The first quay was built at Portreath in 1713 near Amy's Point, though it was destroyed by the sea before 1749. In the late 1770s, during the American Revolutionary war, the harbour was fortified and shortly after this, in 1786, the pier was built. In the 19th century, Portreath was one of the main ports for the export of copper ore. In fact, in 1827 it was described as Cornwall's most important port. The two rectangular basins that today make up the harbour and the long breakwater just below the cliffs were built for the copper trade.
The anchor outside the Portreath Arms is from the Escurial - a steamship that went aground in a storm after taking on water which eventually extinguished the boilers. After this she drifted helplessly onto the shore, grounding at Portreath. The people of Portreath rushed to the beach and managed to pull seven of the drowning crew from the breakers, saving their lives. One other crew member was rescued by the lifeboat, but the remaining eleven perished.
The path to the left at the signpost leads to the "Lighthouse" (of Lighthouse Hill fame), also known as "Pepper Pot" (of signpost fame).
The small white tower overlooking the harbour is known either as the Pepper Pot or The Lighthouse but it never had a light. A notice over the door reads "HM Coastguard Board of Trade" which gives an idea of its original purpose - as a lookout as well as a daytime navigation aid (daymark). It was built in the early 19th Century and originally had a door and window; the knob of granite on the top is for the weather vane.
The wartime buildings are the remains of RAF Portreath.
RAF Portreath was opened in March 1941 as a base for bombing raids against the occupied French Channel ports and fighter escorts for shipping convoys. Later in the war it became the main "jumping off" point for equipment headed south. The airfield was closed in 1946 and taken over by the Ministry of Supply where it was used as a secret base for chemical weapons manufacture. Long after its closure in the late 1970s, it emerged that former workers there had died of exposure to the nerve gas, sarin. As a precautionary measure, a large cleanup operation was mounted in 2000, though no residues of toxic materials were found to be remaining.
The Sea Campion flowers from June to August and can be recognised by the white petals emerging from the end of a distinctive inflated envelope. Their grey-green leaves are fleshy, which protect them from drying out in salt-laden winds.
According to folklore, to pick a Sea Campion was to invite death. This might be something to do with the precipitous locations in which they grow! Consequently another name for the plant is "dead man's bells".
The weed-covered reefs provide a habitat for small pollack to ambush prawns and sandeels.
Pollack spend much of their time around weed-covered rocks, ambushing small fish as sandeels. On offshore reefs and wrecks, pollack can grow up to a metre in length but close to the shore you’re most likely to see young fish of a few cm in length, which there was a word in Cornish specifically for: dojel.
Pollack is a member of the cod family but until recently was an unpopular culinary fish. There are two reasons for this: as well as having a name that sounds like an insult, when the fish is dead, its flavour deteriorates faster than many other members of the cod family, so fish which is not very fresh smells "fishy". However pollack is excellent to eat when very fresh, and since it is pretty much the only member of the cod family that hasn’t yet been overfished, has made more of an appearance in supermarkets in recent years. It used to be marketed as "coley" which was a fishmongers' collective term for either pollack or its close cousin, the coalfish, but more recently it has been appearing as pollack.
Between the two species, some gorse is almost always in flower, hence the old country phrases: "when gorse is out of blossom, kissing's out of fashion" (which is recorded from the mid-19th century) and "when the furze is in bloom, my love's in tune" (which dates from the mid-18th century). Common gorse flowers are bright yellow. Western gorse flowers are very slightly more orange - more like the colour of the "yolk" in a Cadbury's creme egg. Also like creme eggs, gorse flowers are edible but are significantly better for use in salads and to make a tea, beer or wine.
Thrift is known as a "hyperaccumulator" of copper: it can concentrate copper by over 1000 times more than other neighbouring plants. This makes it potentially useful to clean up contaminated land but this be done over many years. In principle it's even possible to mine for minerals by concentrating them in plants and then extracting them (known as "phytomining"). It's currently far from economical to do so for copper but for rarer high-value metals it may become economical, possibly in conjunction with chemical soil additives to increase bio-availability.
The rocky shore is ideal for molluscs.
Winkles and Whelks are marine snails which can often be found on rocks exposed at low tide. Some species were widely eaten in England, rivalling France's snail-eating reputation. If you're considering foraging for these, you'll need to know your whelks from your winkles.
Winkles (also known as periwinkles) are vegans which graze on algae on the rocks. They are fairly small and have a rounded shell, similar to a land snail but much thicker. They were a staple part of the diet of coastal communities in the past and were popular takeaway food at many English coastal resorts until recent years.
