THE LIZARD TO HELSTON
Mr. Norway says that it would be hard to find an uglier spot than
Lizard Town, but of course he fully admits the grandeur of the coast
of which it is the small metropolis. The name, which first applied
only to the most southern headland, was not given from any fanciful
resemblance to a Lizard, but appears to be a corruption of the Cornish
words _Lis-arth_, _lis_ being the secular enclosure, the palace or
court, as distinct from _lan_ the sacred enclosure, and _arth_ meaning
high. Lizard Town is a cluster of houses, growing in number to meet an
increasing popularity, of which Landewednack is the church town, about
half a mile distant; it is served by motor-buses from Helston, and in
time there will doubtless be a branch line of the railway here. Housel
Bay, formerly Househole, is the bathing-place, with a large modern
hotel standing close to the cliffs; on the east is Lloyd's signal
station, and on the west the lighthouse. Vessels that used to call at
Falmouth for sailing orders, or for other information, now receive
these instructions by signal from Lloyd's station here, flags being
employed by day and lights by night; a wireless telegraph has also
been established. All vessels, outward or homeward, are thus reported
at this most southern point of England. At the lighthouse there were
formerly two lights, whose double purpose was to warn seamen not only
of the Lizard but also of the Wolf rocks off Land's End; these rocks
have now a light of their own, and at the Lizard is displayed a single
electric lamp, of 1,000,000 candle power, revolving, whose reflection
is visible at over sixty miles' distance. It is said that when its
revolutions first turned its light towards the houses of Lizard Town,
some alarm was felt at this sudden searching gaze piercing into the
very heart of the dwellings; it was like the vivid illumination of a
flash of lightning, a great prying eye which no one could avoid. To
obviate this a screen has been placed on the landward side of the
lantern. The light stands about 200 feet above the sea; and in
addition to this there is a fog-siren, whose tremendous voice bellows
through thick weather at intervals of two minutes. West of the
lighthouse is the little fishing-cove and lifeboat station of Polpeor.
In old times this headland was lit by a bonfire beacon, kept burning
at night; and there is a story that a Government packet, passing in
the days of our French wars, noticing that the sleepy watchman had
allowed the fire to dwindle to a mere smoulder, discharged a
cannon-ball at the spot to arouse the neglectful watcher. It must be
remembered that the Lizard is rendered doubly perilous by a
sea-covered stack of rocks lying to the southward. Before oil was
introduced for the lamps it is said the lantern was lit by
coal-fires--a kind of first-hand use of gas. Below the lighthouse is
the striking Bumble Rock, and close to this the hollow known as the
Lion's Den, formed by a natural sudden subsidence in 1847. This
formation was an immediate object-lesson as to the manner in which
these remarkable hollows, caverns, and rock-freaks have been produced
in the course of time; and there can be no doubt that such natural
weathering alone accounts for the Belidden Amphitheatre, east of the
fine Penolver Point. Bass Point is the eastward bluff of this rugged
and bare old headland, known to ancient geographers as Ocrinum, the
southern extremity of the Britains.
[Illustration: THE LIZARD LIGHTHOUSE.
_Photo by Gibson & Sons._]
With many visitors, to speak of the Lizard is to speak of Kynance. It
is Kynance that the guide-books and the artists have chiefly
popularised; it is Kynance that is probably the most celebrated
beauty-spot on the whole south-Cornish coast. Is it worthy of its
reputation? Some visitors give an emphatic affirmative; others are a
little dubious. To some the spot is a little spoiled by its
popularity; during the season it is like a corner of a fashionable
watering-place, covered with tourists, refreshment booths, and sellers
of serpentine. But autumn and winter bring a grand solitude when all
traces of the tripper are washed away: the storms cleanse it with
their mighty lustrations; only the white sands, the black or richly
stained rocks remain, a haunt of homeless winds and crying gulls. The
cove is encircled by a group of off-lying rocks, insular at high tide;
it is only at low water that Kynance can be explored. The Gull Rock,
Asparagus Island, the Lion, the Steeple, the Kitchen, the
Drawing-room--these names of the crags and clefts have become
almost as familiar as household words; while every one knows that if
you post a letter in the Devil's Post-office, it will presently be
returned in a great outburst of water. It is of little use for the
local authorities to forbid such posting, as being dangerous to the
individual who waits too eagerly near for his reply; visitors will
still venture, and are sometimes drenched, if nothing worse, by the
natural blow-hole for their pains. There are other places here where
care must be exercised--steep sudden descents, unguarded chasms, nooks
and coves where it is easy to be entrapped by the tide; even the
active and skilful may get into trouble, and visitors who bring
venturesome boys must be prepared for alarms. It is natural that many
a parent of a family should prefer a level sandy shore for his summer
resort, and Cornwall happily has many such spots to offer, where
father and mother can recline restfully without constant anxiety for
their boys and girls.
