The Cornish Riviera

by Sidney Heath

ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT

The Mount is certainly a very attractive spot, and, by the kindness of the owner, access to the castle is generally allowed. The building has been much modernized during recent years, but many of its original features remain. Some alterations at the chapel led to the discovery of a blocked-up Gothic doorway, which, being opened, revealed a flight of stone steps terminating in a dark vault, wherein lay the skeleton of a man. The old refectory of the monks is the most distinctive feature of the present house. The Mount is a parish without a public-house, the only one which ever existed there having been closed a few years ago.

In an old volume on Cornwall, published in 1824, we learn that "Turbot are caught in great plenty during the Summer Season. In Mount's Bay there have been instances of 30 being taken in an evening with the hook and line. When plentiful, they are sold from 4d. to 6d. per pound." Leland writes: "Penzantes about a mile from Mousehold, standing fast in the shore of Mount Bay, is the Westest Market Town of all Cornwall, Socur for botes or shypes, but a forced pere or Key. Theyr is but a Chapel yn the sayd towne, as ys in Newlyn, for theyr paroche Chyrches be more than a mile off."

The neighbourhood of Penzance is rendered very attractive by the variety of its scenery, and the glorious bay offers unlimited opportunities for boating and fishing. The mother church of Penzance is that of Madron a short distance away. The building stands 350 feet above the sea and contains some old memorials, including a tombstone to the memory of George Daniell, a local benefactor. His epitaph reads:

"Belgia me birth, Britaine me breeding gave,

Cornwall a wife, ten children, and a grave."

Madron Well is a chalybeate spring once in much esteem for its curative properties, and its prophetical powers in respect to love and marriage. The holy well here, situated on the moor about a mile to the north-west of the church, was partially destroyed during the Parliamentary wars, by Major Ceely of St. Ives.

One of the most delightful excursions from Penzance is that to Mousehole and Lamorna Cove, and one for which the whole of a day should be allotted.

While in the neighbourhood of Penzance the visitor who is fortunate enough to be a good sailor should not fail to make the trip to the Scilly Isles, although the passage is generally a trying one. The islands consist mainly of low rocks, covered with gorse and heather where their slopes are not given over to flower growing, that great industry of these solitary isles. The coastward sides of the downs terminate in granitic rocks which are a terror to navigators. Even under the guard of three lighthouses and a lightship, thousands of lives have been lost on the Scillies, and there is a prodigious litter of wreckage wedged in among the granite boulders. Probably the worst disasters were the wreck of Sir Cloudesley Shovell's fleet in 1707, and that of the Schiller in 1875. Of the hundreds of lesser calamities there is no record. St. Agnes is perhaps the worst offender, and the lighthouse keeper there is a gloomy man. It has been fittingly said that his landscape of rocks must be about as enlivening to him as a square mile or so of tombstones.

Penzance itself is a town of many attractions of the civilized order, and the whole of the neighbourhood is lovely. It is the most westerly town in England, and one that has a good deal of ancient history. The older part of the town, lying between Market Jew Street and the harbour, has retained a good deal of its ancient domestic architecture, but the churches have no features of any particular interest.

The fishing village of Newlyn is a picturesque but ill-built group of old cottages, fish-cellars, bungalows, and artists' studios. As an art centre it has played, and is still playing, a very considerable part, while many of the native models of the place look out from gilded frames in half the picture galleries of Europe. It must unquestionably be the most painted spot in the British Isles, and it would be difficult to find a single nook or corner that has not been depicted on paper or canvas. One of the curious little streets bears the exotic name of "Rue des Beaux Arts", a reminder of the fact that it was in a dwelling of this street that Frank Bramley painted his dramatic picture "A Hopeless Dawn", now in the Tate Gallery. There is a considerable artists' colony still resident here, although a good many of those who first brought the place into fame have migrated to pastures new, and particularly to the neighbouring port of St. Ives. At the same time Newlyn is still, and always will be, a magic word in art circles, for here such painters as Stanhope Forbes, Frank Bramley, J. A. Gotch, Walter Langley, Sydney Grier, Chevalier Tayler, to mention but a few, introduced a new if somewhat exotic phase into the traditions of British art. Mr. A. Stanhope Forbes, A.R.A., writes: "I had come from France, where I had been studying, and wandering down into Cornwall, came one spring morning along that dusty road by which Newlyn is approached from Penzance. Little did I think that the cluster of grey-roofed houses which I saw before me against the hillside would be my home for so many years. What lodestone of artistic metal the place contains I know not, but its effects were strongly felt, in the studios of Paris and Antwerp particularly, by a number of young English painters studying there, who just about then, by some common impulse, seemed drawn towards this corner of their native land.... It was part of our creed to paint our pictures directly from nature, and not merely to rely upon sketches and studies which we could afterwards amplify in the comfort of a studio."

The road from Penzance to Land's End being rather dull and devoid of interest, the best way to reach the outlying promontory is by one of the G.W.R. motors that make the regular journey. A stay of a short time is usually made at the Logan Rock, perched on the summit of a pile of crags. To reach it involves rather a breakneck scramble down and stiff climb up, and it is doubtful if the satisfaction of having done the feat is equal to the amount of fatigue involved. The stone rocks to a considerable degree, but less than it did before it was upset in 1824 by Lieutenant Goldsmith, who was commanded to replace it by the Admiralty. St. Buryan Church and Cross are both worth inspection. The former has a tower ninety feet in height, while the latter has been attributed to the Romano-British period. It is a plain little erection of stone standing on a base of five steps. On one side is carved in low relief a fully clothed figure of the Saviour with hands extended horizontally.

The first aspect of Land's End, with its covering of turf, worn smooth by the feet of many trippers, is disappointing; and it is only when we begin to wander about the lesser used trackways that it is possible to realize that this is no ordinary promontory, but a lonely headland broken into a hundred beetling crags, with huge granite boulders piled one on another, forming a stalwart bulwark against the onrushing waves of the Atlantic. In the crevices of these miniature precipices purple heather and golden gorse have set them here and there, while the silver lichens have clothed the scarred surfaces of rock with a tender grace. The wind-swept downs that cap the lonely headland are also not without a certain beauty, from the very nature of the surrounding waste of wild grey sea.

As we gaze over the waters from the top of this lonely rock, we think instinctively of the lost land of Lyonesse, that antiquaries and geologists tell us once stretched from our feet to the Scillies.