156 - West Penwith : Description

Physical and functional links to other National Character Areas

Located at the tip of Cornwall, and lying directly adjacent to only one other National Character Area (NCA), West Penwith has few but nevertheless important transport and agricultural links to the Cornish Killas NCA. There are wide views seaward and across Cornwall which extend on clear days towards Carnmenellis and the Lizard (NCA) and seaward to the Isles of Scilly.

The A30 is the principal road connection from and to the area. Similarly, the south-west mainline railway terminates at Penzance, just outside the area, but provides a principal transport connection. Services continue into the NCA through the St Ives branch line and also bus services. The main connections to the Isles of Scilly depart from Penzance and the small airport at St Just.

Many of the streams flow directly into the sea, forming narrow, steep-sided valleys to the coast. Some of the rainfall flows from numerous small streams and rivers and is collected in Drift Reservoir, which supplies water for west Cornwall, and particularly Penzance and St Ives. While the Penwith area is a discrete hydrological unit, small amounts of the water from the area flow into and help to support the interests of the Marazion Marsh Special Protection Area (SPA), maintaining important fen and reedbed communities.

Surrounded by the fertile waters of the Atlantic seaboard, the area has many close associations with the maritime environment. These associations are deep-rooted and reflect a common historic and cultural development with other Western European coastal landscapes. The hard nature of the cliffs results in little erosion but equally little absorption of wave energy, meaning that the full force of the Atlantic is often felt in the dune systems within the Cornish Killas NCA.

The West Penwith today

West Penwith is a granite bastion jutting out into the Atlantic, ringed by seaswept high cliffs. The coastline is irregular and complex, indented by many small, intimate coves and narrow inlets known locally as ‘zawns’. The granite is extremely hard wearing with slow erosion rates. The higher ground is predominantly moorland and rough pasture with a rugged and remote character. It has a simple land use pattern of wind-swept, rock-strewn heaths, ancient field systems and settlements, with frequent remains of a bygone mining industry clearly evident. The settlements have an austere and simple architecture which make good use of the hard local stone and slate. The coast dominates this landscape and provides the background and influence for many of the activities. It has also led to the erection of lighthouses following numerous shipwrecks around the peninsula.

The higher northern section of the plateau is dominated by a north-facing heath-covered ridge sloping down through a farmed coastal plain and a narrow strip of coastal heath to steep cliffs that plunge into the Atlantic. The landscape is criss-crossed by narrow lanes and tracks. The high granite cliffs rise up in great columnar steps and blocks. These are considered to be some of the most magnificent cliffs in Britain. They support nesting and passage seabirds and, in combination with adjacent terrestrial habitats, are important for populations of chough, stonechat, peregrine and raven. The southern half of the plateau presents a softer, more undulating landscape of enclosed pasture and arable fields, and small wooded valleys with narrow, fast-flowing streams running towards a coast of lower cliffs and small coves with white sand, as at Porthcurno.

The high rainfall of the area either flows through a number of short streams via wooded valleys to sheltered coves or high waterfalls, or is collected in Drift Reservoir and then used to supply clean drinking water for the residents and businesses of the area. The area has few hydrological links with the adjoining area although a few streams do flow east to feed the Red River.

The land cover of the central uplands is a mosaic of heather, extensive grassy marshes, wet heaths and gorse scrub. The moorland core of the rest of the peninsula falls away from the highest land to the east and south in gently rolling plateaux and hills cut by the sheltered valleys of small streams. In the valleys there is a wide variety of scrub, some woodland and enclosed pasture field. Cattle are increasingly a feature of the grazed heathland and coastal slopes, with local hardy breeds being favoured owing to their ability to survive in this damp, exposed environment.

The Atlantic coastal climate and underpinning granite geology dictate land use. High rainfall and hard rock combine to give rise to thin and peaty-topped soils, shallow, fast-flowing streams and wet heathland, forming a mosaic of habitats with dry heathland, rocky outcrops and cliff slopes, particularly in the north of the area. Rough, extensive grazing is predominant in more elevated areas. In sheltered and lower-lying areas more productive pasture and some cultivation is present, notably around St Buryan. While modernisation of farming practices – dairying and horticulture in particular – has resulted in changes to the farmed landscape throughout the area, the land use remains predominately extensive, mixed agriculture.

Across the West Penwith landscape can be found the often prominent marks of more than 4,000 years of human occupation: megalithic tombs (quoits), cairns and standing stones, and ancient field enclosures in the form of massive Cornish hedgebanks. The historical ecologist Oliver Rackham has said that the great stone banks are “the world’s oldest artefacts still in use”�. Bronze-age hut circles, Romano-British enclosed farms, iron-age hill forts and cliff-castles punctuate or dominate the landscape, as do the solid mass and tall chimneys of engine houses marking the heads of mines which pursued rich mineral veins often far below and out to sea. West Penwith has a greater concentration of archaeological and heritage sites than any other comparable area in Western Europe. This is a landscape where nature combines with hard industry, long-standing agricultural practice and ritual, steeped in heritage and cultural associations.

