In Elizabethan times, the town of Falmouth did not exist, only a few small settlements around Carrick Roads which had been there since mediaeval times. A few castles had been built during the Tudor period to defend the river system and there was a manor house of Arwenack which was owned by Sir John Killigrew. When Sir Walter Raleigh visited Arwenack in 1598, he was so impressed with the natural harbour of Carrick Roads that he recommended that it should be developed as a port. Following this, the town of Falmouth was created in 1613.
As you walk down Webber Hill, the point that you can see on the opposite side of the water is Trefusis Point.
King Henry VIII planned to build a castle in the field on Trefusis Point as part of the Falmouth coastal defences to go alongside the castles at St Mawes and Pendennis. However, the funds had to be diverted in order to finance the front line of his wars in France and Scotland, so the castle was never built.
A small mediaeval settlement, recorded as Smythwyck in 1370, once stood close to the present Market Strand in Falmouth. The settlement had a harbour and remains of the quay walls have been found near the current Prince of Wales Pier. The settlement still existed in the early 17th Century, after which it was probably subsumed into the new town of Falmouth.
As well as having a university, Falmouth is also where the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society is based.
In 1832 the Cornwall Polytechnic Society was founded by a prominent Quaker family to promote the ideas and inventions of the workers in their Perran Foundry. This was the first use of the word "Polytechnic" (meaning "of many arts and techniques") in Britain. In 1835 the society received Royal Patronage from King William IV and changed its name to the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society. The Society played a prominent role in industrial development in the 19th century, being instrumental in the development of the "Man engine" and explosives in mines. The society is still running as an educational, cultural and scientific charity, as well as a local arts and cinema venue, and is the only remaining Polytechnic in the United Kingdom.
Cornwall was a Royalist stronghold during the English Civil War and Falmouth Parish Church is consequently dedicated to King Charles I under the title "King Charles the Martyr", commemorating his execution in 1649. A little over a decade after the war ended, the building of the church began - in 1662 when the first foundation stone was laid by Sir Peter Killigrew. One historian suggests that since then the church has probably undergone more alterations and additions than any other church in the United Kingdom.
Other than the organ at Truro Cathedral, the church has the largest organ of any church in Cornwall.
The National Maritime Museum was the result of an architectural design competition and was built in 2003. The museum manages the National Small Boat collection and its galleries include the maritime history of Cornwall. The building also includes an underwater viewing zone and a vast library which holds many of the original Falmouth port documents.
Falmouth harbour is one of the largest natural harbours in the world and the deepest in Western Europe. The large waterway of Carrick Roads, forming the junction of seven estuaries, was created after the Ice Age from an ancient valley which flooded with the rising sea levels as the ice caps melted.
Falmouth docks were built during the 1860s and at roughly the same time, the railway was extended into Cornwall, allowing the docks to be used for import/export. During Victorian times, the docks included a granary to store imported cereals, which still exist as a store room. The docks were extended between the 1920s and 1950s and a number of wharves were added in this period, with intensive activity during WW2. A map of the docks from 1983 is inscribed into a metal disc set in granite just before the end of the pavement at the viewing area. More recently, in 1988, the Pendennis Shipyard was established as one of the world's leading builders of multi-million pound super yachts.
St Anthony's Lighthouse was built out of granite in 1835 on the eastern entrance to Falmouth Harbour to guide vessels clear of the Manacles rocks. In most directions, the light is white but a sector close to The Manacles rocks is coloured red, warning vessels to steer offshore. The lighthouse was featured in the UK version of the TV series "Fraggle Rock" as "Fraggle Rock Lighthouse". Until 1954, the lighthouse possessed a huge bell which hung outside the tower and was used as a fog signal. This was later replaced with a foghorn.
The name "Carrick Roads" is thought to be a mangling of the Cornish Karrek Reun meaning "seal rock". It is now known as "Black Rock" and located in the centre of the harbour entrance, between Pendennis Point and Carricknath Point, and marked with a large conical beacon. It is still used at low tide as a haul-out spot by seals.