The term "whelks" is applied to a range of shellfish species that are predatory, eating other shellfish by producing chemicals which dissolve the shells of their prey. The Common Whelk is another edible species. It is larger than a winkle and with a more elongated, wavy shell resembling a small, fluted ice-cream cone.
The Dog Whelk, as you might guess from the name, is not regarded as edible by humans. It is more similar in size and shape to a winkle but with a notably more pointy shell (resembles a winkle with a church spire). It was collected to make purple dyes used for cloth and even to decorate the manuscript of St John's Gospel.
The weather-beaten coastal heath is a good habitat for some salt-tolerant species of orchid which can get their flowers out above the low heather.
The orchids are one of the largest families of plants with over 28,000 recorded species, many of which live in the tropics. It is thought that the first orchids evolved somewhere between 80 and 100 million years ago. The word "orchid" comes from the Greek word for testicle on account of the shape of the plant's tuber. Consequently, in mediaeval times, the plant was known as bollockwort.
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.
Plants such as gorse and heather which are able to grow in soils contaminated with heavy metals such as mine waste tips are known as metallophytes.
There was a concern that if the plants accumulated the metals, whilst themselves being unharmed by them, these might still pass into the food chain e.g. via rabbits eating the plants and then onto buzzards eating rabbits etc.
However, a study of plants from the Carnon Valley found that gorse and heather do not accumulate large quantities of trace metals or arsenic in their tissue. A separate study for a PhD thesis found that for some metals such as zinc, the amount in the plant's tissues (though far lower than in the soil) increased steadily with the levels in the soil. However for certain heavy metals such as lead and copper, the amount measured in gorse tissues appeared to barely increase at all with increasing levels in soil.
Therefore it's thought that there are unlikely to be harmful effects of rabbits eating gorse and heather both directly to the rabbits themselves and indirectly to the food chain of other wildlife.
In October 1932, the "Sarah Evans" was bound from Newport to Par, carrying coal. The sails had been destroyed by the wind and the engines lost power so the crew were unable to control the ship which was driven towards the North Cliffs at Wheal Sally. They managed to anchor and rockets carrying lines were fired to attempt to rescue the crew by breeches buoy. Before this could be done, the anchor rope snapped and the ship was driven by the wind onto the rocky shore. The Padstow and St Ives lifeboats were launched but the crew managed to get ashore unaided onto a ledge on the cliff. They were then rescued by the coastguards who managed to negotiate the overhanging cliff using ladders. By the next day, all that remained of the schooner was the engine and scattered remnants of the hull.
Wheal Sally was situated on the east side of Kerriack Cove and Bottom Shaft was sunk to a lode containing zinc and lead, both as sulphide ore and also in metallic form. A drainage adit runs from the shaft to a hole in the cliff, just above the beach.
When the biological weapons programme at Nancuke ended, waste materials were disposed of in one of the side shafts connecting to the adit. Given how water drips down the shafts into the adit and then runs out onto the beach, the potential flaw in this strategy should be apparent. Fortunately, after an extensive clean-up operation was carried out, no traces of hazardous materials were found. The adit is now blocked by a very substantial grille.
The rectangular structure on the point north of Kerriack Cove is a cover over Kite's Shaft, part of the Wheal West tin mine which extracted the ore cassiterite. If you look through the bars, you can see down the shaft. Please resist the temptation to drop stones down the shaft as bats nest down there - being hit by a rock and knocked down a mineshaft whilst you sleep is not a good way to start the morning.
The chimney on the coast between Portreath and Porthtowan was part of the mines here that worked several lodes of tin and copper. Close to the chimney there were originally 2 separate mines known as Wheal Sterran and Wheal Tye which together had four shafts known as Eastern, London, Caroline's and Vivian's plus some others of unknown name. The raised box near the chimney covers Vivian's Shaft and some nice samples of ores have been found on the waste dumps below this.
The large triangular rock on the beach below is known as Tobban Horse. The beach stretching beyond this is Porthtowan.
The name means something along the lines of "beach with sand dunes". During the 20th Century, dunes have suffered erosion from large numbers of beachgoers. To help restore the dunes, residents donated their Christmas trees and these have been buried in the dunes to help hold the sand in place and give vegetation a chance to re-establish.
At low tide, a number of coves join together to form a mile-long sandy beach, and on a low Spring tide it's just possible to walk all the way to Chapel Porth along the beach.
