The church at St Endellion is 15th Century and named after Endelienta - one of the children of the Welsh king Brychan. It is built in the Perpendicular Gothic style and contains some fine carvings in both stone and wood.
St Endellion lies on the B3267 just past the turning to Port Isaac. There is a music festival in St Endellion every Easter and summer and the church is a popular venue for classical music concerts.
Blackberries are closely related to raspberries and technically neither is a berry but an aggregate of many individual tiny fruits, each containing a tiny stone like a miniature cherry.
Brychan was a legendary Celtic king (originally born in Ireland) who ruled over Breconshire in South Wales and was viewed as the father of the Celtic saints.
Several mediaeval manuscripts state that he was married three times but the numbers of children vary from 12 to 63 with 24 being the most commonly reported number. There is also little agreement in the lists of names between Cornish and Welsh manuscripts. It is thought that the list of his children may have grown over time as more people claimed themselves or their local saint to be descended from what was seen as the holy family.
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.
For a settlement to be considered a village rather than a hamlet it needs to have both a place of worship and a meeting place such as a pub or village hall. There's no clear definition of when a village is considered a town. Many once had markets but now the size of population or presence of a town council can be triggers. However, there are also exceptions to both - one village in England has a population of over 17,000! There are also exceptions to a city needing a cathedral (e.g. Plymouth) - one can instead be created by the King.
There are 2 sparrow species in the UK but only the house sparrow is common in Cornwall.
Since the 1970s the UK house sparrow population has declined to less than half with an even greater loss in urban areas. Consequently the house sparrow is now listed as a species of high conservation concern in the UK. The exact causes for the decline are not known although a number of likely factors have been identified. In the countryside a reduction in aphid populations due to changes in farming practices is thought to be significant whereas in urban areas a loss of suitable nesting sites, roadkill and a more intense level of predation by cats may be significant. Since 2008 the population seems to have stabilised but no-one is quite sure why.
The Ramblers Association and National Farmers Union suggest some "dos and don'ts" for walkers which we've collated with some info from the local Countryside Access Team.
Do
Don't
A short diversion to the left along the lane, is Long Cross where there are Victorian gardens and a restaurant (The Long Cross Hotel).
The Long Cross is an ancient cross shaft from the 6th-8th century, located at a crossroads on the Port Quin road near Trelights. It is inscribed with Broegan hic jacet, which is thought might be a reference to King Brychan.
Researchers have found a recessive gene which appears to turn normal 3-leaf clovers into the 4-leaf version. Normally this is masked by the 3-leaf gene but environmental conditions can promote the 4-leaf form. Some domestic varieties have also been selectively bred to increase the proportion of 4-leaf plants. Genetically-engineered four leaf clovers are now a possibility with some farms in the USA reportedly already using genetic modification to churn-out thousands of plastic-sealed "lucky" charms per day.
The fields here are sometimes used for arable crops including barley.
The size of a barley grain became part of the British imperial measurement system. The length units were eventually standardised as one inch being equal to 3 barleycorns which in turn were each equal to four poppyseeds. The barleycorn is still in use today as it is the basis of the UK shoe size system. This rises in increments of one barleycorn i.e. a size 9 is one barleycorn longer than a size 8.
Roscarrock,on a hill near Port Isaac, is named after a prominent Cornish family who owned the Manor which is mentioned in the Domesday Book. The farm is fortified with castellations which are thought may have been a deterrent for pirates. The grain store at the farm dates from the 16th Century and still stands on staddle stones.
During Tudor times, Nicholas Roscarrock was imprisoned for being a Catholic activist and tortured on the rack, which he miraculously survived, only to be imprisoned again 8 years later. After finally being released, he wrote his only surviving work, "The Lives of the Saints".
The wooden pole in the field is probably a "wreck post".
Wreck posts, resembling a telegraph pole with wooden steps, were used for Coastguard practice exercises. The post emulated the mast of a sinking ship. A "shore" team would fire a rocket carrying a light line known as a whip to a man on the post. Once he caught this, it was secured to the post and a heavier line known as a hawser was pulled out using the light line and secured to the post. This could then used to haul out a Breeches Buoy that the crew member could be rescued with.
In the late spring and throughout the summer, look out for purple betony flowers along the coast path.
Betony is a grassland herb, common on the coast, with pretty purple anthers that stick out from the plant. The name is derived from the ancient Celtic words bew (meaning head) and ton (meaning good) as it was used as a cure for headaches. From Roman times onward, it was believed to be a cure for a number of things (the Romans listed 47!) including drunkenness. Even as late as the 1800s, Richard E. Banks stated that you should "Eat betony or the powder thereof and you cannot be drunken that day" and John Gerard (1597) said that "It maketh a man to pisse well". Betony was also used to ward away evil spirits (hence it is planted in a number of churchyards) and also to make a dark yellow dye for wool.