The trees that overhang this stretch of path include chestnuts.
The chestnut tree originated in Sardinia and there is evidence of its cultivation by humans from around 2000 BC. It was introduced into Britain by the Romans who planted chestnut trees on their campaigns to provide an easily stored and transported source of food for their troops.
A gun battery, known as Crab Quay battery, was built in the 18th Century to defend the fairly easy landing point on Pendennis Head.
Near the end of the Victorian period, the site was reused to install two new 6-pounder quick-firing guns to protect an underwater minefield. The construction of batteries at St Mawes and Pendennis with heavier guns rendered the ones here redundant and they were removed in 1906.
It was not used during the First World War. However, during the Second World War, two guns were installed to target fast torpedo motor boats. There is a wreck of one of these German "E-boats" at Crackington Haven in North Cornwall.
In the late 1530s is was decided that a blockhouse, which became known as Little Dennis, was built as an interim measure so cannons could be quickly put into place to defend Carrick Roads whilst the larger fort on Pendennis Head was under construction. It once had several gun ports facing the sea but these were replaced with a single port for a single large gun. During Elizabethan times, the blockhouse was extended into a small fort which included three batteries at sea level and a drawbridge. This continued to be used until the 18th Century.
Pendennis Castle was built by Henry VIII to defend the coast against a possible French attack and was reinforced during the reign of Elizabeth I. During the English Civil War, more reinforcement took place and the castle withstood five months of siege from Parliamentary forces before it was captured. The castle was adapted for the World Wars of the 20th Century and the guardhouse has been restored to how it might have looked in the First World War. During the Second World War, underground tunnels and magazines were added which can now be visited.
The headlands you can see ahead from right to left are Pennance Point (quite near, between Falmouth's Swanpool and Maenporth beaches), Rosemullion Head (in the middle distance, on the mouth of the Helford River) and Manacle Point (the furthest and the most easterly point on The Lizard).
Eight German U-boats surrendered at the end of the war were moored in Falmouth Bay, anchored at Gyllyngvase. Two were intentionally sunk during Navy exercises, and the remaining six broke free from their moorings in a fierce winter gale and were swept onto the rocks along Castle Drive. The remains of one can be seen at low tide at Castle Beach. The others have broken up but fragments of hull can seen amongst the rocks on low spring tides or by snorkelling.
Whilst ships were returning to England, often on a voyage of several months, merchants would explore the markets to find the best port to land the goods. They had no means of communicating with the ships whilst at sea, so ships were often told to sail for "Falmouth for Orders". Falmouth, being the first large port on The Channel, provided a "holding pen" for ships with incoming cargoes whilst their final destination was being decided and communicated. The ships were often badly in need of repair and supplies from their journey across the Atlantic so during the wait they could be restocked and patched up. It is thought the practice and possibly also the phrase originated in the late 17th century, soon after the Royal Mail Packet Station was established at Falmouth which involved relatively fast communications with London. Falmouth is still a major refuelling port. Ships are required to use low-sulphur oil in the English Channel to reduce emissions.
The name Gyllyngvase is from the Cornish words an gillynn vas meaning "the shallow inlet". The beach is known locally as Gylly beach.
There's a sandy beach at all states of the tide at Gyllyngvase. At low tide, rock platforms either side of the beach are revealed with plenty of rockpools. The rocks extend further into the sandy area as the tide goes out so it's worth keeping a lookout for submerged rocks when paddling near the sides of the beach.
Queen Mary Gardens are laid out in a formal style and framed by Monterey Pines. The were opened next to Gyllyngvase Beach in 1912 to commemorate the coronation of Queen Mary, the wife of George V.
