Some of the History of The Lands End
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The Drowning of Lyonesse
The date of this event is unknown but it remains one of Cornwalls strongest traditions and may well be a folk memory of a tragic event. To read more go here
1600 BC:- The Phoenicians
The first record of possible visitors to the Lands End and Sennen area was with the discovery of blue faience beads in a barrow on the Lands End in the 1800's. These beads are believed to have come from either Egypt or Crete brought by the Phoenicians who had come to Cornwall to trade for tin.
600 AD:- The visit of the Kings
About a quarter of a mile eastward of the church is the village of Mayon, Maen, or Men and adjoining a cottage in this village is a block of granite seven or eight feet long and about three high, called table mean. Tradition says that around 600AD, seven, Saxon kings dined on this stone; and Merlin prophesied that a larger number of kings should meet at this rock for a similar repast previous to some terrible event or the end of the world
King Athelstan embarked for Scilly.
1085 AD:- The Doomsday Survey
The chronicles
tell us that at Christmas, 1085, William the Conqueror consulted with his
“So very narrowly,
indeed, did he commission them to trace it out, that there was not a single yard
and, nay, moreover [it is shameful to tell, though he thought it no shame to do
it], not even an ox, nor a cow, nor a swine was there left, that was not set
down in his writ.”
There are two volumes relating to this
survey. There first is the Great or Exchequer Doomsday, which contains the
survey of most of England, and the second is the Exeter Doomsday, so called from
its preservation in the cathedral library at Exeter. This later contains an
additional and much more detailed survey of the south-western counties,
including Cornwall. The Exeter Doomsday contains, as the Exchequer Doomsday does
not, a complete list of the farm stock on each manor, the division of the
ploughs as between the demesne and the tenants’ land and other similar details.
It stands nearer the original returns of the itinerant scribes than the
Exchequer record. Furthermore, there is an important difference in its
arrangement, which will be mentioned below.
The Cornish survey is a list of manors,
grouped under the headings of the tenants in chief, such as the Bishop of Exeter
and the Count of Mortain. In the Exeter record the lands of each tenant in chief
are roughly grouped in their hundreds. Throughout lowland England, and also to
some extent in West Somerset and Devon, the territory of the manor, village and
parish were more or less co-terminous. The manor was the village in its
administrative and financial aspect, as the parish was the same in its
ecclesiastical aspect. Anglo-Saxon England is, for the most part, a land of
nucleated villages. The highland fringe, whether described as “celtic” or not,
is more often characterized by scattered settlements, or trefs. A tref was a
very small territorial unit, and it was probably beyond the powers of the royal
scribes to list them and ascertain their stock and value, even if such an
undertaking were required. The king was not interested in the geographical
pattern of human settlement only in the ability of the land to pay tax. In the
survey of Cornwall many manors are listed so small that they cannot have
amounted to more than a tref.
The identification of the Doomsday manors
of Cornwall is somewhat problematic. Some of the trefs that gave their names to
the manors may even have disappeared. For the rest, changes through which the
names have passed and the frequent similarity of two or more names renders
confusion extremely easy. It may be that with some identification is
impossible, and the identification of several others must remain tentative. One
such manor is that of Whitsand in Sennen.
F. E. Halliday in his book "A History of
Cornwall" published in 1959 gives details taken from the Doomsday Book
"The Count has a manor called Witestan which Awald held in the time of King Edward and now Ralph holds it of the Count. There is 1 ferling of land and it rendered geld for half a ferling. Therein is half a plough and 1 serf and 8 beasts and 8 swine and 40 sheep and 40 goats and 12 acres of woodland."
Halliday goes on
Anyone visiting the Lands End peninsula today will see little in the way of woodlands. What makes it such a wonderful place to visit is its lack of trees and its bleak windswept moorland. But was that the case in 1085AD?. Britain has undergone a massive de-forestation over hundreds of years. In Cornwall the mining industry has left if bereft of trees. In many cases the only trees left are in the grounds of the old manorial estates. In the 1940’s Charles Henderson, in his “Essays of Cornish History” rejected the identification by Canon Taylor of St. Just that " Witestan" was Whitsand in Sennen, on the ground that its 12 acres of woodland cannot have been found near Land’s End. He preferred Witstone near Tintagel where vestiges of the forest remain today.Which of these two gentlemen is right I leave you to judge.
1135 AD:- THE VISIT OF KING STEPHEN
Whitsand Bay, containing some rare species of small shells, is the spot where :
King Stephen landed on his arrival in England and also King John on his return from Ireland.
1497:- PERKIN WARBECK LANDS IN SENNEN COVE.
In November 1491, a second claimant to Henry VII's throne arrived in Ireland. Perkin Warbeck (possibly an illegitimate son of Edward IV) initially claimed to be Edward, Earl of Warwick (as Lambert Simnel had before him) but soon changed his story and claimed to be Richard, Duke of York - the brother of Edward V and the younger Prince in the Tower.
Various European monarchs - Charles VIII of France, Margaret of Burgundy, Maximillian I of the Holy Roman Empire and James IV of Scotland - accepted Warbeck's claims in order to pursue diplomatic objectives against Henry VII. In 1495, 1496 and 1497, Warbeck attempted to invade England (in 1497 trying to maximise discontent landing in Sennen Cornwall where some local men had rebelled earlier in the year against high taxes) but, in October 1497, he was captured and taken to the king at Taunton.
In November 1499 both Warbeck and the real Edward, Earl of Warwick (who had been imprisoned by Henry VII in 1485) were executed for treason.
1662 AD:- WILLIAM SHELLINKS VISIT TO LAND’S END.
In early august 1662,
Source: M. Exwood and H..L.