Passing westward from Kynance there are numberless features of the
coast that might cause one to delay; and the coastguard's walk above
the cliffs is rendered plain by the white stones that are so necessary
at night. In one place is the intervening cleft called Gue Graze,
which may be scrambled across or skirted, leading to the precipice
that rises above the cavernous Pigeon Hugo; this cave can only be
approached from the water, and then very rarely. Fields of buttercups
and clover come near to the shore, but inland lies the moorland waste
of Pradanack and Goonhilly Downs. Beyond Pigeon Hugo are two notable
headlands, Vellan and Pradanack. This brings us to Mullion, another
small metropolis of what is considered the Lizard district, though we
have now left the true Lizard five or six miles behind us. This is
another region of shipwrecks, but if we can forget them Mullion Cove,
with its outlying islet, is purely delightful, and is reaping the
fruit of its charms by the establishment of hotels, boarding-houses,
and golf-links. Both Polurrian and Poldhu share some of this favour.
The coast here is quite as fine, some think even grander, than it is
around the Lizard; while the air, though temperate, has a bracing
freshness from the Downs. The true name of Mullion Cove is
Porthmellin, and it is probable that Mullion itself is a corruption of
Mellin, for the church is dedicated to Melyan or Melanus, the father
of Mylor. The church-town is about a mile distant from the Cove, and
its church, with "black-and-white" tower of granite and serpentine,
somewhat resembles that of Landewednack. The tower dates from 1500,
but portions of the remaining building are obviously earlier; it was
restored in 1870. There is a curious crucifixion over the west window,
with the figure of the Father standing behind that of the Son; and in
front of the altar are carved wooden figures which may have formed
part of a screen; one of these is supposed to represent St. Cleer, or
Cleher. The bench-ends are of rare excellence for this part of the
Duchy--in fact, they are among the finest in the West of England, and
to say that is to say much. They probably date from the fifteenth
century, and bear all manner of devices, letterings, symbols. One
series, in the western nave, gives the arms of the Passion, while
others bear fleurs-de-lis and different crosses. The gallery that
was formerly here has been removed. In the chancel is an inscription
to the memory of Thomas Flavel, vicar, who died in 1682, being well
known locally as a ghost-layer. Such duties were at one time a
recognised part of a clergyman's vocation. The epitaph of this
reverend exorcist is quaint enough to bear quotation:--
"Earth, take mine earth, my sin let Satan havet,
The World my goods; my Soul my God who gavet;
For from these four--Earth, Satan, World and God,
My flesh, my sin, my goods, my soul, I had."
[Illustration: BENCH-ENDS IN MULLION CHURCH.
