St John's Road was recorded in 1429 as Strete Seyntjohn. St John's Chapel is more recent than it looks, built in the 1920s.
John Wesley began preaching in Helston in 1755. This didn't go down well and resulted in the crowd throwing vegetables. Wesley concluded that Helston was a "hard-drinking town" but nevertheless persevered and by 1773 was able to preach on the main street for the first time, noting "How changed is this town since a Methodist could not ride through it without hazard of his life."
A little further past the chapel is Drippy Droppy - the exit from a steep, narrow path leading to the Masonic Hall. The name is probably a reference to the damp passageway but there was also a game of Drippy Droppy played with pins that was recorded in the Camborne area in Victorian times.
The mediaeval chapel of St John was recorded as being located on the opposite side of the main road and some of the stones were still apparent in the 1920s. They were lost when the junction was widened, and possibly form some of the hardcore that the road is laid on. A hospital associated with the chapel was recorded in 1240 and continued until 1545. It is thought that some of the cut stone in the garden walls of nearby St John's House could be from the hospital buildings.
The source of the river is on Nine Maidens Downs between Hangman's Barrow and the Nine Maidens stone circle and it runs through the mining area around Porkellis and Trenear (Poldark Mine) on its way to Helston. In the 12th and 13th Centuries, the name of the river was recorded as Clohor, Coffar and Cohor before becoming Cober in 1584. The name is thought to be from the Cornish cough-ar meaning "the red one", referring to the colour of the water due to mining activity - effectively another Red River.
Wagtails are easily recognised from the tail pumping behaviour that their name suggests. Despite being very conspicuous, the function of this curious behaviour is not well understood. It is possibly a signal to predators that the wagtail has seen them, so there's no point trying anything.
Two of the wagtail species are easy to confuse as they are both grey and yellow.
Grey wagtails nest close to fast-running streams as they feed on aquatic invertebrates. They have pink (skin-coloured) legs.
Yellow wagtails are more often found in open fields and have black legs.
The third kind of wagtail more often seen in urban environments - the pied wagtail - is easy to distinguish due to the lack of yellow: it's entirely black-and-white.
The town mill is first mentioned in 1260 and a working corn mill was recorded in 1877. By 1978, it had been converted into a house. Sections of the leat that ran parallel to the River Cober along the valley still exist.
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.
The (leather) "tanning" process got its name as it involved extracting the tannins from acorns or oak bark and soaking these into animal hides over 1-2 years to preserve them. From the brown oak juice containing the tannins, the colour "tan" was named and from this the expression "sun tan" arose.
To the right of the path is a small stream. This is the start of the leat that ran all the way to the town mill.
Overshot wheels can achieve higher efficiencies than undershot wheels and can operate using a smaller volume of water which explains why they were generally preferred, particularly in steep-sided Cornish valleys.
A 2004 Civil Engineering publication concluded that high energy conversion efficiencies (of around 85-90%) were possible from overshot waterwheels and that if these can be manufactured cheaply, they could provide an environmentally sound means of small-scale electricity production.
Goosegrass is also known as cleavers due to the ability of the seeds to attach to clothing or animals. The use of "to cleave" meaning "to adhere" has Saxon origins but has become less common in recent years perhaps due to the confusion of having a more well-known meaning which is virtually the opposite. A Cornish dialect name, recorded as cliders in Victorian times, is likely to be a corruption of this. Other common names include sticky willy.
The area of Helston to the left was just fields with a railway line for much of the 20th Century. After the railway closed, this was eventually developed into an industrial estate. At some point, the area gained the curious name "Water-Ma-Trout" and the line of the railway is now recorded as Water-Ma-Trout Road. Various theories exist for the origin of the wacky name. One is that it's based on a miner named Trout (from a dialect expression "Welter-ma" for miner, based on "wheal" and "man"). Another suggestion is a Cornish dialect expression for "wet my throat" which certainly deserves to be used to add some entertainment to future pub visits.
