The port of Charlestown was an enterprise of Charles Rashleigh, initially to export copper ore from the mines from around St Austell to the smelters in South Wales. The port town was planned in meticulous detail, including the wide road that could accommodate 6 carts abreast. Small cottages were built near the harbour for workers, a terrace of fashionable Georgian houses with decorative alcoves was constructed for merchants and an inn (The Pier House) was built right beside the harbour where business could be conducted.
The harbour itself was designed by the marine architect John Smeaton whose other achievements included the Eddystone Lighthouse now on Plymouth Hoe and the pier at St Ives. The outer wall is angled to protect the harbour from waves driven into St Austell Bay by southeasterly winds. The remains of capstans can still be seen on the ends of the piers which were used to haul ships into the harbour when there was no favourable wind to sail in. The inner harbour is gated so that ships could remain afloat at all states of the tide and be continuously unloaded and loaded, ready to set sail immediately on the next tide. Charles Rashleigh had plans for an ambitious extension to the harbour which would have added a further set of piers to the outside to create a large outer harbour beyond the tidal beach area but was never able to realise them as he was swindled out of his fortune by two of his employees.
Smeaton's design for Charlestown included another engineering masterpiece - a mindbogglingly long leat, the far end of which can still be seen on the west side of the Luxulyan Valley beyond the Eden Project.
A leat in the Luxulyan Valley was constructed in the late 1790s to supply water to Charlestown Harbour, 10km away. Its source is at the Cam Bridges on the River Par and the system included some large storage ponds in the valley just above Charlestown harbour. The water supply was used to keep ships afloat within the gated dock at low tide (which gradually leaked water) and to periodically flush out the harbour. Waterwheels on the leat provided a source of power for a number of industries in Charlestown including a china stone mill and a coal tar refinery.
The leat system was cleaned regularly to remove debris such as leaves and branches and re-tar the wooden boards which carried the leat. This work was often done in January and February once all the leaves had finished falling. The work also included crawling in the water through the underground tunnels to clear these which must have been chilly.
Perhaps Smeaton's greatest engineering achievement was the Eddystone Lighthouse.
After the Eddystone Lighthouse burnt down, the engineer John Smeaton designed its replacement - this time in stone - consisting of granite blocks held together with a quick-drying lime mortar of his own invention and modelled on the shape of an oak tree. The lighthouse took 3 years to build and was finally lit in 1759. The design was so effective that the lighthouse outlasted the rock on which is was built, and became the standard method of construction for lighthouses worldwide. After 127 years, the rock began to crack from the action of the waves and the lighthouse would sway when hit by large waves. After a new lighthouse was constructed on a different rock, the people of Plymouth raised money to have Smeaton's lighthouse dismantled and reassembled on the Hoe, where it still stands today. However the lighthouse base was so sturdy that it could not be dismantled and still stands on Eddystone Reef next to the new lighthouse.
Porthpean is from the Cornish for "small cove". The Cornish word for "little" features in many place names ending -vean (or sometimes -bean as mutation of the initial consonant between a softer and harder form occurs quite a lot in Celtic languages).
Lesser celandines flower along the track in spring.
Another name for celandine is pilewort as the tubers of the plant are said to resemble piles. Based on the "doctrine of signatures" (i.e. a plant that looks a bit like something must be a cure for it), the resemblance suggested to mediaeval herbalists that celandines could be used to cure haemorrhoids. This was done by applying an ointment containing crushed celandine leaves to the relevant area. Since celandine contains a poisonous compound, some attempts to ingest celandine in an effort to cure piles have not gone too well.
Ivy has two types of roots. The "normal" roots extend into the soil and collect nutrients. At intervals along the climbing stems there are also aerial roots which attach the plant to a surface. As they come into contact with a surface, the roots change shape to anchor the plant. They then produce hairs that wedge into any crevices. The roots also exude a chemical compound which acts as a glue.
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.
The whole village of Porthpean once formed part of the Penrice estate owned by the Sawle family. The church was built as a private chapel in 1884-5 out of local stone and slate. After the death in 1971 of Mrs Cobbold Sawle, the last in the line, the church was given by the estate’s Trustees to St Austell Parish. The church is dedicated to St Levan, the Cornish patron saint of fishermen.
In the mid-1980s, engineers identified ancient underwater channels criss-crossing the seabed in St Austell bay which had become filled with tin-rich sediment. However, no further exploration was done after the price of tin dropped. In recent years, the price of tin has been steadily increasing as the relatively rare metal is used in the production of electronic devices. These reserves are now being re-examined, with possible exploratory work to follow.
