarters of them are in Cornwall. One of the main reasons for this is that the Cornish word for "coastal inlet" is zawn, and coastline is something that Cornwall has rather a lot of.
Zawn Brinny, near Levant mine is an example of one of these.
Cornwall has the longest stretch of coastline of any county in the UK, stretching for roughly 400 miles around 80% of the county, and there are over 300 beaches. Wherever you are in Cornwall, you are never more than 16 miles from the sea, and from the majority of hills you can see it on a clear day.
As early as the 18th Century, mine workings in the Levant area tunnelled below sea level and went beneath the sea. In 1820 the operation known as Levant Mine was established and operated continuously for over 100 years until 1930, after which it was abandoned and slowly flooded. It got the nickname of "mine under the sea" because its network of tunnels over 60 miles long extends under the Atlantic Ocean, stretching 1.5 miles out from the coast. Within the tunnels, a blind miner helped others to navigate when their candles failed.
The beam engine is still in situ and was restored after 60 years of decay by a group of enthusiasts known as the "Greasy Gang". The working engine can be seen within a mining museum run by the National Trust.
Some of the Cornish mines were up to half a mile in depth and every day men needed to get from the surface to the bottom of the mine and back after doing a day of physically exhausting work. Having men climb a half-mile long ladder was not efficient for mine operators, so faster and less exhausting means to move men about were invented. Winding apparatus could be used to lower and raise men in a basket, and mechanisms along these lines were still in use in the granite quarries of Bodmin Moor during the 20th Century.
However, the beam engine offered an alternative approach: the long rod of a pumping engine could have steps on which men could ride down, usually 12 feet, during one beam engine stroke and the sides of the shaft could have ledges, so the men could step off onto a ledge whilst the engine reversed direction, then step back on for the next stroke. Some of the larger mines had dedicated "man engines" which were tailored for this purpose.
The man engine was first invented in Germany in 1833. The Cornwall Polytechnic Society immediately realised its potential benefit to miners' well-being and sponsored a trial which took place in Tresavean mine at Lanner. Initially this was a small scale installation powered by a water wheel. It was then replaced by a full-scale model, more than ten times longer and powered by a steam engine. Although successful, the cost of building a dedicated man engine put off many mine owners who were much more interested in profit than the welfare of the workforce. It was not until the productivity improvements (resulting from miners not spending 3 hours climbing ladders) were costed-in that some other mines deployed them.
Higher Bal was once part of the Spearne Consols mine and was incorporated into Levant in 1880. In the massive retaining wall, one archway has a flight of steps leading to the engine house and the other looks straight into the mineshaft. The V-shaped notches in the wall were chutes known as "ore-passes" which were used to fill carts with ore. The engine house was used both to pump out the mineshaft and for hoisting.
One evening in 1919, the top bearing failed in the Levant Man Engine as the men were on their way out of the mine and what was described as "a living pillar of men" dropped down the shaft. The weight of the wooden pump rod and men on it was so great that the safety catches designed to stop it if it fell all failed. Since the stroke of the engine was only 12 feet, the drop would have been at most 12 feet before the beam hit the bottom of the shaft. However, the beam on which they were standing shattered which meant that the men dropped from just over 100 feet below the surface to the bottom of the 1800 foot (⅓ mile) shaft and many of those waiting on the steps to get onto the beam were crushed by the debris falling from above. In all, 31 miners were killed and many others were seriously injured.
A number of small mines operated in this area including Spearne Mine, Spearne Moor, Higher Spearne. These were amalgamated in 1839 with a few more nearby to form Spearne Consols. Tin, copper and arsenic were extracted but output was relatively modest compared to the highly productive neighbouring mines such as Levant. The mine waste and nearly all the buildings have been cleared to bring fields back into agricultural use. There is a suspicion this was done without capping some of the mineshafts as one was discovered during ploughing in 1991 which had mine waste bulldozed into it which was starting to slump down the shaft. A survey in 1992 found that were at least 22 shafts, one of which is now under a house.
Rabbits also feed on the crops in the fields here.
The first record of slang word "bunny" being applied to rabbits is from the late 17th Century. Prior to this it was in use as a term of endearment, recorded in a 1606 love letter as "my honey, my bunny...". The origin of this pet name is thought to be a dialect word "bun" which was a general term for small furry creatures which did include rabbits but also applied to squirrels. The use of the word "rabbit" for chattering is from the Cockney rhyming slang for "talk" (rabbit and pork).
Navelwort grows along the wall on the left.
