Gwennap Head ( kw, Toll Pedn Pennwydh, meaning ''holed head of Penwith''; ) is a headland on the south coast of the Penwith peninsula,

Cornwall Cornwall (; kw, Kernow ) is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. Cornwall is bordered to the north and west by the Atlan ...

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

. It is within the parish of St Levan and approximately south of

Land's End Land's End ( kw, Penn an Wlas or ''Pedn an Wlas'') is a headland and tourist and holiday complex in western Cornwall, England, on the Penwith peninsula about west-south-west of Penzance at the western end of the A30 road. To the east of it i ...

, and less than north-west of Porthgwarra, the nearest village. The area of Gwennap Head is designated as part of the

Penwith Heritage Coast Penwith (; kw, Pennwydh) is an area of Cornwall, England, United Kingdom, located on the peninsula of the same name. It is also the name of a former local government district, whose council was based in Penzance. The area is named after o ...

and also designated as part of the Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The South West Coast Path closely follows the coastline around the headland. Its intricate and varied granite cliffs include the famous Chair Ladder crag, making it a popular destination for recreational climbers of all abilities. The older and more correct name for the headland is Tol-Pedn-Penwith (locally "Tol-Pedn" for short) which comes from the Cornish for 'the holed headland of Penwith', referring to the awesome vertical blowhole from the clifftop to a sea cave. From 1888 the name was changed to Gwennap Head, perhaps named after a local family, but the new name did not enter local usage until the 1970s. The inshore waters around the headland are busy with shipping of all sizes. There is a Coastwatch station on the headland in the former coastguard building. The area is also popular with naturalists who, at the appropriate time of the year, can see rare animals such as chough (''Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax''), great shearwater (''Puffinus gravis''), basking shark and

ocean sunfish The ocean sunfish or common mola (''Mola mola'') is one of the largest bony fish in the world. It was misidentified as the heaviest bony fish, which was actually a different species, '' Mola alexandrini''. Adults typically weigh between . The sp ...

(''Mola mola'').

History

Tol Pedn was once known as Land's End, and in the early 19th century was usually called St Leven's Land's End in order to distinguish it from the present day Land's End, which was then called Sennen Land's End and Cape Cornwall which has also been known as Land's End. It would seem that, in the past Tol-pedn was considered to be a larger area, than what is today considered to be the headland of Gwennap Head. Hitchens (1824) writes that ″''Tolpedn-Penwith is divided from the mainland by an ancient stone wall''″, which he thought might have been for defence. A stone wall exists to this day to the north reaching the sea near Black Carn although it seems to be a boundary and/or stock wall rather than defensive. He also indicates that there was other evidence for ancient fortifications in the area. In the 1840s H McLauchlan reported seeing ″faint traces of a

Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second pri ...

tumulus A tumulus (plural tumuli) is a mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves. Tumuli are also known as barrows, burial mounds or '' kurgans'', and may be found throughout much of the world. A cairn, which is a mound of stones ...

at the top″ of Tol-pedn-Penwith, although today there are no traces, and the highest point is now occupied by the NCI Coastwatch station. Reports of a

cliff castle A promontory fort is a defensive structure located above a steep cliff, often only connected to the mainland by a small neck of land, thus using the topography to reduce the ramparts needed. Although their dating is problematic, most seem to da ...

are considered doubtful, partly because there are no traces but also because the site is considered unsuitable. StateLibQld 1 147999 Duncan (ship)

On the north side of Gwennap Head is a stream that flows into the boulder-strewn cove of Porth Loe. On 14 March 1905 the ''Kyber'' was seen from the Wolf Rock, on a bearing to pass The Lizard. The next morning the barque was seen coming ashore at Porth Loe and broke up within fifteen minutes. Men building the nearby coastguard houses used ladders to save three of the crew and a further twenty-three are buried in a mass grave in St Levan churchyard. Roskestral Farm was put up for auction in May 1887 and included Tol Pedn Penwith, the Funnel Hole and portions of Carn Glaze Common. The St Aubyn Estate owns the area.

NCI Coastwatch

Gwennap Head coastwatch station August 2013

There is evidence that the headland has been used as a base for watching ships for centuries. In the

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical History (derived ) is the systematic study and th ...

at Truro there is a photograph of a signal station which has been identified as being on Tol-pedn; the

Union Flag The Union Jack, or Union Flag, is the ''de facto'' national flag of the United Kingdom. Although no law has been passed making the Union Flag the official national flag of the United Kingdom, it has effectively become such through precedent. ...

dating it to before 1801. Early maps also show a station here and a photograph shows a two-arm semaphore dating to circa 1900–10. The current prominent building was begun in around 1905, as a one-storey Coastguard lookout station, and was opened by 1910. A second storey was added to give extra height to the watch room after a French trawler was wrecked at the foot of Wireless Point, Porthcurno on 14 March 1956. The ''Vert Prairial'' could not be seen when she was wrecked, and seventeen crew lost their lives. The coastguard station was closed in 1994, and re-opened on 21 October 1996 as NCI Gwennap Head.

