For many centuries, it was traditional for landowning families to create trusts from the land and assets so future generations could live off the income, but were unable to dispose of the assets so these would be available for future generations. The Duchy estate is an example of this and was created in 1337 by Edward III to provide his son (and future Princes of Wales) with an income. Consequently, unlike other Royals, the Prince of Wales and his family are not paid for by the taxpayer via the Civil List; instead their living costs and all their charitable activities (such as The Prince's Trust) are funded by income from the Duchy estate.
Only 13% of the Duchy land is in Cornwall; the rest is dotted over 23 other counties with some in London but most is in the South West of England, with nearly half on Dartmoor.
Restormel Castle is one of the four chief Norman castles in Cornwall and is notable for its perfectly circular design; the 13th century circular shell-keep still encloses the principal rooms of the castle. The mound on which it is built is the site of an earlier castle, probably originally built at the start of the 12th Century, shortly after the Norman conquest of England, as a motte and bailey castle. The castle is strategically positioned, overlooking the primary crossing point over the River Fowey and was located in the middle of a large deer park. The castle had an early form of pressurised tap water, piped into the buildings from a natural spring.
The battle of Lostwithiel took place in the fields here on the hill.
A 13 day battle took place at Lostwithiel in 1644 during the English Civil War when a large Royalist army marched from Oxford and cornered a smaller Parliamentarian army in Cornwall. 700 Parliamentarians died or were injured in battle and 6,000 were taken prisoner but around half of these died of exposure or disease on their way to Southampton. It was considered one of the worst defeats of the Parliamentarians and secured the South West for the Royalists until 1646.
If there are sheep in the field and you have a dog, make sure it's securely on its lead (sheep are prone to panic and injuring themselves even if a dog is just being inquisitive). If the sheep start bleating, this means they are scared and they are liable to panic.
If there are pregnant sheep in the field, be particularly sensitive as a scare can cause a miscarriage. If there are sheep in the field with lambs, avoid approaching them closely, making loud noises or walking between a lamb and its mother, as you may provoke the mother to defend her young.
Sheep may look cute but if provoked they can cause serious injury (hence the verb "to ram"). Generally, the best plan is to walk quietly along the hedges and they will move away or ignore you.
Wheat was formed by hybridisations between wild grasses which was then spread through domestication. The cultivation of wheat is thought to have begun nearly 12,000 years ago in southeast Turkey.
Remains of wheat from 8000 years ago have been found in Britain which indicate trade with Europe. Until around 6500 BC, it was possible to walk between Britain and the rest of Europe via an area of low lying land known as Doggerland. As sea levels rose after the last Ice Age, the North Sea flooded this, making Britain an island.
Because each of the hybridisations that formed wheat were rare events, and because there were multiple stages of hybridisation involved, domesticated bread wheat is all from a common ancestry and therefore there is very little genetic variety. This narrow gene pool makes the risk of a catastrophic disease quite high. Since the 20th Century, work has been underway to broaden the wheat gene pool to produce disease-resistant strains through a number of techniques including crossing wheat varieties from different parts of the world, hybridising with wild grasses, and more recently through direct genetic manipulation.
If the path is starting to get overgrown, report this to Cornwall Council for a cut (report footpath issue on the menu next to the direction).
Bramble roots are perennial but its shoots last just two years. In the first year, the shoots grow vigorously (up to 8cm in one day!). In the second year, the shoots mature and send out side-shoots with flowers.
An impressively purple blackberry, pear and ginger chutney can be made with blackberries stashed in the freezer. Simmer 500g blackberries, a few chilli flakes, 4 chopped pears and a finely-chopped 8cm piece of fresh ginger until the liquid reduces. Add 150ml distilled or white wine vinegar, and sugar to taste (amount will depend on tartness of the blackberries). Reduce a bit longer until the desired "gloopy" consistency is achieved and finally season with a little salt to taste to balance the sweetness.
The wooded area to the left was once part of the workings of the Restormel Royal mine.
A mine was worked for iron at Restormel from the 1790s originally known as Trinity Mine. A tramway was built in 1836 that connected the mine to the quays at Lostwithiel.
In 1846 it was visited by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and was subsequently renamed Restormel Royal. During their visit, the Queen visited the underground workings and (in the words of the mine captain) Prince Albert "took the pick, and he thrawed to like a man! and he got a bit of ore". After the visit, Queen Victoria ordered 50 gold sovereigns to be distributed among the miners.
