The settlement of Gunnislake dates from mediaeval times and is based on the Old English word for "stream" and a personal name.
St Anne's Church was built by the Anglican church to compete with the Methodist chapels within Gunnislake (as previously a visit to the parish church required a walk to Calstock). It was completed in 1880 by which time Gunnislake had become a large industrial village. The site chosen was next to the Ebenezer Baptist Chapel (built in 1834) which later became used as a Sunday School.
Some mosses are able to absorb 20-30 times their own weight in liquid. Moss was used in several ancient cultures as nappies: babies were carried in a moss-lined bag to prevent leaks. Moss has also traditionally been used to line hanging baskets which are very prone to drying-out. Areas of moss help to protect soil from erosion by runoff and rivers from sediment and flooding by capturing rainfall and giving it chance to soak slowly into the soil.
Internally, a lime kiln consisted of a conical stone or brick-lined chamber which was loaded from the top with alternating layers of limestone and carbon-rich fuel such as charcoal, peat or coal. At the side of the kiln was an alcove known as an "eye" which was used to access the kiln and remove the quicklime from a hole at the bottom of the chamber. The kiln was often run continuously with more layers of fuel and limestone added to the top as the previous layers worked their way down through the kiln. Air was drawn in through the bottom of the kiln and heated up as it passed through the quicklime (also cooling the quicklime) before it reached the level where combustion was taking place.
The footpath crosses over the remains of a tailrace from a mill which was situated at the end of the row of cottages where the path passes along a wall. The mill was used to manufacture paper in the early 1850s and after this as a bone mill to manufacture fertiliser.
Bone mills used the power from a waterwheel to crush animal bones and produce bonemeal. The bonemeal was primarily used as a fertiliser to release phosphorus into the soil, which is a vital mineral for healthy crops. In the 20th century, fertilisers based on phosphate minerals, which could be mined cheaply, made bone mills uneconomical. However, the known phosphate reserves are expected to run out within a few decades and so organic phosphorus sources such as animal bones, and even urine, may become increasingly important for farmers.
The lock that the footpath passes was the sea lock for the Tamar Manure Navigation Canal. The cottage beside the lock was originally occupied by the lock-keeper.
The Tamar Manure Navigation Canal was originally intended to connect with the Bude Canal to bring beach sand and lime (known at the time as "manure") up to the Tamar Valley. However only 500 yards of canal were ever completed - just the section with a sea-lock which bypassed the weir at Weir Head and allowed barges to move from the tidal area below the weir to the quay in the non-tidal area above. Despite its modest length, the canal outlasted all others in Cornwall and was in use for nearly 120 years.
A weir at Weir Head was originally built as a fish weir during mediaeval times by the monks of Tavistock Abbey and a waterside settlement of "Ware" was documented in the 14th Century. The weir consists of a 2 metre wall with two fish ladders and was designed to help salmon break through the strong river and tidal currents to be able to swim upstream to spawn.
The weir was rebuilt in around 1800 as part of the Tamar Manure Navigation project in order to create a barrier between the tidal and non-tidal regions of the river and maintain a navigable depth of water up to New Bridge.
Kingfishers are found near slow-moving or still water where they dive to catch fish, as their name implies, but they also eat many aquatic insects, ranging from dragonfly nymphs to water beetles.
The Kingfisher is able to switch between light receptors in the main central area of its eye and a forward-facing set when it enters water, allowing it to judge distances accurately underwater. It is estimated that a female needs to eat over twice her own body weight in order to increase her condition sufficiently for egg laying.
The unmistakable metallic blue and orange birds fly fast and low over the surface of the water so may only be apparent as a blue flash. The pigment in their feathers is actually brown but the microstructure of their features results in light interference patterns which generate the brilliant iridescent blue and orange colours. Unfortunately the result, during Victorian times, was that kingfishers were extensively killed for display in glass cases and for use in hat making. The population has since recovered and is now limited by the availability of suitable waterways.