Lehmann (eds). The Journal of William Shellinks Travel in England 1661-1663’,
Camden Fifth Series, Vol. 1, Royal Historical Society (1893). pp
15-128.
1716 AD:- The Giants Grave.
“In
1750 AD:- Skeleton of Deer.
1744 John Wesley Visited Lands End.
1795 AD:- The Wolf Rock.
1795 AD:- A TOURIST VISITS
THE LAND’S END
June 17th Wednesday.
In the forenoon we took a ride from Penzance to the Land’s End twelve miles—the road some part of it good and some very rough over several high mounts., with the country quite barren and not a tree scarce to be seen and many of the fields covered with huge blocks of stones.
On this road are the
largest flocks of sheep that we have seen on this side of the county.
For several miles to
the Land’s End are downs covered with a short grass and a prodigious number of
huge blocks of stone which are partly above ground. On these downs are large
flocks of sheep belonging to different farmers, and they have here a different
mode to mark them from any other part in England. Some of the sheep have a slit
cut in the ear, others the ear half cut off, and others both ears cut quite off,
which gives them a very odd appearance. Also a number of goats in these parts.
The small villages
and farm houses scattered about the country are mud houses with scarce any
windows. They appear very poor. No mines in this neck of land. At about a mile
from the Land’s End is the last house, which is a small public house for
travelers to stop at but the best way is to take your dinner with you, as they
have only fish, and sometimes not even that. We took with us a couple of roasted
chickens and a tongue, some roles and a bottle of red port.
At a small distance
from the Land’s End is a light house built on a large rock in the sea, called
the Long Ship Rock..
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1797 AD:- The Longships Lighthouse.
William Turner. Longships Lighthouse, Lands End. c.1834-1835.
Watercolour on paper. Private collection, UK
1842:- CYRUS REDDING VISITS THE LANDS END.
Sennen church-town is about 400 feet above the sea; and the road to the celebrated promontory is a very gentle descent, through the village of Mayon where there is a stone, no way remarkable in appearance, upon which three unknown kings are reported to have dined, who came to visit the Land’s End.. The soil is fertile, though lying upon granite.
The church of St.
Sennen, named from a saint that Hals declares to have been a Persian, is a neat
edifice; in Tonkin's notes , the same patron saint is declared to have been
Irish; it is probable that neither the one nor the other is correct. There are
memorials here of the family of the Ellis's; and the fine granite tower is
conspicuous. a great distance off. It is only on this promontory, shooting out
into the western ocean so far, that granite is seen in contact with the waves,
although abounding so much in the centre of the county; and here its huge
blocks, piled in confused grandeur, cubic and sometimes basaltic in form, are
truly magnificent. On arriving within a quarter of a mile of the rocks, the
slope towards the sea becomes more rapid. A house designed for a small inn, but
never occupied as such, stands just where a steeper descent commences. Here then
we stood, the waves thundering below, and before us the Atlantic without a shore
nearer than America; the horizon line, not straight, but appearing, as it really
is, the section of a circle, and blending softly with the summer sky ;—here,
amid a convulsion of rocks and precipices that form an irresistible barrier to
the raging waters, we were impressed with the feeling of a position amidst a
vast solitude, which some speak of experiencing in deserts. It is true, there
were no arid sands here; for the richest heaths, dwarf furze, almost all bloom,
only three or four inches high, and several kinds of wild flowers, of which we
did not know the names, enameled the ground beneath our feet; but there was an
overpowering loneliness, a sense of our own insignificance compared to what was
around us, amidst a silence only broken by the hollow booming of a restless sea,
that broke into the orifices of the cliff far beneath our feet, or now and then
by the shrieking of a cormorant, or the rushing wing of a sea-mew. There is a
tale related, with the customary exaggerations, respecting the fall of a horse
over the rocks here, and of the narrow escape of the rider, which, as no name is
mentioned, every one thinks he may tell in his own way. The officer’s name whose
horse thus fell over was Captain Arbuthnot, about forty years ago, upon the
staff of the western district, accompanying his superior officer, General
Wilford, who also had a command in the same district, to see the Land’s End. The
general dismounted on the brow of the descent; but Captain Arbuthnot, who did
not know the nature of the ground, rode down some way, when, the grass being
slippery and his horse alarmed, he dismounted, and,. flinging the bridle over
his arm, led on the animal, which, startled most probably at the roar of the sea
in front, backed himself over the cliff which was near in another direction, and
dragged Captain Arbuthnot to the edge, before he could disengage his arm, thus
narrowly escaping being pulled over with him. We must again remark that the
Land’s End is a low headland, not more than sixty feet in height, as the ground
is all the way a descent to its extremity, and the headlands on both sides
1836 AD:- The Wolf Rock.
In 1836 - 40 a second beacon was erected at a cost of £11,298; and four times the oak masts and balls, of which it was constructed, were swept away.
1862 AD:- The Wolf Rock.
1871 AD:- Light Keepers Houses.
Houses for the light keepers were erected on the hill above Sennen Cove.
1801 the National Census
was began on a regular ten year basis. The detail returns showing who was living where and with whom are kept secret for a total on a hundred years. Some information however, is made available including the total numbers living in a parish.
Population figures for the Parish of Sennen.
1801 |
1811 |
1821 |
1831 |
1841 |
431 | 495 | 637 | 689 | 660 |
1851 | 1861 | 1871 | 1881 | 1891 |
652 | 613 | 630 | 678 | 676 |
1901 | 1911 | 1921 | 1931 | 1941 |
679 | 644 | 663 | 646 | no census |
1991 | 2001 | |||
850 | 840 |