The Castor 1 was a cargo ship, nearly 60 metres in length built in the 1950s in Germany. In November 1980, she was on her way back from Londonderry to Par when her engines failed near Port Isaac. Whilst being towed into the harbour, she capsized and sank. The main wreck is lodged in the rocks just outside Port Isaac Harbour and has been broken up by the sea, scattering debris across the seabed of the harbour entrance.
In September 1918, the British collier "Milly" was on its return to South Wales from France, when it was torpedoed by a German submarine, two and a quarter miles west of Tintagel Head. Two men died but the remainder of the crew were saved by another passing ship. The wreck is in 46 metres of water and is slowly sinking into the sand front-first. However, a good deal of it is still discernible and it is a fairly popular spot for divers. The stern gun was salvaged and is outside the Golden Lion pub in Port Isaac.
In 1833, Frederick Trevan recorded the foundering vessel - Sloop Theodore of Yaughall - being rescued at Port Isaac in 1821: "Captain Timothy Daisy from Yaughall for Plymouth with potatoes. Vessel seen dismasted. Boarded with difficulty by boat from Port Isaac. Saw no one on deck but heard violin below. The Pats were enjoying themselves it being St. Patrick's Day to whose guidance, of course, they entrusted the vessel. They had entrusted the helm to a boy the day before and he had jibbed her and carried away the mast. The boat people with difficulty got her into Port Isaac after being at it all night. The potatoes were sold at Port Isaac and Padstow and off they went for dear Ireland. Crew exceedingly dirty - great quantity of lice. The Captain would put his hand into his bosom, take one out and address it saying 'Ach, dear honey, I wish you and I were in Dublin' and then replace it."
Port Isaac is a pretty fishing village with narrow winding alleys running down the steep hillside to the harbour. Particularly noteworthy is the number of 18th and 19th century white-washed cottages and granite, slate-fronted houses, many officially listed as of architectural or historic importance. Port Isaac was a busy coastal port from the Middle Ages to the mid 19th century, where cargoes like slate, coal and timber were shipped in and out. The stone pier was built in Tudor times, and the rest of the harbour in the 19th century. The economy was also heavily based around the pilchard trade.
By 1500, Port Isaac had a flourishing pilchard industry and was considered one of the most important fishing harbours on the north coast. Salted pilchards and pilchard oil were exported to Italy. A number of fish cellars were built in Tudor times and their remnants were uncovered when the foundations were dug in the 1820s for the Victorian fish cellars which now occupy the same sites. The sheds where the women cleaned and salted the pilchards now house the fish merchant and tiny aquarium. It's still an active fishing port with locally landed fish available for sale at the fish merchants.
Following the construction of the pier, a busy period of development began within Port Isaac which lasted until the beginning of the seventeenth century, though by the end of the Tudor period, most of the present day streets were already laid out.
The village of Port Isaac was originally centred around a flat open space at the southern end of the harbour known as The Platt. This was used as a workplace by the fishermen, a venue for the weekly markets, and as a safe place to draw up the boats during spring tides.
The pier at Port Isaac was built during the reign of Henry VIII, probably as an investment by the Roscarrock family. At the lowest point of the tide, large stones stacked on their edges can be seen along the left side of the harbour which remain from the Tudor pier. In around 1536, the village was described as: "Porthissek, a pretty fisher village, lyeth about a three miles from the mouth of the aforesaid brook lower bywest on Severne shore. There resorteth a brook to Porthissek: and there is a pier and some succour for fisher boats.". By the reign of Elizabeth I, as well as a busy fishing port, Port Isaac had become an important centre of export, shipping slate from the local quarries to France and Belgium.
Port Isaac was traditionally part of St Endellion parish, so villagers would follow the return route of this walk, each Sunday, on their way to church. When Methodism became popular in Port Isaac, the Anglican church built the chapel of St Peter's in Port Isaac, to compete with the convenience of attending the Methodist chapels, which did not involve climbing this hill!
Across the valley to your left, was the Wheal Boys antimony mine, near Trewetha, which was worked on and off from the 18th Century until the early 20th Century.
Endellionite, also known as Bournonite, is a grey or black metallic crystalline mineral (a sulphide of antimony, lead and copper). It was discovered at the Wheal Boys antimony mine near St Endellion and often contains crystal structures that resemble the teeth of a cog wheel. It forms from minerals dissolved in hot water circulating through cracks in the rock which crystallised out as the water cooled; the cogwheel structures are the result of a process called "twinning" where 2 crystals become joined like Siamese twins, due to a flaw in the crystal structure.
One of the graves in St Endellion churchyard is that of Miles Marley - a London surgeon who retired to Port Isaac to be near his son (who was the doctor in Padstow).
In 1843, Charles Dickens dined with his friend Miles Marley. They agreed that Marley was an unusual name and Dickens exclaimed (somewhat confidently), "Before the New Year, your name will be a household word!" He then used the name "Jacob Marley" for Scrooge's partner in "A Christmas Carol", which was finished at the beginning of December 1843. The book sold 6,000 copies by Christmas Eve, which at the time was a record, and Dickens' confident claim was realised.