One of the birds you might be surprised to encounter this far from the sea is a cormorant, but they are often seen here fishing in the river.
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.
Dragonflies were some of the first winged insects to evolve, around 300 million years ago in the "age of amphibians" before the dinosaurs. Fossils of early dragonflies have been found with wingspans of up to two feet across.
We are so used to seeing sediment in rivers that we've come to accept it as normal but no river should be brown. Sediment is often a product of human activity including eroded river banks, runoff from ploughed farmland and even cattle poaching. It can smother riverbed gravels that are essential for fish spawning. It can also act as a carrier for other pollutants such as heavy metals and pesticides. As well as being toxic, the smell of these chemicals can prevent salmon from detecting their home spawning grounds. That may all sound a bit doom and gloom but the good news is that this damage can be reversed. Pilot schemes of washing and returning gravel to the rivers have had spectacularly promising results, with breeding salmon becoming re-established within just a few years. The Westcountry Rivers Trust are also working with farmers on improving drainage systems to steadily reduce the amount of new sediment and chemicals entering rivers.
Newbridge was built in around 1520 by Sir Piers Edgcumbe - the owner of the Cotehele and Mount Edgcumbe estates. It is constructed from rectangular granite blocks and its seven arch span is 182 feet long. The bridge formed the main route into southeast Cornwall and was the site of a civil war battle in 1644. It is featured in J.M.W. Turner's famous painting "Crossing the Brook" which was exhibited in 1815. Turner said of the Tamar Valley: "I have never seen so many natural beauties in such a limited spot as I have seen here."
The path passes some of the remains of Gunnislake Clitters Mine, now mostly hidden by the trees.
Gunnislake Clitters Mine began in 1820 using an adit dug next to the river to drain the mine and a waterwheel for pumping out the water. In the 1860s, steam engines were installed allowing deeper mining below the level of the adit. The mine reached its heyday in the early 1880s when it employed almost 200 people and raised an average of over 2,500 tonnes of ore each year. Ores raised from the mine included copper, tin, arsenic and wolfram (tungsten). The mine was re-opened at the time of the First World War specifically for tungsten needed for armaments and finally closed in 1920.
The mine now known as South Devon Mine (despite being located in Cornwall) was originally called Wheal Bramble and was first worked for copper ore some time before 1853 by driving a horizontal tunnel (adit) into the hillside to drain the mine. In 1854 a second adit was created and ventilated using a machine driven by a 20ft waterwheel. A beam engine drained the workings below the level of the adit and an engine house, boiler house and partly collapsed chimney still remain. The mine was active during the 1850s and was renamed the River Tamar Copper Mine in 1857. Work continued into the 1860s then the mine closed and was re-opened in 1896 for arsenic ore (mispickel). The cottage called Wheal Bramble is thought to have originally been the count house (administrative office) for the mine and garages etc. at the property are converted from some of the mine outbuildings.
More than 7000 people were employed in the mines of the Tamar Valley during Victorian times and Gunnislake was amongst the wealthiest mining areas in Europe. Arsenic continued to be produced from the mine at Greenhill in Gunnislake until at least 1930.
The path is the remains of a mediaeval hollow way linking the settlements of Bitthams and Chilsworthy. It is thought that the flat bottom is an indication that it was used by horses and carts. The ruins of a mediaeval cottage are also located on a bend part-way along the path.
The house to the left is on the site of Chilsworthy mine. This was one of several unsuccessful attempts to sink mines to tap into the lucrative copper lode that was being worked on the opposite side of the Tamar by the Devon Great Consols mine which was one of the largest copper producers in Europe and chief arsenic producers in the world. This was the largest unbroken copper sulphide lode in Southwest England and the ore was also unusually rich.
Chilsworthy was first recorded in 1337 spelt Chillesworthy. The name is Old English and means "Chilles' farmstead" (it is assumed that the first part is a personal name).