_Photo by Gibson & Sons._]
There is a ballad of Goethe's ("De Zauberlehrling") which tells how a
magician's apprentice, who had learned enough of his master's craft to
be dangerous to himself, once succeeded in raising spirits during the
wizard's absence, but was quite unable to dismiss them. A similar tale
is told of Flavel's servant-maid. During her master's absence at
church she unwarily opened one of the books in his study, "whereupon a
host of spirits sprung up all round her. Her master discovered this,
though then occupied at church, closed his book and dismissed the
congregation. On his return home he took up the book with which his
servant had been meddling, and read backwards the passage which she
had been reading, at the same time laying about him lustily with his
walking-cane; whereupon all the spirits took their departure, but not
before they had pinched the servant-girl black and blue." It is said
that this parson used to charge five guineas for laying troublesome
ghosts; but as there are no longer ghosts at Mullion, it is not
advisable to attempt a revival of the business. Nor are there
smugglers, though the locality had once a reputation not only for
smuggling but for wrecking. It may not have been often that persons
deliberately drew vessels on the coast by false signals, but that this
was sometimes done seems indisputable. More often still, boats may
have been deceived by lights that were merely displayed as signals or
warnings during operations of the smugglers. But there was little need
to do anything that might lead to shipwreck; the deadly coast itself
was enough. To relate the stories of even a few might be monotonous,
after those of which we have already spoken at the Manacles. Of a
fresher interest is the station of the Marconi Wireless Telegraph
Company, at Poldhu (formerly written Poljew), whose four highest
towers or scaffolds, each over 200 feet in height, have become a
prominent local landmark. It is not easy to describe these; an
illustration can best convey the impression, and no immediate scrutiny
is allowed to the public. The activities of this station must remain
mysteries to the uninitiated, but it must be a weird and wonderful
experience to ascend those white winding stairways around the iron
poles during a strong wind. Poldhu has one of the fine modern hotels
that come as a surprise to the rambler in the district that has
hitherto been so lonely and desolate. Around the wireless station is a
network of posts, wires, and lower towers.
Poldhu was chosen in 1900 as the site of a station for the purpose of
establishing communication by wireless telegraphy with America, Mr.
Marconi being assisted at that time by Professor Fleming, of London.
No such distance had hitherto been attempted, and the employment of
very powerful magnetic waves was necessary. These were obtained, Mr.
Marconi has himself told us, "by means of a generating plant
consisting of an alternator capable of an output of about 25
kilowatts, which, through suitable transformers, charged a condenser
having a glass dielectric of great strength." A corresponding station
was erected at Cape Cod, but in the autumn of 1901 the masts and
aerial at Poldhu were wrecked by a storm, and this caused delay. In
November, 1901, Mr. Marconi crossed to Newfoundland with the hope of
opening communication; and in December he was satisfied that he
received signals from Cornwall, proving to him that messages might be
transmitted by electric waves from a distance of 2,000 miles. Two
months later further satisfactory tests were carried out between
Poldhu and the American liner _Philadelphia_. In 1902 a new station at
Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, was put into touch with Poldhu; and at this
time the four wooden lattice-towers, 210 feet in height, were raised
at the Cornish station, the buildings for the generating plant being
placed in the space between them. The superior equipment at Glace Bay
caused the communication from Canada to be excellent, while the
reverse was not so good; Canada had granted a subsidy, and England had
not. But the communication was established; and a message from
President Roosevelt, sent to Cape Cod and transmitted to Glace Bay,
was safely received at the Poldhu station. Although the efficiency of
this station was greatly increased by the addition of the numerous
wires, sloping umbrella fashion, Mr. Marconi decided to establish a
new long-distance station in Ireland; and the Poldhu station is now
used for transmitting news to vessels on the Atlantic, whereby, with
the addition of intelligence received from the Cape Cod station, most
of the first-class liners to America are enabled to publish daily news
journals throughout their voyage--a very wonderful thing, when we
remember how completely a sea voyage used to cut one away from news of
home. Though it is not at the moment the foremost of the Marconi
stations, therefore, Poldhu has all the merit of having been the
earliest permanent wireless station; and in the near future it is
probable additions will be made to its plant, so as to bring it up to
the standard of the Company's station at Clifden in Ireland, when it
will become available for regular commercial communications between
England and America.
[Illustration: MARCONI STATION, POLDHU.
_Photo by Gibson & Sons._]
A little river flows into the Poldhu cove, running down from the
charming wooded estate of Bochym, mentioned in Domesday as Buchent.