The settlement pattern is one of dispersed hamlets and farmsteads. There is hardly any settlement on the open moorland. Older buildings are almost universally built of granite with slate roofs and some slate-hung walls. The occasional widely spaced, granite-built farms and hamlets in this historic farming landscape are thought to be fairly ancient in origin, many on the site of prehistoric settlements. Modern farm buildings are significant on farmsteads situated on the more sheltered sites and associated with the better land. The farming pattern is overlaid by groups of miners’ cottages and small villages, some recent and rather shapeless, others of medieval origin with buildings clustered around the squaretowered granite churches. Within the mining areas, Methodist chapels are also prominent. Many of the small coves have developed into small fishing villages such as Penberth, Priests Cove and Portherras Cove, which have historically supported a small number of inshore boats.

Penwith has developed as a significant visitor destination; the towns of Penzance and St Ives are gateways to the area, and Newlyn and the fishing village of Mousehole popular destinations. With growing visitor interest have come opportunities for some diversification; numerous old farm buildings and bothies have been converted for accommodation and local produce is valued. Many of the potential activities that draw people to the area are inextricably linked to its wild, rugged and remote character. Popular recreation assets include one of the more challenging sections of the South West Coast Path National Trail, the popular surfing beaches at Sennen Cove and Porthmeor beach, and the attraction presented by Land’s End and Cape Cornwall.

The landscape through time

The granite outcrop that forms the West Penwith peninsula is the most westerly of the series of mainland granite intrusions stretching to Dartmoor 100 miles to the east. These are linked at depth to the Cornubian Batholith. During the Devonian and Carboniferous this area formed part of a marine gulf where sand and mud deposits accumulated. These were intruded by dolerite sills which sometimes reached the sea floor where they formed pillow lavas. This gulf closed during the Carboniferous-Permian Variscan Orogeny, the mountain building period 320 to 280 million years ago. Burial, compression, folding and the propagation of low angle faults resulted in the formation of slates and greenstones from the sands, muds and dolerites; these are found along the south-eastern edge of the area and along the north-west coast. The Land’s End granite was intruded towards the end of this period. The granite forms a high ridge or plateau, the steep columnar cliffs and boulder-strewn moorlands; it is widely used as a building material throughout the area. At the margins of the granite intrusion, the heat generated produced mineral veins of principally tin and copper, with some lead and silver.

In the geologically-recent past, the ice sheets of the Quaternary did not reach as far south as Cornwall, which instead experienced cold, dry, tundra-like conditions. The lower-lying coastal plain formed as a result of marine and weather erosion. Also a product of erosive action, some of the moors are topped with granite tors and strewn with half-buried granite boulders, or clitter. Deposits of granitic sand and gravel moved down slope and collected in gullies between the hills, resulting in a gently rounded topography. These isolated deposits remain today as the superficial geology. The raised beach deposits at Porth Nanven demonstrate changes in sea level, wave energy, sediment supply and climate during the Quaternary.

The acidic rocks and high rainfall have led to the formation of shallow peaty soils which become deeper and more waterlogged on the higher ground, and often have an iron pan where the rain has washed iron down into the soil. Lower lying soils may have a thinner peaty surface layer, but under agriculture form freely draining acid brown earths over much of the south of the area.

Post ice-age palaeo-environmental records show that vegetation cover was primarily oak (probably sessile) and hazel. Common alder was dominant in damp valley bottoms. Historic clearances over many centuries for agricultural activity led to the progressive reduction of woodland cover and the development of the current combination of enclosed pasture fields and open rough grazing ground. Woodland remained largely in the sheltered and more difficult-to-work steep-sided stream valleys. Dutch elm disease devastated the formerly well-treed hedgerows of southern and eastern areas. The relatively recent arrival of sycamore with its vigorous seeding habit has changed the species balance of regenerating woodland in the localised absence of remaining native tree seed sources.

The influence of the most ancient settlers, from the Neolithic onwards, remains one of the most striking aspects of the Penwith peninsula. Monuments and signs of habitation and management of the landscape abound. Early occupation is most clearly seen in the well-known Romano-British courtyard house sites of Carn Euny and Chysauster. Hut circles, enclosed farms, courtyard houses and iron-age hill forts all testify to continued and developing occupation and management of the landscape. The patchwork of prehistoric fields to the north of the area along the coastal plateau forms one of the oldest continuously farmed landscapes in the world. They illustrate the deliberate and structured creation of farmland from the wild moorland. The great granite block field boundaries, made from rocks cleared from the land, have retained their original shape and function.