The railway was part of the branch line between Bere Alston and Callington built in 1908. Much of this railway now forms part of the Tamar Valley Line but Callington Station closed in 1966 and so the Tamar Valley Line now terminates in Gunnislake.
The area with the engine houses by the road was known as Skinners and was part of the Gunnislake Clitters Mine. Three engine houses were built: one for pumping, one for hauling items up from the main, and one for crushing ore. There was also a boiler house connected to the three engine houses by steam flues. The mineshaft next to the pumping engine, known as Skinners shaft, is half a kilometre deep - one of the deepest in the area.
The commonest copper ore - chalcopyrite - is often hard and brittle with a tendency to break into a very fine powder. Tin mines were operated by mechanically crushing all the rocks and then concentrating the granules of ore through a series of processes using water. However, with copper, this would have led to large amounts of fine ore particles being lost as waste so instead as much of the processing as possible was done by hand, leaving mechanical stamping for only the hardest of rocks.
Early copper mining took place on surface deposits that were of relatively high concentrations. As these were used up, mining moved onto deeper and increasingly less concentrated deposits requiring ever more sophisticated techniques to be developed, to sift the ever-lower concentrations of copper ore from the tonnes of surrounding rock.
The waste tips from early mining are becoming of increasing interest as these contain copper ore at a concentration which was uneconomical to recover during Victorian times, but with increasingly sophisticated techniques, recovery may once again become economically viable.
One such method is to use sulphuric acid to dissolve copper out of the mine waste in the form of a very weak copper sulphate solution (the blue stuff familiar from school chemistry lessons, but in this case so weak that it wouldn't be noticeably blue). Special bacteria can then be used to precipitate the very low levels of copper out of the solution which can then be recycled for use on the next batch of mine waste.
The ferns with solid leaves are appropriately called hart's tongue as the leaf resembles the tongue of a deer. It is the only native species of fern that doesn't have divided leaves. The Latin name for the species means "centipede" as the underside of the leaves have rows of brown spore cases that form a pattern resembling centipede legs.
Gunnislake lies within the Tamar Valley AONB.
The Tamar Valley Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty has a similar conservation status to a National Park. It encompasses an area of 75 square miles around the rivers Tamar, Tavy and Lynher, partly in Cornwall and partly in Devon. This also includes an area of Cornwall and West Devon mining landscape World Heritage Site, 41 county wildlife sites and over 1700 hectares of woodland. It was first suggested in 1963 that the Tamar valley area should be designated but this was only eventually granted in 1995.
Like its domesticated relatives, wild garlic grows from a bulb. To distinguish it from other wild plants from the onion/garlic family (such as the three-cornered leek), the species sometimes just called "wild garlic" (Allium ursinum) is often known by the name ramsons or broad-leaf garlic. The scientific name (meaning bear leek) is because the bulbs are thought to be a favourite food of brown bears on the European mainland.
Unlike their more versatile narrow-leaved cousins the three-cornered leeks, ramsons grow mainly in shady places such as woodland. Their broad leaves are solar panels that have evolved to capture the weak winter light early in the year before the trees are in leaf. They are an indicator that woodland is ancient and has provided a shady environment over a long period to colonise.
Despite the pungent smell, the leaves of wild garlic are quite delicate in flavour so can be used quite large quantities in cooking or more sparingly within salads. They are at their most fiery early in the season. As well as a garlic flavour, the leaves have a slight (though not excessive) bitter note which can be balanced against sweet flavours (e.g. tomato or roasted pepper) or salty flavours like bacon to cut through a rich sauce.
Wild garlic is best harvested in early spring before it flowers and the leaves start to die off. Unlike domestic garlic, the leaves are generally used rather than the bulb, which is very small. Note that there are some lilies that look very similar and are poisonous! If it doesn't smell strongly of garlic/onions, then it's not wild garlic and should be avoided. A schoolboy error is to rub the leaves between fingers where the smell lingers so a subsequent poisonous lily leaf could be misidentified.