Field mushrooms are very closely related to the familiar supermarket button mushrooms and are the most commonly-eaten wild mushroom in Britain. They usually appear in grazed fields between July and November but can be out as early as May. They can sometimes be seen growing in a ring. The gills start out pink and become brown with age and the cap is slightly downy, especially around the edges, often with a skirt left on the stem. As there are a few species of white mushroom that all look quite similar, care needs to be taken to avoid eating poisonous species.
In particular, the common but poisonous "yellow stainer" looks very similar to a field mushroom and consequently causes the most mushroom poisonings in Britain. If the flesh is of a yellow stainer is cut or bruised, particularly at the base of the stem, a yellow liquid starts to seep out (unless the mushroom is very dried-out). This can take a few minutes to be apparent so it might not be until you get them home that you notice yellow patches where the caps have rubbed against something. The yellow stainer also has an unpleasant "chemical" smell (sometimes described as an "elastoplast smell") which helps distinguish it from the more appealing "mushroomy" smell of a field mushroom. A small minority of people have been reported as suffering no obvious ill effects from (presumably accidentally) eating yellow stainers but for the vast majority of people they cause stomach upsets which can be fairly severe including cramps, projectile voting and diarrhoea.
At short range, ewes and lambs are able to recognise each other by smell. At longer distances, they can recognise each other visually. Where this is not possible, they are able to recognise each other solely though their calls. Sheep can identify a unique signature for each individual based on the pitch and timbre of the bleat.
The lines of buoys out from Ropehaven were England's first offshore mussel farms. A line runs between two weights on the bottom and this is lifted to a couple of metres below the surface by the floats. The mussels are grown on ropes suspended from this which don't touch the seabed, ensuring they don't pick up grit and as many barnacles. They are naturally-occurring blue mussels which at their planktonic stage look for any suitable attachment to grow on, and attach themselves to the ropes. The ropes are initially coiled to suspend them in the top couple of metres of water where the mussel plankton (known as "spat") are most prevalent. Once the mussels begin to grow, the ropes are uncoiled to give them more space and to protect them from seabirds and other surface predation. EU restrictions on importing shellfish have reduced the size of the viable market for mussels so there is a pilot project to try growing seaweed on some of the ropes instead.
The "Beware of the Wife" sign has been there a few years.
Documented in 1865, the following was supposedly an old Cornish tradition:
To Choose a Wife: Ascertain the date of the month of the young woman's birth, and refer to the last chapter of Proverbs in the Bible. Each verse from 1st to the 31st is supposed to indicate, either directly or indirectly, the character, and to guide the searcher - the verse corresponding with her birth date indicating the woman's character.
However, it's probable the rural traditions involving copious amounts of ale and cider have a much longer heritage and were possibly more conducive to wedlock.
In the years after the Second World War, once the defences had been cleared from the beach and Porthpean was once again used as a pleasure beach, a sea mine washed up one morning. As it was a hot summer's day, the local coastguard carried it into the Watch House as he knew many people would be coming to the beach. He informed the Coastguard service and that evening, the bomb squad arrived from Plymouth and cleared the beach. The mine was carried back to the beach where it was detonated and the resulting explosion went higher than the tall cliffs around the bay.
Most of the mines used during the Second World War were triggered by sensors which detonated if a metallic object disturbed the electromagnetic field surrounding them. When the coastguard had initially carried the mine off the beach, he had been wearing his coastguard hat which had a large metal badge!
The observation tower at Carrickowel Point overlooking Porthpean beach was part of the St Austell Bay practice bombing range used by Coastal Command during WW2. The range included two floating wooden targets a couple of miles out to sea. A moving target was also towed across the bay from Fowey.
The headland is called Carrickowel Point but in the early 19th Century was known as Carrickowel Rock. Neither the "point" or "rock" are really needed as Carrickowel is from the Cornish for "Weather Rock". Exactly in what way isn't completely obvious - perhaps as a lookout point or as a weather-dependent landmark.
The word picnic is from the French piquenique which was itself first recorded in the late 17th Century. At the time it was of recent origin and used to mean bringing your own wine to a restaurant (what we call "BYO" today). After the French Revolution in the late 18th Century, royal parks were opened to the public and picnicking (as we know it today) became hugely popular.
Along the path to the left from the waymark, there is a substantial amount of wild garlic in the spring.
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.