Goosegrass produces lots of small white flowers in summer which are quite noticeable in hedgerows, particularly in July. The sticky seeds then form in late summer - early autumn. The seeds germinate immediately so the seedlings can get started before the winter. They then overwinter as small (frost-resistant) plants, ready for a growth spurt in April once the weather warms up.
From April to June, white flowers of Greater Stitchwort can be seen along hedgerows and paths. The petals are quite distinctive as each one is split almost all the way to create pairs - most of the flowers typically have 5 pairs.
Behind the stone wall at the end of the path are some of the opencast workings from the iron mine (hence the warning signs on the wall as there is an abyss on the other side).
The Romans used to soak bandages in daisy juice as an antiseptic for sword wounds. Other common names include bruisewort and woundwort which also imply use for treatment of injuries.
The first record of the settlement of Penquite is from 1196 as "Pencued" . The name has drifted from the original Cornish pen cos meaning "edge of the woods".
In Elizabethan times, starch made from the bulbs was used to stiffen collars and cuffs in clothing. The ruffs that were highly fashionable at the time would have needed a lot of starch to prevent them flopping. The toxins in bluebell sap might also have had the desirable property of preventing the starch encouraging the formation of mould.
Gardeners have known for a long time that acidic soils lead to blue hydrangea flowers whereas alkaline soils lead to pink flowers. Biochemists have found that aluminium is the thing that actually turns the pigment in hydrangeas blue. Acidic soils free-up aluminium already in the soil to be absorbed by the plant. Within the plant, aluminium combines with a normally-red pigment to turn it blue. Varieties of hydrangeas have been bred with a higher concentration of the pigment and these have more vivid colours (i.e. red rather than pink). Similarly varieties with lower concentrations of the pigment have been cultivated to create pastel colours.
Since Victorian times, it's been common practice for gardeners to use aluminium sulphate to turn their hydrangeas blue (without necessarily knowing why) but this has become less popular in recent years as aluminium sulphate is extremely harmful to aquatic life. Twenty tonnes was accidentally deposited into Camelford's drinking water supply in 1988 which was hastily flushed into the Camel river system, killing many fish.
The roots of red campion contain saponins (soapy compounds) which protect the plants against microbes and fungi. These compounds make it easier for large molecules such as proteins to enter cell membranes. This has the potential to increase the effectiveness of immunotherapy against cancer by allowing immunotoxins to enter the cancer cells more easily.
The term "thistle" is not biologically precise and covers quite a broad range of different plant species from the daisy family. The common thistle (also known as bull thistle or spear thistle) is appropriately the commonest in the UK. The flowers open as a green spiny ball with a purple tuft (often depicted within Scottish emblems). The creeping thistle is also common in agricultural fields and has lighter pink flowers.
Due to their flocking behaviour, sheep have gained a reputation for not being intelligent but actually this is more about being nervous of being eaten. In a study, their intelligence was found to be on a par with cows: they can recognise human faces, learn a name given to them etc. This may even extend to problem-solving: in Cornwall we've seen them escape into a neighbouring field by operating a kissing gate and in West Yorkshire there are reports of sheep that have worked out that they can cross a cattle grid by rolling on their backs with their feet in the air.
Once domesticated sheep had become woolly, individuals with white fleeces were selected for breeding as this was the easiest colour to dye. This was made easier by the genes giving rise to a white fleece being dominant. The recessive genes still do sometimes come together to produce a black lamb in an otherwise white flock. The expression "black sheep of the family" arises from this and its negative connotation was based on the economic undesirability of their fleeces.
The first record of Penknight is from 1221. The name is nothing to do with suits of armour and jousting - it is from the Cornish pen cnegh meaning "top of the hillock".
Although it's obvious that you should ensure any gates that you open, you also close, what about gates you find that are already open?
If the gate is fully open then leave it alone as it may well be providing livestock access to a water supply, and by closing it you could end up killing them.
If the gate is ajar or swinging loose and not wedged or tied open then it's likely that the gate was left open by accident (possibly by another group of walkers). Properly closing the offending gate behind you will not only bring joy to the landowner but you can feel good about saving lives in a car swerving to avoid a cow in the road.
If you encounter a gate doubly-secured with twine that can be untied or a chain that can be unfastened, it's normally there because naughty animals have managed to undo the gate themselves at some point (e.g. by rubbing against the bolt), so retie/fasten it afterwards.