Wild garlic can be preserved as a frozen paste for use as a cooking ingredient throughout the year. Simply whizz up roughly chopped leaves in a food processor with enough olive oil to make a fairly thick paste and then freeze this in an ice cube tray (or slightly larger silicone moulds if you have them). Standard cooking olive oil will do for this (it's a waste to use extra-virgin as the powerful garlic will mask its flavour). Turn out the frozen blocks into a bag and keep in the freezer. They can then be used as garlic "stock cubes", added just before the end of cooking.
Wild garlic has been found in settlements dating as far back as the neolithic period which given its springtime abundance and aroma is not that surprising. Its culinary use was eventually overtaken by domesticated garlic which first arrived with Mediterranean traders and had the advantage that the bulbs could be stored for relatively long periods.
If cows eat wild garlic, this flavours their milk. Whilst this is definitely not what's wanted for tea or cornflakes, the butter made from it is more useful. This means of producing garlic butter became popular in Switzerland in the 19th Century.
All plants in the onion family are poisonous to dogs including wild garlic. This is one of the reasons that feeding dogs human foods (many of which contain onion such as gravy powder) is not good for them. Garlic is extremely toxic to dogs and cats and the consumption of even a small amount can lead to severe poisoning. Keep dogs away from wild garlic and wash their paws if they come into contact with it.
You can make impressively green pasta with wild garlic and the garlic flavour goes well with most pasta sauces. Whizz up some wild garlic leaves with olive oil to make a thick paste (or retrieve some of this from the freezer and zap in the microwave to defrost). Whisk an egg and add roughly the same amount of your wild garlic paste as the egg. Now keep adding plain flour until you reach a stiff dough (stiffer than bread dough). Roll out fairly (but not excessively) thin keeping it coated with plenty of flour to stop it sticking. Roll it up into a Swiss roll and then cut at 1cm intervals with a sharp knife. Unroll all the strips into a floured surface first and then quickly drop them into boiling water. It will be done in just a minute or 2 (as soon as it floats) so get the strips in at the same time and have your pasta sauce made and ready to go before you cook the pasta.
In a small food processor, whizz approx 20g of Italian-style hard cheese (Parmesan or Pecorino). Optionally whizz in about the same amount of any toasted nuts (nice but not vital). Next whizz in 50g of wild garlic leaves. You can also add 10g lemon balm leaves if you have it growing in your garden. Add zest of a lemon, juice of half the lemon and whizz in a couple of glugs of olive oil to the desired consistency. Finally whizz in salt and pepper to taste.
Make your own super-quick fresh pasta with 200g plain flour, 4g salt, 1 egg and enough water to form a smooth dough. Use a good dusting of flour and roll out thin. Dust again, roll up into a Swiss roll and cut across at 1cm intervals to form spirals. Unravel each and drop the squiggles into boiling water. Done when it floats (about 2 min).
The name Tamar is documented in the second century and likely to be substantially older. It is thought it might share a common origin with the River Thames and both might stem from an ancient Celtic word meaning "dark". The source of the river is within 4 miles of the North Cornish Coast and the river flows 61 miles south across the peninsula forming the majority of the historic border with Devon. Work is being done by the Environment Agency to improve the water quality of the Tamar and its tributaries by reducing the amount of run-off of phosphate fertilisers into the rivers.
Salmon spawn in winter in the tributary streams of rivers, where the gravel is suitable. The young fish (known as "parr") grow by feeding on aquatic insects for one to three years. They then undergo a physiological preadaptation to life in seawater known as "smolting". In spring, large numbers of "smolts" swim downriver and migrate to the rich feeding grounds of the Norwegian Sea where they feed on fish such as herring and sandeels.