A lestercock was a timber and cork raft with a sail used by shore fishermen in Cornwall to carry a string of hooks out from shore to deeper water using the wind. Once the craft had floated out far enough, it would be pulled back in, hopefully with fish on the hooks. This provided a safer alternative to launching fishing boats when there were strong offshore winds and rough seas and also a way for those too poor to own a boat to fish further from the shore. This is likely to have worked well in mid-water for pelagic fish such as mackerel or along sandy seabeds for flatfish. Rocky ground would present more of a challenge - hooks dragging along the seabed would snag weed or the rocks themselves.
The small path to the right at the bottom of the valley leads to Duporth beach.
Duporth is a development on the site of an old Butlin's holiday village which itself was built on the old estate owned by Charles Rashleigh, who developed Charlestown. Duporth beach is privately-owned but the public are allowed access subject to a few restrictions (e.g. no fires) indicated on the information board. There is very little beach at high tide, but as the tide recedes, a sandy beach is revealed with areas of rock along the edges containing rockpools.
The gun battery was built a year after Charlestown harbour to defend the port against a possible French invasion during the summer months when the sea was calmer. It's likely that the battery was more of a status symbol and deterrent rather than designed for serious combat. Evidence for this includes the walls not being reinforced with earth ramparts and the castellations are far too high from the ground on the inside to be able to shoot over them with rifles. Each winter, the cannons were taken down to Charlestown to be stored out of the elements. The coast path leading down to Charlestown is the remains of a track used by horses to transport the cannons.
Charlestown harbour was used for the filming of Truro and Falmouth harbours in the BBC's Poldark series.
The protected harbour at Charlestown is now used for sailing ships. The combination of the tall ships and undeveloped location has made it a popular Hollywood filming location which features in Pirates of the Caribbean and many others.
Barnacles are crustaceans, related to crabs and lobsters. After a planktonic stage, they settle on a rock and never move again. To facilitate genetic transfer between isolated individuals, barnacles have extraordinarily long penises. It is thought barnacles probably have the largest penis to body size ratio of the animal kingdom.
Mussels are filter feeders and their "foot" is used to generate threads which they use to anchor themselves to rocks. Mussels clump together both to create a more secure attachment to the rock and also to trap water at low tide.
Mussels are preyed on by dog whelks which dissolve a hole in their shell, through which they inject digestive enzymes which result in mussel soup. Mussels have evolved a defensive strategy whereby they lasso invading whelks with their threads and tether them to the rocks, where the whelks starve to death.
Fortunately, consumption of mussels by humans is a little less fraught with danger provided you don't harvest them between May and August: a species of plankton that is poisonous to humans can be hoovered up by the mussels in this period. Make sure you collect more mature mussels of at least 50mm in length as smaller ones are less good to eat. It's worth studying the tides to get the beach for a low spring tide as this is when you'll find the biggest, juiciest mussels. Ideally, take a bucket and bring your mussels home in clean seawater. Once harvested, soak them for a few hours somewhere cool in clean saltwater to allow them to purge any sand (don't submerge them in freshwater as this will kill them). Sort through them, tapping any that are open on a surface to see if they close shut. Discard any that remain open or any that are damaged (they have perished and are not safe to eat). Before cooking, mussels must be thoroughly cleaned and rinsed and the "beard" (threads that secure the mussel to the rock) should be removed.
The extraction of china clay has dramatically altered the Cornish landscape: it is estimated that 120 million tons have been extracted. For every 1 tonne of china clay, there are 9 tonnes of mineral waste products (a gritty sand of quartz and mica), which has led to the creation of large areas of tips. The now disused conical (or "sky tips") can be seen near St Austell from as far away as Bodmin Moor.
Due to the density of china clay pits, the area around St Austell has become known as "The Clays". This has dominated St Austell's more recent industrial history and to some degree masked the area's earlier history: prior to china clay, St Austell was an important centre for copper and tin mining.
China clay in Cornwall and Devon resulted from a sequence of events that began over 300 million years ago; molten rock cooled into granite: a mixture of quartz, feldspar and mica. As it cooled, the feldspar reacted with other minerals to form china clay.
The clay from Cornwall was found to be a much finer quality than elsewhere in Europe and also turned out to be the largest deposit in the world. By the mid-19th Century, 7,000 workers were employed in the St Austell area alone and by 1910, Cornwall was producing 50% of the world's China Clay.
At the time of writing, the UK is still the third largest producer of China Clay in the world: Cornwall produces approximately 1 million tonnes of kaolin each year. Due to increasing mechanisation and large amounts of production being moved to Brazil, the industry now only employs around 1000 people.
The word kaolin is thought to be a corruption of the Chinese for "high ridge" where it was presumably found.