Public byways are rights of way down which motor vehicles may be driven depending on how brave you are and how expensive your car is to fix. You are also permitted to use a horse-drawn carriage, should you own one. Byways tend to be surfaced in an ad-hoc manner either with gravel or occasionally with a smattering of tarmac, but still leaving plenty of room for a good crop of grass to grow down the centre. They are conventionally marked using red waymarks or a "Public Byway" sign. There are 130 miles of byways in Cornwall.
The thing that resembles a giant golf ball is known as a "radome" - a weatherproof enclosure that protects a microwave RADAR antenna from the elements. In particular, if ice forms on the antenna, this can detune it. Often the antenna inside rotates, hence the need for the round shape.
Hawthorn grows along the hedgerows providing shelter for small birds.
The hawthorn tree is most often found in hedgerows where it was used to create a barrier for livestock, and in fact haw was the Old English word for "hedge".
The hill in the distance is Carn Brea, on top of which is the Basset Monument.
The 90ft high Celtic cross on the top of Carn Brea was erected as a monument to Francis Basset and is inscribed "The County of Cornwall to the memory of Francis Lord de Dunstanville and Basset A.D. 1836."
Basset gained the title of Baron for defending Plymouth from the combined fleet of the French and Spanish in 1779, and calming a miners' food riot in 1785. Towards the end of his life, he was part of the group who petitioned the House of Lords against slavery in 1828.
The building on the skyline to the left of the Basset Monument is Carn Brea Castle.
Carn Brea Castle is on the site of a 14th Century chapel dedicated to St Michael. In the 18th Century it was rebuilt as a hunting lodge for the Basset family in the style of a castle. In this period, Carn Brea was a deer park. Once the hill began to be mined, the deer were relocated to a park at Tehidy (which became the country park and golf course).
During the 1950s to the 1970s the building fell into disrepair but was renovated from 1975-1980 and is now in use as a restaurant. There are panoramic views which include St Ives Bay and the coast around Portreath. Consequently, from the sea, the building is a clear landmark and formed an important beacon for shipping: a lease from 1898 stipulates that the tenant must maintain a light in a north-facing window.
The tall trees provide perches for crows to survey what's going on.
Birds of the crow family are considered to be among the world's most intelligent animals, displaying a high learning ability and are able to use logic for solving problems. Researchers have found some crow species capable of not only tool use but also tool construction. Crows have also demonstrated the ability to distinguish individual humans apart by recognising facial features. If a crow encounters a cruel human, it can also teach other crows how to identify that individual.
Copper ore required large amounts of coal to smelt it so it was shipped from ports on the Cornish coast to South Wales. In 1800, it was estimated that 15,000 mules were used in the copper trade in west Cornwall. They required a regular supply of fodder and when the cost of this increased during the Napoleonic War, it caused difficulties for the mining industry. The transport problems were solved by a set of tracks built between Portreath and the mines near Scorrier for horse-drawn wagons, which were extended in 1815 to Poldice mine. The wagon wheels ran along L-shaped cast iron tracks known as "plates", and the smooth-running wagons allowed much more material to be moved per horse.
There is a replica wagon in Greenfield Gardens.
In the early 1820s, a young man called John Taylor obtained the lease on abandoned mines in the Gwennap parish, and after re-working some of the old deposits, discovered what was at the time the richest copper deposit in the world. Initially, the ore was shipped from Portreath but the transportation fees started to grow as news of John Taylor's good fortune spread. This greed backfired, as in 1824, John Taylor built his own tramway through the Carnon Valley to Devoran, and Devoran began to take over from Portreath for servicing the mines in the Redruth and Camborne area.
The problem with exporting ore from Devoran was that it required sailing around the treacherous waters of Land's End to reach South Wales.
In order to transport wagons from the top of the valley to the harbour, the Inclined Plane was built. This was a massive 1:10 slope running all the way from the top of the valley which was cut into the bedrock and over the viaduct that Glenfeadon Terrace passes beneath. A steam engine at the top of the valley hauled a wagon up with a cable, whilst a wagon was lowered at the same time to act as a counter-balance. It was typically ore being brought down and (in much larger quantities) coal was taken up to power the many steam engines, including the one for raising the coal. Letting that one run out of coal would have been a major mistake!