As well as being environmentally-friendly, wool fibre has a number of technical properties that synthetic fibres lack including fire-resistance and the ability to absorb and release moisture. Some novel high-tech uses are now being found for it including biodegradable ground cover matting to control soil erosion. As concerns grow over the effects of plastics in the environment and micro plastics turning up in all kinds of unwanted places (such as 80% of the human blood samples tested in a study), this may also lead to a renaissance in natural fibres including wool. It may therefore not be too long before demand increases and fields are once again full of neatly-shorn sheep.
Nettle fibres have been used to make clothing since at least the Bronze Age (textiles made from nettle fibre were found at a Bronze Age site in Denmark). During the First World War, almost all German army uniforms were made from nettles to avoid a shortage of cotton. In more recent years, some European countries have started modern commercial production of nettle-based textiles. A textiles student who produced "nettle knickers" for her university project commented that the fibres are coarser than cotton so it is probably more suited to workwear than underwear.
Fern fronds form in a coil (known as a crozier or fiddlehead) with the delicate tip protected in the centre. As the outer parts begin to photosynthesise, the sugars they produce cause more water to be drawn into the leaf, causing it to expand and gradually unfurl.
Crocosmia (also known as Montbretia) is a garden plant in the iris family with bright orange flowers in summer. It has South African origins and was bred in France in 1879 as a garden plant hybridised from two wild plants, then introduced into the UK in the 1880s.
Green alkanet is a member of the forget-me-not family and has small but striking blue 5 petal flowers with white centres. The plants are often around 2ft tall by the time they are flowering, making them one of the taller plants around in April and they also have hairy leaves that can cause skin irritation in some people.
Green alkanet is native to the western part of the Mediterranean region and prefers sunny spots. It was introduced to the UK around the start of the 18th Century and fairly quickly escaped into the wild where it has become naturalised. As a garden weed, its brittle tap roots make it tricky to eradicate.
The name "alkanet" derives from the old Arabic word for Henna. The "green" in the name is to distinguish it from dyer's alkanet (hence the Henna), to which it is related but minus the dye. The scientific name for green alkanet (Pentaglottis sempervirens) is based on the Greek for "five tongues" (a reference to the flowers) and Latin for "evergreen" (as the plant often over-winters as a rosette of leaves).
Something you may have noticed is that all A and B road numbers in Cornwall start with the number 3. For A and B road numbering, England and Wales are divided up into 6 segments a bit like an orange, radiating out from London. Zone 3 covers the South West.
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.
Lostwithiel is from the Cornish word lost (meaning "tail") and as with Withiel near Wadebridge, the word for "wooded place". The gist is likely to be that the town was situated on the edge of the woods during early mediaeval times. During the later mediaeval period it grew into an important river trading hub referred to as the "The Port of Fawi" and was considered the capital of the county at this point.
As you emerge from the alleyway, the house to the left on the opposite side of the road has a mediaeval window built into the wall which is thought likely to be from a chapel. It is not known whether the chapel was originally at the same location or whether a it was reused from a derelict one nearby.
Lostwithiel church began as a chapel which was an offshoot of Lanlivery church. It is mentioned in a record from 1202 and 1286 but no traces of a Norman building now remain.
The current church building was built in the 14th Century and the font also dates from this period. As the layout of the church is similar to Fowey church, it's thought that it might be by the same builders. The church was restored in the late 19th Century.
Lostwithiel's mediaeval quays are thought to have been located somewhere near the upper end of Quay Street. There are records of land including a quay being sold in 1291. A tithe map from Victorian times also records a wharf. By the 1880s, a tramway ran along Quay Street to bring ore from Restormel Mine to a series of sidings beside the river just on the other side of the railway bridge. A limekiln was also located beside Quay Street.
A complex of buildings was created for the Earl of Cornwall in 1289, known as the Duchy Palace which housed the Duchy Parliament. This included administrative buildings such as a coinage hall for valuing ore, and a prison. The buildings were gutted in 1644 during the Civil War. During Victorian times, the remains of the coinage hall were converted into a masonic lodge which still survives. Other remaining fragments such as the arch at the end of South Street give an idea of how far the original buildings stretched.
There are records of a bridge in Lostwithiel from the 12th Century and there is also record of a mediaeval chapel and toll house on the town side of Lostwithiel bridge. The current bridge dates from the 15th Century - the 5 pointed arches nearest the town are from this period. The parapets were added in the 17th Century and the bridge was extended in the 18th Century with the round arches on the far side from the town.
