Rinsey ( kw, Rynnji) is a hamlet in

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 ...

, England, United Kingdom. It is located off the main A394 road between

Helston Helston ( kw, Hellys) is a town and civil parish in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is situated at the northern end of the Lizard Peninsula approximately east of Penzance and south-west of Falmouth.Ordnance Survey: Landranger map she ...

and

Penzance Penzance ( ; kw, Pennsans) is a town, civil parish and port in the Penwith district of Cornwall, United Kingdom. It is the most westerly major town in Cornwall and is about west-southwest of Plymouth and west-southwest of London. Situ ...

in the civil parish of

Breage Breage or Breaca (with many variant spellings) is a saint venerated in Cornwall and South West England. According to her late hagiography, she was an Irish nun of the 5th or 6th century who founded a church in Cornwall. The village and civil par ...

. The nearby hamlet of Rinsey Croft is located 1 km to the north-east.Ordnance Survey: Landranger map sheet 203 ''Land's End'' The nearby cliffs and beach are owned and managed by the

National Trust The National Trust, formally the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, there is a separate and ...

and part of Rinsey East Cliff is designated as the Porthcew Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) for its geological interest. The

South West Coast Path The South West Coast Path is England's longest waymarked long-distance footpath and a National Trail. It stretches for , running from Minehead in Somerset, along the coasts of Devon and Cornwall, to Poole Harbour in Dorset. Because it rises ...

passes through the property. Rinsey lies within the

Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty The Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty covers in Cornwall, England, UK; that is, about 27% of the total area of the county. It comprises 12 separate areas, designated under the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 for ...

(AONB). The name ''Rinsey'' is an anglicisation of the Cornish language ''Rynnji'', which contains the words ''rynn'' 'point of land' (as in Penryn), and ''chi'' 'house'.

History

Rinsey, in the

Hundred 100 or one hundred (Roman numeral: C) is the natural number following 99 and preceding 101. In medieval contexts, it may be described as the short hundred or five score in order to differentiate the English and Germanic use of "hundred" to des ...

Kerrier Kerrier ( kw, Keryer) was a local government district in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It was the most southerly district in the United Kingdom, other than the Isles of Scilly. Its council was based in Camborne (). Other towns in the dis ...

, is mentioned in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

as one of four manors in the parish of Breage, under the name of 'Rentis'. The population in 1086 was 9.5 households. In the 29 April 1880 edition of ''

The Cornishman ''The Cornishman'' is a weekly newspaper based in Penzance, Cornwall, England, United Kingdom which was first published on 18 July 1878. Circulation for the first two editions was 4,000. An edition is currently printed every Thursday. In early Fe ...

'' Rinsey was listed as one of the places in the

area with a fishing fleet.

Mining

Wheal Prosper Wheal may refer to: * Wheals, a type of skin lesion * Brad Wheal (born 1996), British cricketer * Donald James Wheal (1931–2008), British British television writer, novelist and non-fiction writer * David John Wheal, Australian businessman * ...

, () on Rinsey East Cliff, started operating in 1860 possibly as an extension of

Wheal Trewavas Wheal Trewavas was a copper mine in Cornwall, England, about west of Porthleven. The ruined engine houses remain, on sea cliffs overlooking Mount's Bay, just east of Trewavas Head. The site is a Scheduled Monument. History The mine was in ope ...

mine, 800m to the east on Trewavas Cliff (). The mine is on the southern end of the Tregonning granite within the Wendron Mining District. By the time Prosper closed in 1866 it had produced mostly tin and a little copper from the Porthcew

lode In geology, a lode is a deposit of metalliferous ore that fills or is embedded in a fissure (or crack) in a rock formation or a vein of ore that is deposited or embedded between layers of rock. The current meaning (ore vein) dates from the ...

. The prominent house on Rinsey Head is often said to have been the mine's count house (offices), it was built in the late 1920s and early 1930s by Mr G A Gibb, a London

stockbroker A stockbroker is a regulated broker, broker-dealer, or registered investment adviser (in the United States) who may provide financial advisory and investment management services and execute transactions such as the purchase or sale of stocks ...

, after he bought the land from Mr Bucket, a local farmer. Designed as an Arts and Craft style holiday home, rock had to be blasted in order to build the foundations, taking four years to build with stone from a local quarry. The New Penrose Tin and Copper Mining Company Ltd, which mined Trewavas Head went into

liquidation Liquidation is the process in accounting by which a company is brought to an end in Canada, United Kingdom, United States, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, and many other countries. The assets and property of the company are redistr ...

in 1882.

Natural history

In 1990 part of Rinsey Cliff was notified as the Porthcew SSSI for the mineral assemblage caused by the granite contact zone on the

Upper Devonian The Devonian ( ) is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic era, spanning 60.3 million years from the end of the Silurian, million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Carboniferous, Mya. It is named after Devon, England, whe ...

Mylor Slates. The contact zone is also a

Geological Conservation Review The Geological Conservation Review (GCR) is produced by the UK's Joint Nature Conservation Committee and is designed to identify those sites of national and international importance needed to show all the key scientific elements of the geological ...

site of national importance. Trewarvas Head is the site of a

black-legged kittiwake The black-legged kittiwake (''Rissa tridactyla'') is a seabird species in the gull family Laridae. This species was first described by Carl Linnaeus in his landmark 1758 10th edition of ''Systema Naturae'' as ''Larus tridactylus''. The English ...

(''Rissa tridactyla'') colony usually with thirty-five nesting pairs although numbers can vary with just six active nests (all failing) in 2013. Other breeding birds include

European shag The European shag or common shag (''Gulosus aristotelis'') is a species of cormorant. It is the only member of the monotypic genus ''Gulosus''. It breeds around the rocky coasts of western and southern Europe, southwest Asia and north Africa, mai ...

(''Phalacrocorax aristotelis'') and

European herring gull The European herring gull (''Larus argentatus'') is a large gull, up to long. One of the best-known of all gulls along the shores of Western Europe, it was once abundant. It breeds across Northern Europe, Western Europe, Central Europe, Easter ...

(''Larus argentatus'').

In popular culture

The house on the Rinsey Head was a setting for a

Rosamunde Pilcher Rosamunde Pilcher, OBE (''née'' Scott; 22 September 1924 – 6 February 2019) was a British writer of romance novels, mainstream fiction, and short stories, from 1949 until her retirement in 2000. Her novels sold over 60 million copies worldw ...

story.

References

External links

* {{SSSIs Cornwall geological Hamlets in Cornwall Manors in Cornwall Tin mines in Cornwall Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Cornwall Cliffs of England Seabird colonies