The higher ground has megalithic tombs, or quoits, cairns, stone circles, standing stones and other monuments, which today form a 6,000-year-old ritual landscape. This higher ground reverted to moorland by the 9th century, when churches and settlements were established (sometimes resisted, sometimes on the sites of ancient farmsteads). Christianity has left its mark on the landscape in the form of wayside crosses marking the boundaries of medieval cultivation, rare early Christian memorial stones, holy wells, churches, chapels and numerous place names prefixed with ‘St’.

Settlement across the area tends to perpetuate the pattern of dispersed farmsteads and hamlets established before the 9th century. This ancient pattern is intermixed with a small number of 12th- and 13th-century ‘churchtowns’, with buildings clustered around square-towered granite churches as at Morvah and Zennor. Farming hamlets formed the basic unit of settlement, many of which continued to contract from the 14th to the 19th centuries to form the farmsteads of today. Many of the farmsteads around the moorland retain the ancient dispersed layouts typical of these areas, although much of the architectural character of rural areas results from rebuilding in the late 18th and 19th centuries. This was also associated with the enclosure of formerly extensive rough ground and the establishment of new farmsteads, smallholdings and settlements, and the reorganisation of earlier enclosures with straight boundaries and enlarged fields (especially to the south of the area). Expanding or new settlements were particularly dense in the St Just area, and many were colonised by miners’ families out of unimproved moorland. These are associated with Nonconformist, particularly Methodist, chapels, Methodism being exported along with mining technology to other parts of the world. Coastal settlements, rebuilt in the same period with cellars for processing pilchards and other fish, have long nestled around sheltered coves. In the far west, around Mousehole and Sennen Cove, settlement is often marked by the dark silhouettes of conifers such as Monterey pine and Monterey cypress. Introduced from California in the 19th century, they thrive despite the cutting, salt-laden winds, and have become an integral part of the landscape.

For many centuries the extraction of metals contributed significantly to the Cornish economy. Mining of tin, copper and other minerals seems to have taken place at a small scale over a long period; tin was probably being won in the Bronze Age. Most of the present-day remains, and particularly the cliff-top engine houses at the heads of mines as at Levant, Botallack and Geevor, are the result of deep mining and large-scale expansion in the industry that began in the 18th century. The significance of the development of mineral extraction in the area is now recognised through the definition and inscription of the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage Site.

The expansion of mining and associated industrial activities also resulted in the growth and extension of earlier settlements, with the addition of terraced miners’ cottages and smallholdings on the unimproved moorland abutting towns and villages. Further enclosure of the remaining and adjacent moor during this period is marked by a typically rectilinear, planned field pattern, a marked contrast with the ancient, ‘organic’ field pattern. The mining economy remained dependent on and combined with versatile and productive agricultural activity.

Cattle rearing was the most significant element of the area’s agriculture until the late 18th and 19th centuries, when there was a great increase in stocking levels, corn production and finally dairying, the last becoming more intense since 1950. The arrival of the main rail line from Penzance to London in the 1870s saw a dramatic rise in the production of early vegetables and flowers, exploiting the more productive soils of the southern part of the area and expanding onto cliff-top enclosures to make use of available land. Early season crops retain a high market value and are still distributed throughout the country.

The arrival of the railway also brought a group of pioneering artists who formed the Newlyn School. Focusing on the life and work of local people, the Newlyn School at first drew little from the landscape. But with a splinter group formed in the valley of Lamorna, the dramatic scenic landscape, granite outcrops, coastal scenery, evocative historic features and unique qualities and effects of the light began to influence and define the work of the school. A little later an avant-garde artists’ colony developed in St Ives with sculptors and landscape painters taking inspiration from the Penwith area. The landscape has inspired many artists, writers, poets, film-makers and photographers including Barbara Hepworth, Daphne du Maurier and a one-time resident of Zennor, DH Lawrence, who wrote:

“The most beautiful place, a tiny village nestling under high shaggy moorlands, a big sweep of lovely sea beyond, lovelier than the Mediterranean… all gorse now flickering with flowers, and then it will be heather, and then hundreds of foxgloves. It is the best place I have been in.”

In 1959 West Penwith was designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, one of twelve parts of Cornwall designated for their special scenic beauty and qualities. In 1988, West Penwith benefited from being one of the first six areas in England to be classified as an Environmentally Sensitive Area (ESA), which provided funding to encourage farmers to protect the most important wildlife, heritage and landscape features. The ESA ended in 2012 and has been replaced by Environmental and Countryside Stewardship. In 2006 the area received UNESCO World Heritage Site status as part of the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage Site in recognition of its important role in the mining of tin.