Spanish bluebells have been planted in gardens and these have hybridised with native bluebells producing fertile seeds. This has produced hybrid swarms around sites of introductions and, since the hybrids are able to thrive in a wider range of environmental conditions, the hybrids are frequently out-competing the native English bluebells. Sir Francis Drake would not be impressed! The Spanish form can be fairly easily recognised by the flowers on either side of the stem. In the English form, they are all on one side. In general, the English bluebells also have longer, less-flared flowers and are often a deeper colour. However, the easiest way to tell the difference between native and non-native bluebells is to look at the colour of the pollen: if it is creamy-white then the bluebell is native; if it is any other colour such as pale green or blue then it's not native.
Hawthorn's red berries, also known as haws, are abundant in September and October. These are an important winter food for birds such as thrushes and small mammals such as dormice and wood mice.
As well as its thorns, another thing that makes hawthorn good for hedging is its very rapid rate of growth of around half a metre per year. Consequently one of the alternative common names for it is "quickthorn".
The word insect was coined in the 17th Century from the Latin animal insectum, meaning "segmented animal". In the mid-18th Century it was restricted to the specific group of animals with six legs. Before this it was a broader term applied to any small cold-blooded creature with a segmented body including spiders or woodlice. In mediaeval times, even frogs and lizards were lumped into the same group of animals as insects.
The stems and rhizomes (underground stems, shaped like giant carrots) of Cordyline australis are high in natural sugars and were steamed by the Māori to convert the carbohydrates into fructose and then flattened and dried for storage. The top of the stem from which the leaves shoot was also harvested, resulting in something resembling an artichoke. It is bitter so it was traditionally eaten with fatty meats such as eel to make it palatable.
During late winter or early spring, if you encounter a patch of plants with white bell-shaped flowers, smelling strongly of onions, and with long, narrow leaves then they are likely to be three-cornered leeks. Once you're familiar with their narrow, ridged leaves, you'll be able to spot these emerging from late October onwards.
All plants in the onion family including three-cornered leeks are poisonous to dogs. Keep dogs away from the plant and wash their paws if they come into contact with it.
The red campion produces a blaze of pink flowers along hedgerows in the spring with the most intense flowering period occurring between late April and the end of June. A scattering of flowers continue throughout the rest of the summer. In the mild Cornish climate, a few plants can often be seen flowering during winter months.
The parish church in Helston - dedicated to St Michael - is relatively modern by Cornish standards, built in the mid-Georgian period, which initially seems quite odd when Helston was well-established in mediaeval times. The reason is that there was previously a 12th Century chapel here which had been extended into a church in a way similar to many others in Cornwall but this burned down in 1729. The replacement church was completed in 1761 and restored in the 1830s.
The memorial near the other exit from the churchyard (i.e. if you keep the church on your left) is to the inventor of the marine rocket.
In December 1807, the Navy frigate HMS Anson hit bad weather off Mount's Bay. They attempted to head into Falmouth harbour but realised they were trapped by the wind on the wrong side of the Lizard. The captain anchored the ship but the anchor rope snapped. A second anchor was deployed and held fast but this also snapped. As a last resort, the captain attempted to sail the ship onto the beach at the centre of the Loe Bar, but hit an uncharted reef just 100 metres off the beach. The force of the collision caused the main mast to topple onto the beach. Some of the crew were able to escape across it but around 100 drowned in the huge breakers. One of the witnesses was Henry Trengrouse who was so moved by the helplessness of the onlookers that he spent much of his life and personal savings developing the rocket lifesaving apparatus which went on to save many thousands of lives. A canon salvaged from the wreck in 1964 is on display outside the Helston museum and a cross overlooks the beach, commemorating both the disaster and the life work of Henry Trengrouse. Gold coins are occasionally found which are thought to be from pockets of the officers aboard.
During winter, from November to March, winter heliotrope is visible along the edges of roads and paths as carpets of rounded heart-shaped leaves.
From mid November to January, the plants produce spikes with pale pink flowers. The scent of the flowers resembles marzipan i.e. almond and vanilla. The chemical responsible for the scent (4-methoxybenzaldehyde) has been found to attract pollinators whilst also repelling ants. It is a very similar chemical compound to vanillin (hence the vanilla-like scent).