There was formerly some fine old tapestry and stained glass in the
mansion, but these have gone; however, its oak room with sliding panel
and secret staircase remains, and the garden has some remarkable
tropic growths. A number of prehistoric relics have been discovered on
this estate. Close to Bochym is another old manor, Bonython; it is
said that the poet Longfellow was descended from one of the Bonythons,
who was an early settler in America. We are now in the parish of St.
Cury, or Corentin. He is a saint better known in Brittany that in
Cornwall, but it must always be remembered that the two countries
are very closely connected in race and tradition; also even in
name, for there was a Cornouaille in Brittany which former chroniclers
have sometimes confused with the English Cornwall.
The church, which is chiefly late Decorated, has a very good Norman
doorway, and a most interesting hagioscope, resembling that of
Landewednack, with the difference that the Cury window is a single
light. Much change and mutilation seems to have taken place in this
church; a former vicar found many remains of alabaster figures hidden
among plaster and debris behind a slab. There is a very singular
aumbry or alms-box, formed in an oak bench-end near the door. The
rugged old building is finely placed, with a magnificent view over
land and sea. But the ordinary visitor takes more notice of
Grunwalloe, which is one of the most curiously situated churches in
the kingdom, standing where the sea-spray sometimes makes a clean
sweep over it. Its churchyard walls rise immediately from the sands of
Gunwalloe Church Cove--at times the very graveyard has been invaded by
dashing waves; and its little campanile tower is literally built into
the solid rock. Thus founded on rocks, it stands old and
weather-beaten, in a desolate district of sand-towans. The dedication
is to St. Winwaloe, and it must be left to more learned hagiologists
to decide who this Winwaloe really was, or whether he was identical
with the founder of Landewednack. There are about half a dozen
churches with detached belfries in Cornwall, but this of Gunwalloe is
perhaps the most striking; the campanile here stands 14 feet west of
the main building. It is difficult to account for the peculiarity, but
of course there are stories that attempt to solve the mystery. The
church itself is said to have been the votive offering of a survivor
from shipwreck; some, however, speak not of a single survivor, but of
two sisters whose lives were saved here, and who could not agree about
the exact position of the church they desired to erect as a
thank-offering. The result was a compromise. There are traditions of
buried treasure here, as well as of wrecked dollars; and in both cases
much time and money have been spent by treasure-seekers.
It is possible that the Goonhilly Downs, which occupy the high-lying
and barren interior of this Lizard district, really embody a
corruption of the name of Gunwalloe, though the name is generally
explained as meaning "hunting down." These downs belong to the true
_meneage_ or stony district, but in the past they seem to have been
covered with thickets and wild beasts. It is still a lonely, deserted
track of country, with prehistoric hut-circles and entrenchments,
crossed by two good roads, now often traversed by brake and motor and
cycle, leading from Helston to St. Keverne and the Lizard. Leland
speaks of "a wyld moor, called Gunhilly, wher ys brood of catyle";
perhaps the cattle were the once-famous Goonhilly nags referred to by
Norden. "There is a kinde of nagge," he says, "bred upon a mountanous
and spatious peece of grounde, called Goon-hillye, lyinge between the
sea-coaste and Helston; which are the hardeste naggs and beste of
travaile for their bones within this kingdome, resembling in body for
quantitie, and in goodness of mettle, the Galloway naggs." The breed
seems now to be extinct, though there are doubtless living
descendants; and Goonhilly remains an almost treeless table-land,
broken by streamlets where it meets the sea. There are many to whom
this inland portion of the Lizard country may seem dreary enough, but
others will be touched by its indefinite charm of breezy expanse, the
beautiful colour of its Cornish heath, the loneliness of its pools and
hollows, the call of its curlews, the hum of its summer bees.
Just below Gunwalloe fishing-cove are the fine Halzaphron cliffs, on
which a transport was wrecked about a century since, and the bodies
then buried are said to have been the last shipwrecked persons to be
laid in unconsecrated ground. Public opinion rebelled against the
so-called heathen burial given to such remains, and an Act was passed
in Parliament sanctioning their interment in the churchyards of the
parishes on which they were cast. Whatever advantage there may be in
lying in consecrated earth is now freely granted; the unknown drowned
are given the benefit of the doubt, and their bodies committed to the
dust in Christian fashion. In parishes like these of the Lizard, and
on the north Cornwall coast at places like Morwenstow, this duty of
giving Christian sepulture has been no sinecure.