The bridge is at the normal tidal limit of the river.
In tidal rivers, the discharge of freshwater and friction with the riverbed effectively "holds back" the rising tide. The further up the tidal region of the river, the shorter the interval between low and high tide and the faster the rising tide comes in when it eventually does.
The upper reaches of the Fowey river system run through 2 Sites of Special Scientific Interest and the Fowey valley is designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The river has populations of sea trout and salmon as well as brown trout which make it popular with fly fishermen.
Buttercups produce a toxin called protoanemonin, which is at its highest concentration when flowering. It is thought that buttercups may be partly responsible for Equine Grass Sickness. Fortunately the toxin is quite unstable and drying of the plant in haymaking leads to polymerisation into non-toxic anemonin. Buttercups are also toxic to dogs, cats and humans. They have a bitter taste which puts dogs off eating the plants but pollen can collect on fur and be ingested, particularly by cats when they clean themselves. A man in France who drank a glass of juice made from buttercups suffered severe colic after four hours and was dead the next day!
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!
Rosebay willowherb is a tall plant with a spike of pink flowers in late summer which can often be seen beside paths and tracks. Their long leaves have a distinctive thin, white vein along the centre.
It is a pioneer species which is good at colonising disturbed ground as its seeds travel long distances in the wind and remain viable in the soil for many years. It was considered a rare species in Britain in the 18th century but spread along the corridors cleared for railways in Victorian times.
Robins are able to hover like kingfishers and hummingbirds and use this skill when feeding from bird feeders, which they are unable to cling to.
Blobs of resin from conifers can fossilise along with the trees themselves in low oxygen environments to form amber. Over time, the volatile organic compounds that make the resin sticky are lost as the molecules left behind join up into polymers. After a few million years, the result is something very similar to a hard piece of clear plastic. Amber's ability to survive for hundreds of millions of years also suggests that man-made plastics created from organic polymers could persist in the environment a very long time.
Restormel Manor was built in the 1760s and replaced an earlier building documented on the site in 1649 as Trinity House. It is owned by the Duchy of Cornwall and sometimes used by the Royal Family on visits to Cornwall.
A 12th Century chapel known as the hermitage of the Holy Trinity was recorded as being near a river crossing below the castle, although exactly where is unknown. One possibility is that if the bridge across the river was located more-or-less where the current one is then it could have been on the site of Restormel House. So far, no evidence on the ground has been found to confirm if this was the origin of the previous name of the house.
Primroses prefer moist soils so they tend to grow either in semi-shady places which don't get dried out too much by the sun such as woodland clearings and the base of hedgerows, or in wet open ground such as near streams.
Primrose seeds are quite large and therefore, due to their weight, don't travel far from the plant. This causes a clump of primroses to spread out very slowly over time and means it takes a long time for primroses to colonise new areas. This makes large carpets of primroses a very good indicator of ancient woodland where they would have had many hundreds of years to spread out.
Although primroses flower most intensely in March and April, some primroses can begin flowering in late December. The name "primrose" from the Latin for "first" (as in "primary"), alluding to their early flowering.
Primrose flowers provide an important nectar source for pollinators that hibernate over winter and emerge quite early like brimstone and small tortoiseshell butterflies - these are some of the first butterflies to be seen in spring. Primrose is also the food plant for the caterpillars of the rare Duke of Burgundy butterfly.
Most primroses tend to be pale yellow but in residential areas, extensive hybridisation occurs with pink and purple garden primulas to create all kinds of weird and wonderful mutants, with some even shaped like cowslips. However, there is a pale pink variety of primrose (known as rhubarb and custard) that is thought to be a naturally-occurring variant of the pale yellow (rhubarb-free) version as it has been found miles away from any domestic plants.
During Victorian times, the building of railways allowed primrose flowers picked in the Westcountry to be on sale in London the next day. Picking was done on a large scale but eventually became unfashionable, being seen as environmentally destructive. However all the evidence gathered suggests as long as the flowers were picked and the plants were not dug up, the practice was sustainable.
Handling primroses is best avoided as the hairs on the leaves and stems can cause contact dermatitis which is quite severe in some people. It is thought that some people may develop a tolerance with repeated exposure but nevertheless a study in a medical journal found that over a quarter of Primula growers experienced skin reactions.
Pond skaters are able to stand on the surface of water due to long legs and water-repellent hairs on their feet.