Although propelling a floating platform with a pole or paddle dates back thousands of years to multiple cultures, the modern sport of propelling a surfboard with a paddle is thought to stem from a surfer in Hawaii who was getting a bit too old to keep getting up and down to paddle and so used a long-handled wooden paddle so he could stay upright. His son and other surf instructors known as the Waikiki Beach Boys realised that standing up offered a better vantage point to keep an eye on their students and it became known as "Beach Boy surfing". It was adopted in the 1990s by big-wave surfer Laird Hamilton and took off as a sport in its own right in the early 2000s.
The Manacles reef stretches for a mile and a half out to sea and has numerous submerged rocks just below the surface which are all covered at high tide apart from one. The reef has been named "the grave of 1000 ships"; over 100 have certainly been lost here, which is more wrecks than any other comparable reef on the south coast of England. The name "Manacles" is thought to be a garbling of Meyn Eglos meaning "church stones" and may either refer to St Keverne church or the gravestones of over 1000 people who have drowned here.
The proverbial silver lining is that the shipwrecks and surrounding reefs provide a good habitat for marine life and consequently the reef has some of the best diving in Britain. In 2013, The Manacles was designated a Marine Conservation Zone as the wide range of habitats it provides support species such as spiny lobsters and sea fan anemones.
During the 17th and 18th Century, the Killigrew family flew a red flag from an elm tree as a navigational aid to guide shipping into Falmouth harbour. It was eventually taken down in 1779 to stop it being used by invading fleets.
Coots are black with a white beak and head shield. This white patch is the origin of the phrase "bald as a coot". Moorhens look similar but have a red beak.
Coots are extremely aggressive, especially in the breeding season. If their chicks annoy them, the parents will bite them. Consequently quite a few coot chicks starve to death due to mean parents.
The lake at Swanpool was once part of the sea but after the last Ice Age, a shingle bar formed (similar to the Loe Bar near Helston) which cut off the lake from the sea and it became a freshwater lake, roughly three times the size of the current lake. In the mid 1820s, a culvert was dug to drain much of the lake into the sea, creating the lake you see today. On high Spring tides, the seawater flows back through the culvert into the lake so the water is brackish (slightly salty).
The brackish lagoon forms an unusual habitat that supports some rare wildlife. This includes the Trebling Sea Mat which is found nowhere else in the UK. The wooded wetland behind the lake is criss-crossed by six small streams and it provides a valuable habitat for birds and small mammals. The whole area is now a designated nature reserve.
During the Second World War, a large fuel depot for use in the D-Day landings was located on the hillside behind Swanpool. During the final air raid on Falmouth, the depot was hit by a bomb and a flood of burning fuel swept down the valley towards the houses below. An American navy officer managed to use a bulldozer to divert the flow away from the houses and was awarded the British Empire Medal for his bravery.
The tall trees at the top of the path are beech.
Beechwood ageing is used in the production of Budweiser beer but beech is not the source of flavour. In fact beechwood has a fairly neutral flavour and in the brewing process it is pretreated with baking soda to remove even this. The relatively inert strips of wood are then added to the fermentation vessel where they increase the surface area available for yeast. It is the contact with yeast that produces the flavour in the beer, not the beech itself.
A pale green jade axe was found in Falmouth during the early 19th Century. It is thought to be a ceremonial item dating from Neolithic times and is similar to those found in Brittany from this period. The axe is now on display in the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro.
Postboxes are a Victorian invention. The first pillar boxes were erected in the 1850s and by 1857, the first roadside wall boxes were in place. Early postboxes were green and it wasn't until 1874 that some in London were painted red. Over the next 10 years this was applied elsewhere. Postboxes are initialled with the reigning monarch at the time which allows them to be approximately dated. For example Edward 7th (marked as E VII) was only on the throne for 10 years so these date from the 1900s before the First World War.
In 1863 Alfred Nobel patented nitroglycerine as an industrial explosive marketed as "blasting oil". A demonstration was carried out at Falmouth docks in which a wrought iron anvil of about three hundredweight was destroyed by a small quantity of the innocuous-looking oily liquid. Following this, Novel was awarded a Silver Medal by the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society at their 1865 Exhibition.