Day marks

There are a pair of cone-shaped navigation markers on Gwennap Head, in line with the Runnelstone buoy. These are day markers warning vessels of the hazard of the Runnel Stone. The cone to the seaward side is painted red and the inland one is black and white. When at sea the black and white one should always be kept in sight in order to avoid the submerged rocks nearer the shore. If the black and white cone is completely obscured by the red cone then the vessel would be directly on top of the Runnel Stone. The black and white landmark was erected by the Corporation of Trinity House in 1821 – an event recorded on a plaque on the back of the marker. Between 1880 and 1923 over thirty identified steamships were wrecked, stranded or sank in the area. There have been none since 1923. The navigation markers feature as "the Cones of Runnel" in Hammond Innes's 1940 thriller "The Trojan Horse".

Wildlife and ecology

Gwennap Head is part of the

Porthgwarra to Pordenack Point Porthgwarra to Pordenack Point is a coastal Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in west Cornwall, England, noted for its biological characteristics. The South West Coast Path runs through the SSSI. Geography The site, notified in 1977, i ...

Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) designated for its vegetation of waved maritime heath, and for being of considerable ornithological interest; especially for passage migrants. It is renowned for its relative abundance of passing marine bird species with many common species such as northern gannet (''Morus bassanus''), Manx shearwater (''Puffinus puffinus''), common guillemot, (''Uria aalge''), razorbill (''Alca torda''), northern fulmar (''Fulmarus glacialis''), shag (''Phalacrocorax aristotelis'') and

cormorant Phalacrocoracidae is a family of approximately 40 species of aquatic birds commonly known as cormorants and shags. Several different classifications of the family have been proposed, but in 2021 the IOC adopted a consensus taxonomy of seven ge ...

(''Phalacrocorax carbo''). The headland is favoured by birdwatchers and many travel the length and breadth of Britain to track rare seabirds. In July and August there is a chance to see two large shearwater species outside of their breeding season. The great shearwater breeds in the south Atlantic on islands in the

Tristan da Cunha Tristan da Cunha (), colloquially Tristan, is a remote group of volcanic islands in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is the most remote inhabited archipelago in the world, lying approximately from Cape Town in South Africa, from Saint Helen ...

group and the Cory's shearwater (''Calonectris diomedea'') breeds in the

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on th ...

, and on North Atlantic islands; mostly among the

Azores ) , motto= ( en, "Rather die free than subjected in peace") , anthem=( en, "Anthem of the Azores") , image_map=Locator_map_of_Azores_in_EU.svg , map_alt=Location of the Azores within the European Union , map_caption=Location of the Azores wi ...

. Many birds follow the coast as they migrate north in spring to breed or head south in the autumn to overwinter in warmer places. At Gwennap Head many waders, ducks,

larks Larks are passerine birds of the family Alaudidae. Larks have a cosmopolitan distribution with the largest number of species occurring in Africa. Only a single species, the horned lark, occurs in North America, and only Horsfield's bush lark ...

and

finches The true finches are small to medium-sized passerine birds in the family Fringillidae. Finches have stout conical bills adapted for eating seeds and nuts and often have colourful plumage. They occupy a great range of habitats where they are usua ...

are seen especially during the peak times in May and October. Breeding birds include the red-billed choughs ( ''Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax'') which have recently been breeding successfully on Gwennap Head, but lost their young to a predator in early May 2015. From 2007 to 2011, the Seawatch SW survey was organised by Dr Russell Wynn with the aim of recording the numbers of targeted species from a designated location close to the cliff edge on Gwennap Head. The survey ran from 15 July to 15 October each year and most of the recording was by volunteers who spent up to twelve hours a day on seawatch. The main targeted species were Balearic shearwater (''Puffinus mauretanicus'') and basking shark, along with the ocean sunfish (or common mola). Marine mammals such as

whales Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully aquatic placental marine mammals. As an informal and colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea, i.e. all cetaceans apart from dolphins a ...

, dolphins and grey seal (''Halichoerus grypus'') were additional main targets. During a seawatch on 28 August 2015 a red-billed tropicbird (''Phaethon aethereus'') was seen over the Runnel Stone, a bird that usually frequents tropical areas. Gwennap Head is part of the Land's End

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies und ...

massif with shallow, free-draining and acidic soils. The dominant plants of the maritime heath are heather (''Calluna vulgaris''), bell heather (''Erica cinerea'') and western gorse (''Ulex gallii''). Near the edges of the cliff there is maritime grassland and includes the red data species, perennial centaury (''

Centaurium scilloides ''Centaurium scilloides'', also known as perennial centaury is a flowering plant in the family Gentianaceae. It is native to Atlantic Europe (England, western France and the northwestern Iberian Peninsula) and the Azores. Plants from the Azores h ...