The weight on each foot is less than the combined cohesive forces between water molecules ("surface tension") around it. Their long legs space out their feet so that the dents in the water's surface from each foot don't connect.
However, in order to walk on water, pond skaters must exert extra force to propel themselves which if applied to the surface of the water would sink them. The very tips of the water-repellent hairs on their feet penetrate the surface of the water and these create swirling vortices like tiny oars. The vortices transfer momentum down below the surface of the water so the surface of the water doesn't need to take all the force.
The horse chestnut tree was introduced to Britain during Tudor times. Mature horse chestnut trees grow up to 40 metres tall and can live for up to 300 years. The association of conker trees with horses may be due to the horseshoe (complete with nail holes) shape of the leaf scars on the twigs.
Due to the name of the tree, there are stories that conkers were fed to horses as a stimulant, to make their coat shine or to cure coughs. However horse chestnuts contain a chemical compound - aesculin - which is poisonous to horses. It is also poisonous to dogs so they should not be allowed to chew the nuts.
The Vikings used crushed conkers to make soap as they contain saponins. As fresh conkers dry out, the saponins are released and scientists have found these repel moths. However no evidence has been found that they repel spiders despite many people believing this to be the case.
The game of conkers was first recorded on the Isle of Wight in 1848, but similar games were played in Britain and Ireland with hazelnuts or even snail shells before this. In recent years, many schoolchildren have become disinterested in playing conkers, preferring electronic gadgets that simulate the game by catapulting birds rather than horse chestnuts. However there has been a surge in interest from adults who would prefer to physically bash something, preferably less expensive than an iPhone. The World Conker Championship has been held in England since 1965 and now attracts competitors from all over the world.
The Cornwall Heritage Trust (CHT) is a charity founded in 1985 to preserve and strengthen Cornish heritage. The CHT own some historic structures such as the Treffry Viaduct and also manage a number of state-owned English Heritage sites in Cornwall such as Carn Euny.
The CHT management of some of the smaller English Heritage sites follows controversy in 1999 when the Revived Cornish Stannary Parliament pressure group removed several English Heritage signs. CHT now manage these in partnership with local communities, Natural England, Historic England and English Heritage.
As part of the English Heritage partnership, members of the Cornwall Heritage Trust can visit the larger English Heritage sites in Cornwall (Tintagel Castle, Restormel Castle, Launceston Castle, Pendennis Castle, Chysauster etc) free-of-charge. CHT annual membership is therefore quite an economical option for anyone intending to visit multiple English Heritage sites solely in Cornwall. The family membership is particularly good value-for-money.
Over 160,000 species of butterfly and moth have been described and nearly 19,000 of these have been found in the UK. Butterflies are effectively a sub-group of moths that fly during the day. They have adaptations for this such as wings that fold flat against each other with a camouflaged underside to help them hide from predators when landed but a patterned upper surface to attract mates during flight. Whilst moths' feathery antennae are highly optimised for an incredibly sensitive sense of smell, butterflies can make use of vision so their antennae are more streamlined and are also used to measure air temperature.
The oldest moth fossils found so far are from the Carboniferous period 300 million years ago. By the Middle Triassic (age of amphibians - before the dinosaurs), moths had evolved their proboscis used to collect nectar from flowers. Day-flying butterflies were on the scene in the Late Cretaceous (when Tyrannosaurs were around). Originally it was thought day-flying was to avoid night-flying bats but it's now thought more likely that this was mainly to take advantage of the abundance of nectar that was originally targeted at bees.
A popular misconception is that a butterfly was originally called "flutterby". In fact, the name stems from the Old English word buttorfleoge which literally means "butterfly". The term "flutterby" is thought to have been coined by Shakespeare.
Exactly why butterflies were associated with butter is a bit of a mystery. One theory is that they were seen hovering over pails of milk and thought to be stealing or protecting the butter. Another is that the yellow brimstone was the species for which this name was first devised.
When a caterpillar is still developing, it grows a small group of cells - known as an imaginal disc - for each of the adult body parts it will need as a mature butterfly. When a caterpillar pupates, it digests itself, releasing enzymes which dissolve all of its tissues into a soup leaving only the imaginal discs. These then act as seeds from which the adult butterfly is resurrected.
Many butterflies taste/smell using chemoreceptors on their feet and antennae. They can detect a sugar solution (nectar) with their feet that they can feed on. Female butterflies also detect suitable caterpillar food plants on which to lay their eggs.
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