We come across traces of an ancient Cornish family at Carminow, the
eastern creek of Loe Pool; but the most tangible relics of the
Carminows now remaining are the two effigies in the church of
Mawgan-in-Meneage, in which parish we find ourselves once more after
having made the tour of the Lizard peninsula. Various tales are told
of the Carminows; it is said they claimed descent from King Arthur--it
is even said that a Carminow fought against the Romans at their first
landing, which would carry them far eastward of Cornwall. Hals thought
that the Mawgan figures were brought from the old chapel of their
manor-house, which stood here by the Carminow creek; but Blight is of
opinion that the effigies were removed from Bodmin. In Loe Bar we have
a formation slightly resembling the famous Chesil Ridge of Dorset, and
the bar at Slapton Sands in Devon; but this Loe Bar is on a much
smaller scale. Being formed of very fine pebbles, the waters of Loe
Pool are in ordinary times able to percolate to the sea; but after
much rain there is more water than can thus be carried off, and it was
formerly the custom to cut the Bar at such times that the superfluous
flood might rush through. A culvert has now been constructed for this
purpose, so that the cutting of the Bar is now superseded. A writer
who was at school at Helston tells us that "when the floods became
serious, and the Loe too near Helston to be pleasant, there was a
solemn function performed by the men of Helston, with the Mayor at
their head, called breaking the Bar. The Loe was so full that a small
trench cut between it and the sea let out the waters; there was then a
rush of water and the Loe became connected with the sea by a deep
chasm through which the tide flowed. I have never seen the Bar broken,
but I have seen the deep chasm in the bar of sand with the tide
flowing in and out. The natural forces which originally made the Bar
restored it, and in the course of some months it became the same as
before." Mr. Hind says he was told by a sailor that "when he was a boy
Loe Bar used to be broken once a fortnight"; but we sometimes
exaggerate the things that we remember of our boyhood, and certainly
the cutting can never have been as frequent as this. C. A. Johns, who
knew Helston well, says that it was rarely necessary to cut the Bar
more than twice a year, sometimes not even once; and further,
describing a cutting, he says: "In a few hours a deep mighty river is
bursting out with inconceivable velocity, and engaging in violent
conflict with the waves of the ocean; as the two meet they clash
together with terrific uproar, while the sea for twenty, or even
thirty miles, is tinged of an ochreous hue. Even at the Scilly Islands
the cutting of the Loe Bar has been notified by the altered colour of
the water." As the pool belonged to the lord of Penrose, it was
customary to present him with a purse containing three-halfpence to
obtain his permission for the cutting of the Bar. All this is a thing
of the past, but Loe Pool remains as the only sheet of water in
Cornwall worthy to be termed a lake, with banks finely wooded and
carpeted with flowers. In shape it is more like a broad river than a
lake, and it is in fact the land-locked estuary of the Cober, cut off
from full intercourse with the sea by this pebbly and sandy spit.
Helston claims that it was once a seaport, with vessels sailing close
up to its walls; and the formation of the Loe Bar, which destroyed all
access, is said to have been one of the accidents of the doomed
Tregeagle, whose story will be told later. The Pool is about seven
miles in circumference, and affords some excellent fishing; it is the
one great attraction that Helston can boast. When Tennyson wrote his
"Morte d'Arthur," the germ from which all his Arthurian Idylls
sprang, and in some respects the finest portion of them, he described
how the knight Bedivere carried the wounded Arthur after his last
battle--
"And bore him to a chapel nigh the field,
A broken chancel with a broken cross,
That stood on a dark strait of barren land.
On one side lay the Ocean, and on one
Lay a great water, and the moon was full."