Some of the places that the ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge are also thought to be based on Dickens' visit to Cornwall in 1842 with elements including the "bleak and desert moor where monstrous masses of rude stone were cast about" and the Longships Lighthouse at Land's End (described as "upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league or so from shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed"). One of the main objectives of Dickens' visit was to witness the working conditions at Botallack Mine, particularly for women and children, and this also features in the story.
By the 1800s, Port Isaac had enough Methodists to support different chapels for 2 factions of Methodism. In 1836, a Methodist Free Church chapel was built at the foot of Roscarrock Hill, above the fish cellars; meanwhile, the Weslyans worshipped in Middle Street. By 1867, the Roscarrock Hill Methodist Chapel could no longer accommodate the swelling congregation. It was therefore converted into a Sunday school and a larger chapel built next door. The chapel bell was retrieved from a wrecked ship, The Bencoolen, which sank off the Bude Coast.
The Mote (now a restaurant) was the first Inn in Port Isaac, built in 1542 and originally called the Mote Inn. It later became the Bristol Inn and then The Commercial.
The house named The Dolphin also gives its name to Port Isaac's Dolphin Street on which it is situated. It was formerly the Dolphin Inn which was originally built in 1770s and extended to the front and rear in the mid nineteenth century.
Fern Cottage is a mid to late 19th century building on Roscarrock Hill in Port Isaac, overlooking the harbour. For many years this was a relatively unremarkable house (especially by Port Isaac standards) but it is now one of the most visited and photographed in Port Isaac. The reason is that it features as the house and surgery of the central character, Dr Martin Ellingham in the ITV comedy drama, Doc Martin. Only the exterior is used in filming; the interior shots are done in the studio.
The Golden Lion, at the foot of Fore Street in Port Isaac, was built in the 18th Century, along with two other inns. The larger stones at the base of the inn could indicate it stands on the site of a former quay. It is thought that contraband was stored in the cellars during the 18th Century. It features as "The Crab and Lobster" in the ITV comedy drama series, Doc Martin.
The first Methodist chapel was built in Port Isaac in 1750, during the time when John Wesley was visiting the town. The building no longer exists, though a shed on Middle Street contains a window which may well have been re-purposed from it. A new Weslyan Methodist Chapel was built in the mid-1800s, at the eastern end of Middle Street, which is now a private house.
The Old School in Port Isaac was built in the mid 1870s, designed by Cornwall's most famous architect Silvanus Trevail who also designed Tintagel's Castle Hotel. The old school closed in the mid 1970s when it was replaced by a new primary school on Mayfield Road, and is now Old School Hotel and Restaurant. It has been returned to its former purpose, as the Portwenn primary school where the character Louisa Glasson (played by Caroline Catz) teaches in the ITV Comedy Drama, Doc Martin.
John Watts Trevan was the village doctor and writer who lived in Port Isaac in the early nineteenth century, which he described as: "Port Isaac a small fishing town but the longest and most thickly inhabited place in this parish it contains about one hundred and forty dwelling houses inhabited mainly by seafaring people being as mean dirty and tumultuous place as can well be conceived." The house where he lived (now named Trevan House), was built a decade before, in the early 18th century.
Victoria House in Port Isaac is a 17th century merchant's house that John Wesley is reputed to have preached from. The house was the victim of a serious fire in the late 1990s but has since been repaired, retaining the 18th century Venetian window from which Wesley may well have addressed the crowd. The façade is quite eye-catching, with the nineteenth century shop front surmounted by the late eighteenth century Palladian window.
John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church, is reported to have visited Port Isaac 14 times in the mid to late 18th century. It's thought that Wesley House acquired its name because this is where he stayed on at least one of those visits. John Wesley described Port Isaac as "the liveliest place in the [Methodist] circuit". Given that the lifestyle advocated by Wesley wasn't exactly hedonistic, we can assume his meaning of "lively" probably didn't involve the large amounts of ale and sea shanties that were likely to have featured in Port Isaac in earlier times! It's possible that the formidable Church Hill from Port Isaac to the parish church in St Endellion may have fuelled the locals enthusiasm for attending Methodist services in Port Isaac and thus foregoing the Sunday trek.
Temple Bar off Dolphin Street in Port Isaac, also known as "Squeeze-ee-Belly Alley", is just 55cm wide at its narrowest point. It was at one time listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the narrowest public thoroughfare in the world. The more humorous form of the name was coined in the 1950s and is sometimes written as Squeezy Belly or Squeeze Belly but the "-ee-" is actually Cornish dialect for "you/your" (e.g. "I'll tell 'ee").
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 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.
In pre-industrial times, cattle were allowed to roam over quite large areas and could therefore find a suitable tree to relieve an itch. In the Victorian period, farming became more intensive and cattle were moved into enclosed fields. It was quickly discovered that an itchy cow could wreak havoc with walls and fences so dedicated rubbing stones were positioned in the centre of some fields to minimise cow damage. In some cases, new stones were quarried specifically for the purpose and others, existing prehistoric standing stones or even Celtic crosses were unceremoniously re-used.
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