Wild Clematis, also known "traveller's joy", produces white silky seeds in autumn which give rise to another name: "old man's beard". These stay on the plant through much of the winter and provide both food for birds and fluff for lining their nests. The tangled structure of their stems also provides cover and nesting sites for birds. During the summer months, their flowers are a good source of nectar for bees.
The French name is "herbe aux gueux" - beggar's herb. It is said to be because the sap was used deliberately to irritate the skin to give it an ulcerated look to induce more sympathy. The sap contains a chemical called protoanemonin which causes blistering.
Rooks can be distinguished from other members of the crow family by their pale, hairless, pointy beak (other members of the crow family have black beaks and also a moustache on the top of their beak).
Lismore House was built between 1810 and 1820 by demolishing several other properties and amalgamating a number of existing gardens. During the Victorian period, the house was extended and a summerhouse was added to the gardens. The house and gardens have always been private but it has been a tradition passed down to each new owner that the gardens are opened to the public during the dances on Flora Day and forms the most famous part of the dance route.
The monument is dedicated to Humphry Grylls - a banker and mayor who acted during the 1820 recession to keep the Wheal Vor mine from closing, protecting 1200 jobs. When he died, the funeral procession is said to have stretched for two miles and over 2,000 local people contributed to build the moment.
The shelter is decorated with a a depiction of the Furry Dance.
Helston Flora Day is normally held on May 8th and stems from an ancient pre-Christian tradition celebrating the arrival of spring.
The most famous element of the celebration is the "Furry Dance". It is thought "furry" - which pronounced to rhyme with "curry" - is probably a corruption of the Cornish word fer meaning "fair".
The celebration also includes a traditional (Mummers') play known as Hal-An-Tow. The Victorians deemed that the Hal-An-Tow play had become "a drunken revelry" and so the play part of the celebrations was suspended during the late Victorian era. The dances still continued as these appealed to Victorian sensibilities, particularly the mid-day dance which was reserved for gentry.
The well-known "floral dance" song was written in 1911 by a composer from London after she had visited the Helston Flora Day.
Helston Castle (which may have been more along the lines of a fortified manor house) was built some time between 1272 and 1300. By 1478 it had been destroyed and no trace now remains. The location is thought to be where the bowling green is situated now.
The word crow is from the Old English crawe. Since this sounds a lot like the noise the bird makes, there is a misconception that the Old English is directly derived from this. In fact the word is far older. It's related the the Old Saxon kraia and can be traced back further to a Proto-Indo-European word from the late Neolithic period which is thought to mean "to call hoarsely".
The word "crow" is sometimes used to refer to the whole crow family (including jackdaws, rooks and ravens) and sometimes specifically to the common (carrion) crow. Carrion crows can be distinguished from their cousins by being totally black (jackdaws have grey heads, rooks have pale beaks) and having a slender and fairly straight beak (i.e. not the broad beak with a hooked top that a raven has). Biologists use the word "corvids" for "crow family" to avoid ambiguity, or to show off.
The collective noun for a group of crows is a "murder". The term has been traced back to around the 15th Century, originally as a murthre (which was a Middle English word that meant "murder"). It is thought that the expression may be based on crows scavenging carcasses.
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.
Research has shown that crows have a much higher density of neurons in their forebrains than primates do (the density of neurons in this region is thought to correlate with intelligence).
The brain of a crow accounts for 2.7 percent of the bird's overall weight whereas an adult human's brain represents 1.9 percent of their body weight. This is even more impressive when considered in context: birds need to be as light as possible in order to fly.
Ravens are considered the most intelligent crow species, outperforming chimpanzees in some tests. Consequently an academic is quoted as saying that crows are "smarter than many undergraduates, but probably not as smart as ravens."
Studies have shown that crows are capable of self-discipline. If offered one piece of food now or two later, the crows will resist temptation and wait. However if the initial piece of food is a high value item such as sausage, they won't take the risk.