Salmon exhibit a remarkable homing instinct, locating their river of origin using the earth's magnetic field and smell which includes pheromones released by other salmon in the river. Some salmon reach maturity after only one year at sea; these are known as "grise" and return in summer, weighing between 1 and 4kg. Larger fish, that take two or more years at sea to mature, usually return considerably earlier in the year.
Salmon cease to feed on entering freshwater and having spawned, the fish (referred to as "kelts") are susceptible to disease and predators. However some do survive to repeat their epic journey again and there are records of some salmon spawning three times.
Bracket fungi can be recognised by tough, woody shelf-like growths known as conks. Some species can live for a very long time and are often coloured with annual growth rings.
Bracket fungi are one of the most important groups of fungi responsible for wood decay. This is good for nutrient cycling but less good if you own a forestry plantation. Many bracket fungi begin on living trees and can eventually kill a branch or whole tree by damaging the heartwood and allowing rot to set in. They can continue to live on the dead wood afterwards and a much more diverse range of species of bracket fungi are found in old natural forests with lots of dead wood.
The Tamar Discovery Trail was created in the early 21st Century after Tamar Valley AONB was established. The 35 mile route - partly in Cornwall and partly in Devon - was originally indicated by waymarks with an apple symbol which is a reference to the area's horticultural heritage. It was known affectionately as the "apple trail" and some of these are still visible, inscribed into the wooden posts. More recently, waymark arrows with a bee (based on a new logo for Tamar Valley tourism) have been added to the route.
Rhododendron is a member of the Ericaceae family to which heathers also belong and like its cousins, it is tolerant of acid soils. The word rhododendron is from the Ancient Greek for "rose tree" due to their spectacular flowers. As a result of these, rhododendrons have been popular ornamental plants for over two centuries and the species that we now call the common rhododendron was introduced in 1763. The plants thrive in the UK climate and were once native but were wiped out by the last Ice Age. Being a vigorous plant, common rhododendron was often used as a root stock onto which more fragile but exotically-coloured hybrids were grafted.
Azalea is a name given to a sub-group of rhododendron species which typically form a bush rather than a large tree. There is no clear biological distinction but most azalea species are deciduous (whereas rhododendrons are evergreen) and azaleas often have smaller leaves, funnel-shaped flowers and are more tolerant of sunny locations than rhododendrons.
Rhododendrons are so successful in Britain that they have become an invasive species, crowding out other flora in the Atlantic oak woodlands. They are able to spread very quickly both through suckering along the ground and by abundant seed production. Many of the root stocks of ornamental specimens have suckered off some new common rhododendrons which have then out-competed the ornamental tree and killed it off!
Conservation organisations now classify the rhododendron explosion as a severe problem and various strategies have been explored to attempt to stop the spread. So far, the most effective method seems to be injecting herbicide into individual plants which is both more precise and effective than blanket cutting or spraying.
A problem with rhododendrons is that they kill bees. Rhododendron nectar is highly toxic to honeybees, killing them within hours. Some other bee species such as mining bees are also adversely affected. Bumblebees seem to be unaffected though.
Honey made with rhododendron pollen can be poisonous to humans, causing severe low blood pressure and low heart rate if enough is eaten. Rhododendron honey is used in Nepal as a hallucinogenic drug.
Some of the Public Rights of Way originating from mediaeval times appear as sunken paths, also known as holloways from the Old English hola weg, a sunken road. There are different reasons for the lane being lower than the surrounding land. In some cases it was simply erosion caused by horses, carts and rainwater over hundreds of years. There are also examples where ditches formed between banks as a boundary between estates and then later adopted as a convenient location for travel or droving animals.
Tungsten (also known as Wolfram) is a rare metal which occurs as mineral compounds such as Wolframite (an oxide with iron and manganese). Tungsten is the hardest of all metals and has the highest melting point, imparting these properties when a steel alloy is made containing tungsten. This made it in great demand for arms in the World Wars. It still has many different modern-day uses including cutting tools, electronics, turbine blades and rocket nozzles.