''), and

early meadow-grass ''Poa infirma'' is a species of grass known by the common names early meadow-grass and weak bluegrass. It was first described from a specimen found in Colombia, but it is actually an introduced species in the Americas and is native to Europe. It ...

(''Poa infirma''), along with the rare

hairy bird's-foot trefoil ''Lotus subbiflorus'', hairy bird's-foot trefoil, is a flowering plant of the pea family Fabaceae. It is a finely hairy annual plant, growing in dry, sandy ground, often near the sea, and producing sprawling stems with clusters of two to four le ...

(''Lotus subbiflorus'') and

yellow bartsia ''Parentucellia viscosa'' is a species of flowering plant in the family Orobanchaceae known by the common names yellow bartsia and yellow glandweed. It is native to Europe, but it can be found on other continents, including Australia and North Am ...

(''Parentucellia viscosa''). The grassland can be colourful in the spring and early summer with

spring squill ''Scilla verna'', commonly known as spring squill, is a flowering plant native to Western Europe. It belongs to the squill genus '' Scilla''. Its star-like blue flowers are produced during the spring. It is a small plant, usually reaching 5- ...

thrift Thrift may refer to: * Frugality * A savings and loan association in the United States * Apache Thrift, a remote procedure call (RPC) framework * Thrift (plant), a plant in the genus ''Armeria'' * Syd Thrift (1929–2006), American baseball exec ...

, sea campion and kidney vetch in flower followed by the purple and yellow of the maritime heath in mid and late summer. In 2010 perennial centaury, a national rarity, was refound by Helen and Laurie Oakes. Despite many searches by botanists the species had not been seen in Cornwall (and England) since 1962 (or possibly 1967), and survived on only one Welsh site; coastal footpaths of

Pembrokeshire National Park Pembrokeshire Coast National Park ( cy, Parc Cenedlaethol Arfordir Penfro) is a national park along the Pembrokeshire coast in west Wales. It was established as a National Park in 1952. It is one of three national parks in Wales, the others bei ...

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...

. The re-discovery follows the re-introduction of cattle grazing under a HLS Stewardship agreement. Resident butterflies include large white (''Pieris brassicae''), small copper (''Lycaena phlaeas''), common blue (''Polyommatus icarus''), small tortoiseshell (''Aglais urticae''), peacock (''Aglais io''), comma (''Polygonia c-album''),

small pearl-bordered fritillary ''Boloria selene'', known in Europe as the small pearl-bordered fritillary and in North America as the silver-bordered fritillary, is a species of butterfly of the family Nymphalidae. It is found across Europe, Asia and North America, and fe ...

(''Boloria selene''), speckled wood (''Pararge aegeria''),

grayling Grayling or Greyling may refer to: Animals Fish * Grayling, generically, any fish of the genus ''Thymallus'' in the family Salmonidae ** European grayling (''Thymallus thymallus''), the European species of the genus ''Thymallus'' ** Arctic grayli ...

(''Hipparchia semele'') and wall (''Lasiommata megera''). As well as birds, some insects also migrate and butterflies often seen include

clouded yellow ''Colias'' is a genus of butterflies in the family Pieridae. They are often called clouded yellows; the North American name "sulphurs" is elsewhere used for Coliadinae in general. The closest living relative is the genus ''Zerene'', which is som ...

(''Colias croceus''), red admiral (''Vanessa atalanta'') and painted lady (''Vanessa cardui''). Migrant moths include rush veneer (''Nomophila noctuella''), rusty-dot pearl (''Udea ferrugalis''), hummingbird hawk-moth (''Macroglossum stellatarum'') and

silver Y The silver Y (''Autographa gamma'') is a migratory moth of the family Noctuidae which is named for the silvery Y-shaped mark on each of its forewings. Description The silver Y is a medium-sized moth with a wingspan of 30 to 45 mm. The wing ...

(''Autographa gamma'').

Marine Conservation Zone

The Runnel Stone Marine Conservation Zone (also known as Land's End (Runnel Stone)) was designated on 29 January 2016, covers 20 km² and is based on a 3.5 km arc measured from the NCI lookout. Included is much of the coast from Gwennap Head to Hall Dinas on the east side of Treryn Dinas. As well as protecting deep sea rocks on the Runnel Stone reef, the MCZ also protects other habitats ranging from exposed rock on the coast to soft sediments on the sea floor.

References

Extracts from ''A Complete Parochial History of the County of Cornwall'', Joseph Polsue, 1868
* Some of the above information is extracted from material on display in the visitors' room at the Coastwatch station on Gwennap Head.

External links

Photo gallery of climbers on Chair Ladder
fro
UKClimbing.com

NCI Gwennap Head - Coastwatch at Gwennap Head

Birdwatching sites in England Daymarks Headlands of Cornwall Marine reserves of England National Coastwatch Institution Penwith Protected areas of Cornwall