Crows are omnivores and their ability to eat anything from animal feed to potato chips has allowed them to capitalise on food sources created by humans. Their problem-solving skills also allow them to access food that less savvy animals cannot, for example tugging on bin liners and tucking each fold under their feet to raise the contents of waste bins in motorway service stations.
Crows have a vocabulary of different calls with specific meanings and these can be varied to convey emotion like a human tone of voice.
The sounds that crows make have also been found to vary with location rather like regional accents in humans. When a crow moves into a new area, it mimics the calls of the most dominant flock members to fit in with its peer group.
There is a somewhat brutal rural tradition of hanging dead crows in fields with crops. Scientists now understand why this was so effective. Research has shown that crows understand the concept of death and can distinguish an (obviously) dead crow from a taxidermically-stuffed (alive-looking) crow. Crows often gather around a dead individual in "crow funerals" to try to determine the cause of death and assess the threat to themselves. They become wary of the place a dead crow is found but will also harass humans who handle crow corpses.
In the 3rd Century BC, the Romans named their ill-fated gangplank for boarding other ships "corvus" (Latin for crow) because its end contained a large metal spike which was thought to resemble a crow's beak. The end of the gangplank was dropped from a height onto the captured ship and the spike acted as a nail, attaching the gangplank to the deck of the ship being boarded. The design was short-lived because the 36ft gangplank sticking up from the front mast of the ship did nothing for its stability and consequently resulted in almost two entire fleets being lost in rough seas.
The life-saving rockets were invented at the beginning of the 19th century, by Cornishman Henry Trengrouse, and were also carried aboard larger vessels. They consisted of a solid fuel rocket on a wooden pole with a line attached, and a grapple on the top of the rocket to snag and hold fast onto the target ship or shore. Despite the rockets occasionally exploding, it is recorded that the apparatus saved thousands of lives in the last 2 decades of the 19th century.
A striking red fungus you may see in the woods that forms cup-like structures on decaying wood is appropriately named scarlet elf cup. There's also a very similar looking ruby elf cup but since telling them apart requires studying the hairs on the outer surface of the cups under 400 times magnification with a microscope or by DNA analysis, that's probably better left to the elves.
There are several species of Woodrush in the UK that all look fairly similar. They are most noticeable in woodland where they often form dense mats - hence the name.
Woodrush has green pointed leaves which can be mistaken for bluebell leaves when there are no flowers to provide an obvious difference (woodrush flowers are unexciting small brown things that look a bit like grass seed). To tell the leaves apart, woodrush leaves taper steadily to a sharp point whereas bluebell leaves are relatively straight for most of their length and only taper near the end (like a broadsword). Bluebell leaves are also slightly blue-green whereas woodrush is a glossy vibrant green.
The grey heron is an unmistakably massive bird with a 6ft wingspan and yet weighs in at only 1-2kg. The call of the heron is equally unsubtle - a loud croaking "fraaank" noise that is more like grating metal than the sound of birdsong. Herons are most commonly seen in or near freshwater where they hunt for fish. The number of breeding herons has been steadily growing in the UK due to mild winters as they struggle to feed during cold weather when ice forms a barrier on the surface of water.
Although herons primarily eat fish, they will eat frogs, rodents, moles, ducklings and even baby rabbits! They are quite brave birds and will venture into gardens and parks to eat the ornamental fish. They have also been known to visit zoos to steal fish during penguin and seal feeding.
Herons nest in tree-top colonies known as "heronries" where they make a large nest from twigs. It is not unusual for a single tree to contain as many as 10 nests and the overall colony can reach over a hundred nests. The herons re-use their nest for as many years as possible until it gets blown away by a storm. It is unwise to stand beneath a heronry as the birds defend their nests by regurgitating half-digested fish on those below!
In mediaeval Britain, roast heron was a prized dish reserved for aristocratic banquets. In Tudor and Elizabethan times, hunting herons with peregrine falcons was considered a royal sport which resulted in the population being protected from peasants who might otherwise have caught and roasted them.