Both navelwort's Latin name and common name are based on its resemblance to a belly button. Other common names include wall pennywort and penny pies due to the shape and size resembling an (old) penny.
The lone chimney in the field is the remains of an engine house for Ninevah Mine. There are also mineshafts hidden in the undergrowth either side of the footpath. It is thought that this mine might have been a later development of nearby Carn Yorth tin mine which by 1857 had been incorporated into the Spearne Consols complex of mines. Ninevah Mine was later incorporated into Botallack Mine and the shafts here were used for ventilation.
Lichens often grow on sick or dying trees so some gardeners assume that the lichen might be harming the tree. In fact, it's purely because these trees have fewer leaves so there is more light available for the algae inside the fungus to photosynthesise. It's too dark under many healthy trees for the lichen to grow.
There are over 4,000 farms in Cornwall covering over a quarter of a million hectares. Over 70% of Cornwall's land is farmed.
Alexanders are a member of the carrot family and grow along roadsides in places similar to cow parsley. The leaves are more solid than the lacy cow parsley leaves and the flowers are yellow rather than white. The name arises because the plant was introduced to the UK by the Romans and was known as the "pot herb of Alexandria". It is also sometimes known as horse parsley.
The nutritiousness of nettle leaves makes it a preferred food plant for the caterpillars of many common butterfly species including the red admiral, tortoiseshell, peacock and comma.
The place name Botallack dates back to the Middle Ages and was recorded as Botalec in 1302. The first part of the name is from the Cornish word bod for "dwelling". It's possible that the rest is based on the Cornish word tal which be used to mean "brow", "front" or "end". The meaning isn't obvious and the name may even have come via a personal name itself based on the Cornish word i.e. Talek's dwelling.
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).
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.
The plants get their name due to their triangular flower stems. As the name also suggests, they are members of the onion family and have a small bulb. In fact, in New Zealand they are known as "onion weed". They are also known as "snowbell" due to their white bluebell-like flowers.
Mines were worked in shifts. Particularly in winter, miners would often have to walk to and from work in the dark. Candles were used in the mine but since Cornwall is a windy place, on the surface, some form of lantern was required to stop the candle being blown out. One of the most common was made using an old boot!
The engine house was part of Wheal Owles (it housed the pumping engine) and the cottage was the Count House (mine office).
Wheal Owles, pronounced "oals" and from the Cornish als for cliff, was a tin and copper mine worked during the 19th Century. The mine had twenty-five shafts, eleven steam engines, and over thirty miles of tunnels.
In 1893, 20 miners were killed when a surveying error resulted in tunnelling into an area of old workings of Wheal Drea which was flooded. Water poured into Wheal Owles, rising up the shaft at an average rate of 1 foot every 2 seconds which completely overwhelmed the pumping equipment. As the water rushed into Wheal Owles it pushed the air before it, creating a great wind which blew out all the candles, leaving the terrified miners in absolute darkness. Those working on the upper levels narrowly escaped with their lives. Six miners managed to escape by using a tram wagon to navigate through the darkness to the shaft and climbed to safety before the water engulfed them. Within 20 minutes, 75% of the Wheal Owles mine was filled with water. The mine was closed and the 20 bodies were never recovered.
The engine house to the left was part of Wheal Drea. This housed a winding engine used to raise ore from the mine.
The settlement of Kenidjack was first recorded in 1324 spelt Kenygyek. The name is thought to be based on the Cornish word for firewood, kunys.
The bramble is a member of the rose family and there are over 320 species of bramble in the UK. This is a big part of why not all blackberries ripen at the same time, and vary in size and flavour.
Gorse is also known (particularly in the Westcountry) as furze from the Middle English word furs. This itself is from the Old English word fyres, closely related to the Old English word for fire.
Mining for tin was already underway in the upper part of the Kenidjack Valley during the 16th Century and this intensified in the 1830s when steam power was available.
During Victorian times, the higher section along the south side of the valley was operated as Boscean Mine whilst Lower Boscean Mine occupied the middle part of the Kenidjack Valley, near the crossing just below Boscean Farm. The mine included an engine house for a pumping engine and the chimney from this stands just below the farm. Down in the valley there was an ore crushing mill powered by a waterwheel. A massive area in the valley was covered in large sheds which included the "dressing floors" for processing the ore. The mines were worked until the late 1870s and in their last decade as part of a group of mines known as Wheal Cunning United.
Boscean was recorded in 1302 as Bosseghan. The name is from the Cornish words bod (meaning dwelling and often appearing in the form bos) and sehgan meaning "dry place". The farm is on a northeast-facing slope, clear of the wet ground at the bottom of the valley.
