Lamorna

Lamorna Cornish: Nansmornow
Cornwall
Lamorna Cove
Location
Grid reference:	SW449234
Location:	50°3’47"N, 5°33’52"W
Data
Post town:	Penzance
Postcode:	TR19
Dialling code:	01736
Local Government
Council:	Cornwall
Parliamentary constituency:	St Ives

Lamorna is a village set in a beautiful cove in the west of Cornwall. It is on the Penwith peninsula approximately four miles south of Penzance. The village lies within the Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (though almost a third of Cornwall has such a designation.) The South West Coast Path passes through the property.

Lamorna Cove is renowned for its remote charm, looking out on the farthest end of the English Channel, it is sheltered from the worst of the Atlantic storms though rollers still enter the bay and may burst over the tall harbour wall. The cove lies at the foot of the Lamorna Valley and the village of Lamorna just half a mile inland.

The village may be reached from inland, on along a delightful path from Mousehole up across the heath and then above the cliffs, which path forms part of the South West Coast Path.

Geography

Lamorna Cove is at the southern end of a north-west to south-east valley. The cove is delineated by Carn Dhu (Black Rock) on the eastern side and Lamorna Point on the western side.

The parish boundary runs through the stream with the the Parish of Paul on the western side and St Buryan to the east. The valley is privately owned from the pub (The Wink) down to the cove, which is reached by a narrow lane to the car park and quay.

The small village, half a mile inland, was originally known as Nantewas.

History

The first record of tin streaming is in the 1380s when Alan Hoskyn was murdered during a dispute following the diversion of the stream. Mounds along the river are evidence of past activity. A mill, operated by the Hoskyn family from at least the 14th-century to the 1920s is now a gift shop under different ownership.

In the 17th-century a privateer owned by the Penrose family was regularly moored in the cove and was wrecked during a storm. At one time five cannon lay on the sea floor in 8 fathoms of which one is now at Stoney Cross in Leicestershire where it is used at an underwater archaeological training area. A number of silver coins found in 1984 and 1985 includes one dated 1653. The wreck is a popular diving site.

Quarries

Waste tips on the eastern side of the cove are a reminder of the granite quarries first opened by John Freeman in 1849 and continued working until 1911. Famous buildings and constructions include Admiralty Pier at Dover, County Hall, Southwark, the Thames Embankment and Portland Breakwater. Stone from the cove was also used locally to build the Bishop Rock Lighthouse, Mousehole north pier and the Wolf Rock Lighthouse. Granite was dragged by chains to an iron pier, where the stream enters the sea, and transported by ship. A plinth weighing 20 tons was sent to The Great Exhibition of 1851 by sea but eventually, due to the hazards of loading ships, granite was sent by road via Kemyal and Paul Hill through Newlyn, to the cutting yards in Wherrytown.

The quay was built in around 1850. A quarry on the west side of the cove failed due to the high quartz content of the granite. The Lamorna Cove Hotel, built in the 1870s and known as Cliffe House, was originally a school and chapel (with bell tower) for the quarry workers and their families. It was first used as an hotel in the 1920s.

Newlyn School of Art and the Lamorna Colony

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Lamorna became popular with artists of the Newlyn School. It is particularly associated with the artist S J "Lamorna" Birch who lived there from 1908. The colony included Birch, Alfred Munnings, Laura Knight and Harold Knight. This period is dramatised in the 1998 novel Summer in February by Jonathan Smith and adapted for the 2013 ffilm of the same name. Lamorna was also the home of the jeweller Ella Naper and her husband, the painter Charles, who built Trewoofe House. The Lamorna Arts Festival was launched in 2009 to celebrate the original Lamorna Colony and today's Lamorna art community.

Lamorna in culture

The main appearance of lamorna in the cultural imagination coes from the Newlyn School of artists and their 'Lamorna Colony'.

Lamorna has been immortalised in the song "Way Down to Lamorna", about a wayward husband receiving his comeuppance from his wife. The song is beloved of many Cornish singers, including Brenda Wootton.

The actor Robert Newton (1905–1956) was educated in Lamorna and his ashes were scattered in the sea off Lamorna by his son, Nicholas Newton.

The authors Derek Tangye and Jean Tangye lived above Lamorna where he wrote his famous books "The Minack Chronicles". A piece of land called "Oliver Land" has been preserved as a wildlife sanctuary in memory of the couple. Lamorna was the village used in the novel The Memory Garden by Rachel Hore (2007) and was a location used for the shooting of Sam Peckinpah's 1971 thriller Straw Dogs.

Lamorna Cove was the title of a poem by W. H. Davies published in 1929.

The name of Lamorna's pub, The Wink, alludes to smuggling, "the wink" being a signal that contraband could be obtained. The pub is the subject of a novel by Martha Grimes, entitled The Lamorna Wink. The interior contains an important collection of maritime artefacts, including the nameplate of the battleship HMS Warspite.

The Lamorna Pottery was founded in 1947 by Christopher James Ludlow (known as Jimmy) and Derek Wilshaw. It is currently a gift shop and café.

• 
  Naiad by Lamorna artist Colin Caffell
• 
  Millennium gardens at Lamorna

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Lamorna)

• The Minack Chronicles
• Lamorna.info
• The Lamorna Society