There are several reasons why seagulls should not be fed.
One is that human foods are not nutritionally suitable for seagulls but seagulls are not smart enough to know these can damage their health.
Another is that seagulls become dependent on humans and lose the skills to obtain food from natural sources.
The reason most affecting us is that feeding seagulls makes them less scared of humans. Since seagulls do not have have the emotional wiring to empathise with humans, fear is the only thing preventing that interaction being aggressive. Seagulls are innately aggressive when it comes to food as their behaviour with other seagulls demonstrates. There are many examples of children being attacked (who then drop food, reinforcing the behaviour).
The tall chimney was part of a large china clay pan kiln opened in 1906 and was the lower of two built by the Lovering company. China clay was piped from the pit at Carclaze into an array of settling tanks at the rear of the building. The clay was then dried in the building and then moved on wagons through underground tunnels to the harbour via the building that is now the Shipwreck and Heritage Centre. It closed in 1968 and the main building burned down in 2005.
Squirrels are rodents, closely related to chipmunks and slightly more distantly to dormice. The word "squirrel" originates from an ancient Greek word meaning "shadow-tailed", referring to the bushy tail of a squirrel. A family group of squirrels is known as a "drey" (also the word for a squirrel nest). A group of unrelated squirrels is known as a "scurry", though squirrels tend not to hang out in groups.
Grey squirrels were introduced to the UK from the USA in the late 19th Century and within decades they had replaced the native red squirrel in most parts of the country.
Compared to red squirrels, grey squirrels are able to eat a wider diet (including acorns), are larger so can survive colder winters, and are better able to survive in the fragmented habitats created by urbanisation. They are also thought to be carriers of a squirrel pox virus which they usually recover from but has been fatal to red squirrels, although red squirrels are now also developing some immunity.
To date, culling of grey squirrels has not reversed their domination of woodland habitat and alternative approaches such as planting food with contraceptives are being explored as a means to control the population. The theory is that infertile squirrels can compete for food against fertile squirrels, whereas culling can create a glut of food resulting in a higher number of squirrels surviving which replace those that were exterminated. Natural predators such as goshawks or pine martens also remove more grey squirrels than red squirrels. This is because red squirrels are more savvy having co-evolved with the predators so for example they recognise the scent of pine martens and actively avoid areas with this.
Squirrels assess each of their acorns before burying them. If an acorn is too light (which suggests it might have a hole), the squirrel will eat it immediately rather than risking it going mouldy.
In order to later find the nuts that they've buried, squirrels need to be organised. Some species of squirrel have been studied and found to structure their hoards by type of nut e.g. burying all their acorns under one tree and all their conkers under another. This is equivalent to us organising all the veg onto one shelf of the fridge to make it easier to remember where to look for them.
As well as forgetting where they buried some of them, squirrels may also lose a quarter of their buried food to birds, other rodents and fellow squirrels. Squirrels therefore use dummy tactics to confuse thieves by sometimes just pretending to bury a nut.
Squirrels eyes are positioned on the sides of their head which allows them to spot predators approaching from behind them. When a squirrel spots a predator, its runs away in a zigzag pattern. This confuses many of their predators but unfortunately it doesn't work well for cars.
Young squirrels suffer a high mortality rate in the wild and less than one in three make it to adulthood. The ones that do, live on average for about 6 years, although a lucky one can live to about 12 years old. In captivity, where there are neither predators, cars nor cold winters to contend with, they can reach 20 years old.
By using their tail as a parachute, squirrels are able to survive falls from high trees. This allows them to attempt risky jumps between treetops that don't always work out. They are one of the few mammals that can (but not always) survive an impact at their terminal velocity i.e. if a squirrel jumped out of an aeroplane, it may well survive.
In urban areas in cold countries such as Canada, a black form of the grey squirrel is more common which is able to withstand the cold better both by retaining more heat and also having a slower metabolism. In wilderness areas where predators are more common, the black squirrels don't seem to do so well, perhaps because they are less camouflaged against trees than the grey ones.
Porthpean is a sheltered beach between two headlands, facing southeast away from the prevailing westerly winds. The upper part of the beach is coarse white sand against the sea wall. As the tide goes out, a rock platform with rockpools is revealed on the right-hand side of the beach. The left-hand side remains sandy at low tide. At high tide, the beach is narrow and gets crowded in holiday periods.
Porthpean means "small cove" in Cornish and is equivalent to Porthbean on the Roseland. In both cases the word for "small" (vean) has undergone a mutation of its initial consonant to "agree" with the word before which is a quirk that's quite common in Celtic languages.
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