The first lighthouse on the Lizard was built in 1619 by Sir John Killigrew of Falmouth, whose family had a colourful history involving smuggling and piracy. A few years before, Sir John had divorced his wife, accusing her of having become a prostitute after having been "first debauched by the governor of Pendennis Castle". Sir John applied for a patent to build the lighthouse and this was granted on the understanding that it be extinguished on the approach of pirates or enemy vessels. The lighthouse maintenance was intended to be funded by collecting voluntary contributions from the ships that passed it. Once built, despite its great benefit to shipping, the shipowners contributions did not materialise. The maintenance cost was bankrupting Killigrew, so James I set a fee of 1 halfpenny per tonne on all vessels passing the light. The uproar at this from the shipowners was so great that the lighthouse was demolished in 1630.
From 1688 Falmouth was used as the port for mail to Spain and the Mediterranean and by 1763 it was used for trans-Atlantic communication. Mail was wrapped in brown paper and oiled cloth to repel seawater, then placed in weighted leather folders which could be thrown overboard to sink if the ship was under threat of capture. The sailing ships were known as Packets which sailed from the Packet Quays, and the office where the mail was prepared was the Packet Office.
Initially, mail from the Falmouth Packet Station was transported to London on horseback as the roads were not suitable for carriages. Towards the end of the 18th Century, suitable road surfaces were put in place between London and Exeter so that mail from Exeter could be transported by coach. By 1799, the road had been extended to Falmouth so that mail could be transported all the way to London. As the mail often contained sensitive dispatches, the coaches travelled under military escort.
Despite its quite modernist appearance, the pyramidal monument was created in 1737 by Martin Lister Killigrew who died with no heir. It's possible that the memorial was therefore to create some form of legacy, although the town of Falmouth itself is arguably the legacy of the Killigrew family.
There's a sandy beach at all states of the tide at Swanpool although it can get fairly narrow at high tide. The beach is in the lee of Pennance Point and faces southeast so it's sunny and sheltered. Due to its proximity to Falmouth and because it's quite a small beach, it can get pretty crowded in summer. There are reefs either side of the beach so seaweed often washes ashore after storms, usually in the autumn. This can be quite smelly for a couple of weeks when it decays.
The car park in Swanpool is constructed from the remnants of Swanpool Mine - a lead mine worked in the 18th and 19th Centuries. During the 18th Century, the mine was worked on a fairly small scale and then expanded in the 1790s which included working beneath the lake. The lead ore was found to contain a good amount of silver which helped to make mining more profitable. In the 1850s, mining above the beach was carried out on a more industrial scale and a tunnel was cut to Pennance Point to release the sulphurous fumes from roasting the ore through a chimney stack. During World War 2, American soldiers stationed in Falmouth levelled the spoil heaps, resulting in the slightly raised car park.
Mermaids purses are the egg cases of the shark family and are sometimes found washed up on the seashore. They are usually light brown, approximately rectangular and fairly flat, with curly strands on 4 corners. At first glance they could be mistaken for a piece of kelp or a melted piece of plastic. The strands attach to seaweeds to lodge the egg case in a safe environment for the baby shark or skate to develop.
The Cornwall Heritage Trust (CHT) is a charity founded in 1985 to preserve and strengthen Cornish heritage. The CHT own some historic structures such as the Treffry Viaduct and also manage a number of state-owned English Heritage sites in Cornwall such as Carn Euny.
The CHT management of some of the smaller English Heritage sites follows controversy in 1999 when the Revived Cornish Stannary Parliament pressure group removed several English Heritage signs. CHT now manage these in partnership with local communities, Natural England, Historic England and English Heritage.
As part of the English Heritage partnership, members of the Cornwall Heritage Trust can visit the larger English Heritage sites in Cornwall (Tintagel Castle, Restormel Castle, Launceston Castle, Pendennis Castle, Chysauster etc) free-of-charge. CHT annual membership is therefore quite an economical option for anyone intending to visit multiple English Heritage sites solely in Cornwall. The family membership is particularly good value-for-money.