Portreath is situated on the coast north of Redruth. The name Portreath was first recorded in 1485 and is from the Cornish Porth Treth meaning "sandy cove". As with many coastal villages, there was a fishing fleet who fished mainly for pilchards. Mining for tin and copper nearby led to further development of the port. There are records of tin being extracted from the valley stream beds at least as far back as 1602 and the proximity to the mines of Camborne and Redruth resulted in large amounts of ore being exported during the 18th and 19th Centuries.
During Victorian Times, the pollution from the harbour and tin streaming in the river meant that Portreath was not a location of leisure. When the Portreath Arms Hotel was originally built in 1856, this was for use by those involved in commerce at the port. The first recorded Landlord lent out his brewing furnace to the Illogan Temperance Society for use at community gatherings, regattas and fairs... as a tea urn.
On the beach at Portreath there are six rectangular pools cut into the rock. These were created in the late 1700s on the orders of Frances Basset at Tehidy for his wife and daughter. During Georgian times, it was widely believed that bathing in cold saltwater was especially good for one's health and this continued into Victorian times with bathing machines being created to avoid ladies being seen in their extensive swimming garments.
There are two other pools on the other side of the beach, one large one which is thought to have been constructed in the 20th Century and a smaller one nearby. It isn't known if these were originally created by Basset (and subsequently enlarged in the case of the bigger pool) or were just inspired by his original pools.
Basset's pools at Portreath are thought to be slightly later than the one constructed in Mounts Bay by John Stackhouse (owner of the Pendarves Estate) for his sickly wife. It's possible that Basset's pools were inspired by this, particularly as the Pendarves Estate is not far from the home of the Bassets at Tehidy so there would have been social contact.
The lookout on the end of the pier at Portreath is now known as The Monkey House. It was used as a shelter and to keep watch on ships on their into the harbour. It stood for over 100 years until it was obliterated by the 2014 storms that also destroyed the railway into the South West. During the summer of 2014 it was rebuilt, and a few Atlantic storms will be the judge of how well modern engineering fares against that of its Victorian predecessor.
The small cylindrical building perched slightly above the harbour formally titled the Lower Pilot’s Look-out (to distinguish it from the higher "lighthouse"). It was used to signal to ships whether it was safe to enter the harbour by displaying coloured flags during the day and coloured lanterns at night. It is also known as Dead Man's Hut as it was used as a temporary morgue when bodies were washed ashore.
Shafts which are fenced and completely open are one of the favourite nesting places of bats and the Cornish chough. Therefore resist the temptation to drop stones down the shafts otherwise you may unknowingly be stoning bats or chough chicks to death.
The Mining Trails are a 60km network of walking, horse riding and cycling trails opened in 2010. The routes are largely based on the trackbeds of tramways and railways that were used to transport ore from the mines to the ports on both coasts. For this reason, the project was originally known as the Mineral Tramways.
The chough is a member of the crow family, with striking red legs and a red beak. They are also recognisable from feathers, spread like fingers, on their wing tips. It was known as the "Crow of Cornwall" and appears on the county coat of arms. The birds have a loud, distinctive "chee-ow" call which is perhaps best described as resembling a squeaky dog toy! Once you've heard it a couple of times, you'll be able to recognise them from the sound long before you can see them.
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.
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.
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.
If you think you've seen a chough, take a photo if possible and email choughs@cbwps.org.uk to report the sighting. This will help the "Chough Watch" team keep track of the growing population.
During the breeding season (beginning of April to the end of June), chough eggs and chicks are very vulnerable to predators (including dogs) and many young birds die in their first 6 months. You can make a substantial difference to their chances of survival and to increasing Cornwall's chough population by keeping dogs on leads along the coast and also by avoiding naming exact locations if you post photos on social media during this period.
The breeches buoy is a piece of life-saving equipment devised in the 1860s. It is essentially a zip-line to which a "cradle" (consisting of a lifebelt with a pair of attached shorts) is connected. The flotation device provided a backup if the line broke or sagged into the sea. The breeches - whilst not glamorous - were an effective way of preventing the person being rescued from being washed off the zip-line by breaking waves.
A lightweight line was first sent from the shore to the wrecked ship possibly via a kite, rocket or mortar. This was then used to haul out a more heavy-duty rope (known as a "hawser") on which the zip-line could run. Lighter ropes were also secured to the cradle from each end so it could be hauled in each direction to bring each crew member ashore and then send it back for the next one.
One of the challenges with the mode of rescue was length of time needed for transferring the crew one-by-one. During this period the vessel could roll, drift away or sink. Training the rescue team to operate at the maximum speed possible was therefore important.
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