It has been sometimes imagined that this "great water" was none other
than Loe Pool, and certainly the spot has a better claim than Dozmare
on the Bodmin Moors; but the placing this last battle in the West at
all is merely a concession to fancy, and to the desires of West
Countrymen. History tells us that Arthur's last fight must almost
certainly have taken place in Scotland. But Tennyson's localities are
a land of dream and myth; we do better not to try to identify
them--their beauty may go with us from place to place, their
atmosphere bring peace and soothing to us wherever our steps may be.
It is probable that the origin of the name of Helston is the Cornish
_hel_, "water," as at Helford and Hayle; but some Saxon derivations
have been suggested, and certainly the name was once Henlistone. It is
a clean, bright little town of about five thousand inhabitants, with a
broad main street. Relatively, the town was once of greater
consequence than now; its earliest known charter was granted by King
John, with many later charters from other monarchs. It was an active
centre of mining, and became a stannary or coinage town. The Grammar
School (now extinct) was notable in the days of Derwent Coleridge,
son of the poet, who was headmaster here at a time when Charles
Kingsley was pupil; the second master was Johns, known to all
botanists by his _Flowers of the Field_, and to all lovers of Cornwall
by his _Week at the Lizard_. Kingsley utilised his knowledge of this
corner of Cornwall when he wrote his _Hereward_, and there is no doubt
that he derived much good from his schooling under such excellent
masters as Coleridge and Johns. When writing of Helston it is
customary to say a great deal about its Flora, or Furry Day, the 8th
of May--a relic of old Maytide saturnalia. Though the dance through
the streets to a special kind of hornpipe, in at the front doors and
out at the back, is still continued, the old spirit that actuated it
is dead--it has become very much of a make-believe, a show for
visitors, a galvanised custom that might as well be decently buried.
If we believed the guide-books, we might imagine that Cornish folk
were still a gay, childlike, merry-making people, carrying on the
customs of their forefathers, cherishing the old traditions, nursing
the old myths and superstitions, dreaming dreams and seeing visions.
Even writers who might know better try to present them as a race
apart, sharing to the full in that character of mysticism and vision
which is attributed to Celtic peoples. As a matter of fact the Cornish
are by no means gentle-minded simpletons nor poetic visionaries,
though, of course, there may be a few of either class among them; and
these nominally Celtic folk have no greater power of imagination than
the natives of other English counties nominally Saxon. There is a
strain of difference--something that is possibly pre-Celtic--something
at times sinister, passionate, incoherent; but there is nothing that
is more romantic, more thoughtful, than may be found in the average
countryman of the southern counties. We have all met delightful
Cornish people--hospitable, kindly, lovable; but, thank God, such are
to be met with elsewhere. It is not that the Cornish are to be
under-valued or slighted, but they are to be defended from the foolish
claims of casual visitors and the equally unwise assertions of some
natives. There is one grave charge that may be laid against the
people--Mr. W. H. Hudson made it in his beautiful book on the Land's
End: this is a charge of cruelty, especially against birds. There
could be no good in repeating this--it is never pleasant to say things
that sound unkind and perhaps uncharitable--unless it be that when the
people realise that certain practices are thought cruel by outsiders,
they may in time come to see the cruelty themselves. There is also the
supposed religiousness of Cornwall. From reading certain books we
might be led to imagine that Wesley found the Cornish savages and left
them Christians. He did a great deal certainly--let no one say a word
against that noble-hearted man. But the aspects of Wesley's teaching
that took chief root in Cornwall, as also in Wales, were just those
parts on which he himself would have laid least emphasis--the
excitability, the emotionalism. We do a grave wrong to Wesley in
giving his name to those manifestations of frothiness and of undue
familiarity with the Deity that have too often been classed as
Wesleyanism. These, coupled with sectarian bitterness against the
Church of England, may flourish if their votaries desire; but why
should they take the name of one who was an earnest and sober-minded
Churchman? Of course there is much in Cornwall of which Wesley or any
other religious teacher might well be proud; but there are other
aspects also, and plenty of room for those who shall teach the people
love, charity, and tenderness towards all forms of sentient life.