Symbols on the front of ships arose both out of superstition for good luck and symbols of power. The general practice of putting a carved figure on the bowsprit became common practice from the 16th Century. Figureheads often depicted either the role of the ship (e.g. warship) or the name of the ship allowing it to be recognised by sailors who couldn't read. During the 18th Century, a figurehead of a woman (preferably showing some breast) was thought to bring calm to a stormy sea.
Many place names in Cornwall containing "Dennis" are corruptions of Dinas which is the Celtic (Cornish and Old Welsh) word for a fort or citadel. The boy's name Dennis has an altogether different origin, from Dionysus - the god of wine. St Dennis (in Cornwall) and the shortened version of it in Australia - Sydney - are both of the latter origin.
Biologically, there is no clear distinction between ducks, geese and swans (geese and swans are one lanky subfamily of ducks). Dark-coloured ducks get the equivalent of "grey hairs" with age - their feathers gradually turn white.
The species of duck that you're most likely to encounter is the mallard. Mature males have striking iridescent green heads and dark bodies whilst females look totally different - a brown and white pattern which offers much better camouflage. However, both have a common feature that is unique to mallards - an iridescent blue patch on their wings.
In situations where ducks need to watch out for predators, they can sleep one half of their brain at a time, keeping one eye open for danger. In safer circumstances, ducks will sleep fully.
Male ducks (drakes) have a penis which falls off every autumn and regrows the following spring. The length each year depends on the amount of competition for females and varies up to a maximum of the duck's whole body length.
Ducks can change gender. This happens for about 1 duck in 10,000 and more commonly from female to male than the other way around. It seems to occur in a flock of ducks where there is a significant gender imbalance where it gives the duck that changes a competitive advantage. It's likely that the female to male direction is a bigger evolutionary win because one male can fertilise multiple females.
Feeding bread to ducks is quite bad for them although not feeding ducks anything at all is potentially worse as many have now become reliant on being fed. White bread lacks many of the nutrients that ducks need but ducks will gorge on it to the point of ignoring other foods, effectively becoming junk food addicts. The problem is that by filling up on just this, they can become malnourished, deformed and even die. Some healthier things to feed ducks are leftover peas, sweetcorn, seeds, rice and salad.
A ball hitting sport documented in AD 945 in China seems to be more-or-less crazy golf, which would make crazy golf the "original" form of golf.
The form we know today is thought to have evolved from mini golf which was created for Victorian ladies for whom it was unbecoming behaviour to swing a club violently. The St Andrews Ladies' Putting Club, created in the 1860s, is thought to be the first mini golf course.
In 1916, a miniature golf course in America was created with the holes bordered with flower beds. Then, during the 1920s, a series of short-lived crazes culminated in the Crazy Golf craze of 1930 in which four million Americans played every night! The craze spread into Britain via London and by October of 1930 there were already 60 courses.
Moorhens are water birds which is the basis of names including "waterhen" and the more entertaining "swamp chicken". The name mor-hen was recorded in the 13th Century and is from an old word for marsh that also gave rise to "mire", rather than simply "moorland".
Moorhens are close relatives to coots but have red-and-yellow beaks rather than white. Like coots, they are aggressive in the breeding season. Unlike coots, they are not aggressive the rest of the time too! The older moorhen chicks will even help their parents to raise the young ones. Moorhens also spend more time out of the water than coots and will even climb trees.
The large black birds nesting on offshore rocks, known colloquially as the cormorant and shag, are two birds of the same family and to the untrained eye look pretty similar. The origin of the name "shag" is a crest that this species has on top of its head and the cormorant doesn't. The cormorant is the larger of the two birds with a whiter throat. The shag's throat is yellow, and mature shags have a metallic green sheen on their feathers which cormorants lack.
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