The English surnames Earnshaw and Hernshaw originally meant "heron wood" and the surname Herne is also a corruption of Heron.
The blackbird is a species of thrush. The name "blackbird" is mediaeval, first recorded in 1486. Since most of the crow family is also black, plus many seabirds, the choice of this particular species for the name is thought to be due to its size. Up to the 18th Century, larger birds such as crows were referred to as "fowl" and the term "bird" was only used for smaller species.
The Old English name for the blackbird was osle and up to the 17th Century this survived as in alternative names for the blackbird ranging from ouzel to woosel. One of these is used in A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare: "The Woosell cocke, so blacke of hew, With Orenge-tawny bill".
Only male blackbirds are actually black. The females are brown. The difference in appearance between males and females is known as sexual dimorphism and is an evolutionary strategy by the males to get noticed more by females at the cost of decreased chances of survival.
Blackbirds can be found in deciduous woodland, particularly where there is dense undergrowth. In the man-made landscape, hedges provide plenty of dense undergrowth and have consequently become a really important habitat for blackbirds. Moreover, many gardens have such a high density of hedges and bushes that they are able to support ten times the blackbird population versus an equivalent area of their natural woodland habitat.
Blackbirds are one of the most common birds in the UK with a population of somewhere between 10 and 15 million. However, blackbirds were in steady decline from the 1970s through to the mid-1990s. The population has only relatively recently recovered.
Blackbirds begin singing from around the end of January but it is normally the overkeen young males initially - the older, wiser males wait until March, pacing themselves for the singing period which continues into the early summer. Blackbirds have been shown to sing more during and after rain but exactly why is not yet known.
Baby blackbirds usually leave the nest before they can actually fly then hop and scramble through the bushes. Their parents watch over them so don't attempt to rescue them.
Blackbirds in the UK are resident all year round but the blackbirds that live further north (e.g. in Norway) migrate south for the winter. To help with migration and also to avoid being eaten by predators, blackbirds can sleep half their brain at a time. This allows them to get some rest whilst still maintaining enough alertness to fly or spot predators.
The reference in the nursery rhyme "sing a song a sixpence" to "four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie" is thought to be to the 16th Century amusement (though not for the blackbirds) of producing a large pie which included an empty chamber. After the pie had been baked and was ready to be served, a trapdoor would be cut in the empty chamber and live birds were placed inside which would fly out when the pie was cut open. Live frogs were sometimes used as an alternative.
In the Christmas carol "The Twelve Days of Christmas", the line "four colly birds" is thought to be from 18th Century slang meaning "black as coal" and was a popular nickname for the blackbird. Whilst many people today sing and write "four calling birds", this is thought to be a modern misunderstanding of what was originally written.
The game of bowls dates from mediaeval times and was first clearly documented in the 13th Century. From the 14th Century, it was banned along with several other sports for being a distraction from archery practice. However bans on bowling continued long after guns had replaced the longbow due to the disreputable nature of bowling alleys which were often attached to taverns. Until 1845, labourers, apprentices and servants were forbidden from playing bowls except at Christmas under the supervision of their masters!
Up to the end of the 19th Century, the area now occupied by Coronation Park was an area of waste ground that was often flooded and sometimes grazed by donkeys that mischievous children attempted to ride whilst the farmer wasn't looking. To commemorate the coronation of King George V in 1912, it was transformed into a swimming and boating lake.
The "coinage" in the names of some buildings and streets in Cornwall comes from an early method of measuring the purity of metal ore (assaying). Before ingots of tin were sold, a corner of the ingot (known as a "coign") was broken off. The coign was weighed and then reduced with carbon (e.g. anthracite powder) in a furnace and the amount of metal produced was also weighed. The building where the measurement was carried out became known as a Coinage Hall.
The Red Lion is thought to be the most common name for a pub in the UK and to originate from the Stuart era when James I came to the throne and ordered the heraldic red lion of Scotland to be displayed on all buildings of importance, which naturally included pubs.
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