The neatly-kept grass over the wall to the right is Cape Cornwall golf course.
Golf developed in The Netherlands during the Middle Ages and was introduced into Scotland towards the end of this period where it evolved to its present form. The word golf is thought to be a Scots alteration of Dutch colf meaning "club". Golf is first documented in Scotland in a 1457 Act of the Scottish Parliament, prohibiting the playing of the games of gowf and futball as these were a distraction from archery practice.
Pasties became popular with miners initially as a meal that could easily be carried to work though some mines eventually had stoves so a batch of pasties could be lowered down raw and baked fresh at the bottom of the shaft. Mines were very wet places so keeping a pasty dry for several hours would have been a real challenge.
The popular story of pasties eaten in mines being held by their crimped crust which was then discarded is likely to be an urban myth. As well as the difficulty of holding a "man size" pasty by its crimp without it snapping off. You can try this experiment for yourself with a "large" (enormous) size Philps pasty (but not on a harbour wall). Miners were generally too poor and hungry to throw away food. Photos from the 1890s show miners with pasties wrapped in a cloth bag to keep them clean down a mine. Some researchers (very dedicated to the pasty cause) have checked through thousands of photos and found none where a miner is holding a pasty by its crimp.
Boswedden was recorded in 1302 as Boswen which comes directly from the Cornish for "white dwelling".
Porthledden was built by Francis Oats, a local man who was a mine captain by his early twenties and went on to make his fortune in the gold fields and diamond mines of South Africa, becoming the Chairman of De Beers within 3 years of joining the company as a mining engineer. Porthledden was completed in 1909, towards the end of his life, and was run as a hotel by his son after his death. As the family was heavily invested in Cornish mines and the hotel was not that successful, the family debts mounted and eventually they had to sell off the house. Towards the end of the 20th century it became derelict until it was bought in 2003 by a young couple who had built a successful company in the .com boom with a website about hotels, ironically. The restoration of the house took them 10 years and had to be approached as a maritime engineering project due to the salt-laden winds that blow over the Cape that would corrode any materials that are not marine grade.
Kenidjack headland was adapted in the Iron Age to create a promontory fort. Stone-reinforced triple ramparts were created either side of the large rock outcrop to form a line of defences. Within the fortified area are hut circles - the foundations of roundhouses.
The stripey chimney with the remains of a building alongside was a compressor house. This contained an absolutely massive steam engine over 60ft long with a flywheel that weighed nearly 20 tonnes, The compressed air powered drills underground.
The ruined building is associated with a rifle range which is documented in the 1880s. On the ground between the building and the wall forming the butts is a ring of stones which is the remains of a cairn circle, documented as containing a central cist in the 1860s.
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.
English Stonecrop grows as a mat in rocky places and is recognisable in summer as dense clumps of star-shaped white or pale pink flowers. This is now being actively encouraged to grow on roofs in eco-housing projects to provide insulation.
The leaves turn pink in dry conditions when moisture to move nutrients around the plant is limited. This causes sugars created by photosynthesis to build up in the leaves. At high concentrations, these react with proteins in the sap to produce red anthrocyanin compounds. This is the same process that causes autumn leaves to turn red when the plant cuts off supplies to the leaf.
The northwest-facing coastline of Penwith was particularly treacherous for shipping. The high cliffs along the coast prevented ships from being able to see the lighthouses at Trevose Head or the Longships. From Cape Cornwall, the wall of granite runs towards the rocks of the Wra, or Three Stone Oar, off Pendeen, some of which are just below the surface. The cliffs continue all the way to St Ives, and part-way along is the protruding Gurnard's Head which was another major hazard for shipping.
Because bluebells spread very slowly, they're considered to be an indicator of ancient woodland sites. In areas where trees are not very old, the fact there are bluebells around can indicate that there has been a wood on a site for a very long time. Even if there are no trees there at all, bluebells tell us that there was woodland there some time in the past. The bluebells along the coast are a relic of the gnarled oak woodland that used to grow here before it was cleared for grazing. There is still a patch of the ancient oak woodland left along the coast at Dizzard.
The stiles in Cornwall that consist of rectangular bars of granite resembling a cattle grid are known as "coffen" (coffin) stiles. These often occur on footpaths leading to churches such as the Zennor Churchway. The mini cattle grids are fairly effective at containing livestock and were significantly easier for coffin-bearers to navigate than stiles crossing walls. They are more frequently found in West Cornwall but there are a few in East Cornwall such as those on either side of Advent Church.
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