Arsenic is a chemical element that is part-way between a metal and non-metal, known as a metalloid. In the natural environment it reacts with oxygen to form an oxide which readily dissolves in water to form arsenic acid. This is able to leech into groundwater and cause contamination. Deeper in the ground where sulphur is more available than oxygen, arsenic is found as sulphide compounds.
The name arsenic is ultimately from Arabic al-zarnīḵ where the "zar" element is a Persian word for "gold" (as an arsenic sulphide compound known as "orpiment" was used as a yellow pigment).
Arsenic disrupts the production of the ATP (energy carrying) molecules vital in the metabolism of multi-cell organisms (in plants as well as animals). Due to its toxicity, arsenic was used as an insecticide and rat poison, and by the ruling class to murder one another. As the toxicity extends to plants, highly contaminated ground often has limited or stunted vegetation.
Arsenic had a variety of chemical uses including metal alloys, clarifying glass and in pigments. In Victorian times, an arsenic-based pigment known as "Scheele's Green" (copper arsenate) was used to colour sweets green. Later, the same compound was used as an insecticide!
Arsenic pigments were also popular in Victorian wallpaper manufacture to create green and yellow print. Unfortunately in the Industrial Revolution smogs, these arsenic compounds reacted with the acidic coal fumes to form lethal arsine gas which is even more toxic than arsenic itself.
During Victorian times, having a sun tan was seen as common, as peasants working in the fields were out in the sunshine. In order to make their faces paler, women of the higher social classes rubbed arsenic into their faces and arms. They also mixed arsenic oxide with vinegar and chalk and ate this! The Victorian notion that women were "frail creatures" would certainly have been helped along by eating arsenic.
Tin is a semi-rare metal well-known for its corrosion resistance which is used extensively in electronics, engineering alloys and anti-corrosion coatings. Unlike many other "heavy" metals, it is not poisonous which has resulted in its use within food packaging - the ubiquitous "tin can" - and increasingly as a replacement for lead, which was used extensively before its toxicity was understood.
Tin is found in Cornwall as the ore cassiterite (tin oxide) which occurs in small crystals amongst other rocks; even a "rich" tin ore only contains 5% tin. The name for the ore is thought either to come from the Greek kassiteros meaning "tin" or from the Phoenician name Cassiterid for Britain and Ireland.
Deep in the earth's crust where there is lots of sulphur and little oxygen (hence the smelly sulphur compounds around volcanic vents), copper occurs as crystals of sulphide compounds. Nearer the surface, chemical reactions with air and water form brick-red oxide and blue-green carbonate compounds and also copper sulphate. The latter is the blue stuff from school science lessons which you may vaguely recall is soluble in water; thus it became concentrated at the water table. In the Ice Ages that followed, Cornwall was scoured by glaciers which bulldozed away many of these concentrated deposits. Early copper mining took place on the few remaining areas of these surface layers, but it was not until innovations in pumping technology that copper mining could be carried out on the deeper sulphide deposits and these account for the bulk of the ore mined. The most common ore (called chalcopyrite) is a copper-bearing version of "fool's gold"; when pure it looks like gold but where it meets air and water, patches of iridescent green, blue and purple form and so it was known as "peacock copper".
Cornwall's iconic engine houses were built to house huge beam engines - a type of steam engine with a pivoting beam. This configuration was particularly suited to powering pumps to stop the quarry pits and mines from flooding as water trickled into them from above. Inside the engine house, steam from a boiler would push up a piston, causing the beam to tilt downwards, pushing the pump down into the shaft. The steam would then be shut off and cold water would be used to condense the steam within the piston back into water, creating a partial vacuum. Atmospheric pressure then pushed the piston back down into the vacuum, raising the beam and lifting water out of the shaft. The valves to apply the steam and cold water were mechanically automated, maintaining a steady rocking motion of the giant beam.
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