Mount's Bay
Mount's Bay (Cornish: Baya an Garrek)[1] is a bay on the English Channel coast of Cornwall, England, stretching from the Lizard Point to Gwennap Head. In the north of the bay, near Marazion, is St Michael's Mount; the origin of name of the bay.[2] In summer, it is a generally benign natural harbour. However, in winter, onshore gales present maritime risks, particularly for sailing ships. There are more than 150 known wrecks from the nineteenth century in the area.[3] The eastern side of the bay centred around Marazion and St Michael's Mount was designated as a Marine Conservation Zone in January 2016.
Geography and geology
Mount's Bay is the biggest bay in Cornwall. Its half-moon shape is similar to that of Donegal Bay in Ireland and Cardigan Bay in Wales, although, unlike the aforementioned bays, Mount's Bay is relatively sheltered from the prevailing Atlantic westerlies. However, it is a danger to shipping during onshore southerly and south-easterly gales.[3]
The coast is about 42 miles (68 km) from Lizard Point to Gwennap Head.
There are small
Evidence of higher sea-levels in the past can be seen at Marazion where the town is built on a raised beach. A second example is the road between Newlyn and Mousehole. Sea levels rise and fall as the ice sheets advance and retreat, and raised beaches now mark the interglacial periods when sea levels were higher.[8]
Gwavas Lake is an area of relatively calm water that is situated outside the current harbour area of Newlyn.[9]
Post-ice age
Offshore surveys have found submerged erosional plains and valleys containing deposits of peat, sand and gravel. The deposits indicate cyclical changes from wetland, to coastal forest, to brackish conditions have been occurring over the past 12,000 years as sea levels rose.[10] With the melting of ice-sheets and glaciers after the last ice age, sea levels reached their present levels about 6,000 years ago during what is known as the Flandrian Marine Trangression.[11] Either side of Penzance, on the beaches at Ponsandane and Wherrytown, evidence of a 'submerged forest' can sometimes be seen at low tide in the form of several partially fossilised tree trunks.[12] Divers and trawlers also find submerged tree trunks across Mount's Bay and the forest may have covered a coastal plain 2 to 5 kilometres further south than today.[13] The samples of peat and wood around Penzance have been radiocarbon dated and indicate that the forest was growing from at least 6,000 to around 4,000 years ago when rising sea levels finally killed the trees.[10] Artefacts dating from the Mesolithic (10,000 to 5,000 BCE) have been found indicating some occupation contemporary with the forest. Marshes formed and were overlain by sand, gravel and by sand dunes which formed natural barriers to the sea. Storms sometimes destroyed the barriers depositing sand and gravel over peat beds in Marazion Marsh, and in the foundations of many buildings in Wherrytown and Long Rock. The remains of these natural barriers can still be seen at Eastern Green and the dunes to the seaward of Marazion Marsh. The submerged forest in the intertidal area between Wherrytown and Long Rock is of national importance and is a County Geology Site.[10]
At
Marine Conservation Zone
The Mounts Bay Marine Conservation Zone (MCZ) was designated on 29 January 2016 and covers an area of Mount's Bay south of the coast from Long Rock to Cudden Point. The 12 km2 (4.6 sq mi) site includes the sea around St Michael's Mount and tidal reefs such as the Greeb, near Perranuthnoe, and the Long Rock.[16] The MCZ protects habitats ranging from exposed high-energy rock on the coast to sand and muddy sand on the sea floor. The seagrass beds, Zostera marina, mainly grow in the sub-tidal zone and are important as a nursery area for fish and shellfish, as well as a feeding area for birds. Damage from the anchors and chains from moored boats can damage the beds.[17][18]
Animals within the zone include
On 19 August 2018, a white harbour porpoise was seen near Mount's Bay.[19]
History
Spanish attack
A Spanish raid took place over two days in August 1595 during the
Pirate attacks
In August 1625 "Turks took out of the church of Munigesca in Mount's Bay about sixty men, women and children and carried them away captives".
1755 tsunami
On 1 November 1755, the Lisbon earthquake caused a tsunami to strike the Cornish coast at around 14:00. At Mount's Bay the sea rose 10 feet (3 m) at great speed and ebbed at the same rate.[21]
Settlements
There are several coastal towns and villages dotted around Mount's Bay of which the largest is Penzance. To the west are Newlyn, Paul, Mousehole and Lamorna, and to the east are Marazion, Perranuthnoe, Praa Sands, Porthleven and Mullion. The bay also incorporates many beaches, coves and features including Prussia Cove, Loe Pool (and Loe Bar), Church Cove, Poldhu Cove and Kynance Cove.
In the churchyard wall of the church of St.
Mount's Bay gives its name to Mounts Bay Academy, a secondary school in Heamoor that serves Penzance and the surrounding countryside.
Industry
A number of mines were established along the shore and at least three were below the high water mark. An elvan dyke, rich in tin, runs nearly parallel with the Penzance promenade, at about 240 yards (220 m) from the shore. According to folklore, numerous veins of nearly pure cassiterite were worked by the ″old men″ in the early 18th-century. Over three summers, from 1778 Thomas Curtis sank a shaft on the Wherrytown reef and then built a 20-foot high wooden tower with a dressed stone breakwater at the base. In 1790, £600 worth of tin was produced by ten men and in 1792, the tin was worth £3000. By 1798, £70,000 worth of the tin was sold. In this year an American ship is said to have demolished the tower and machinery, during a storm and the mine closed. An 1823 attempt at reopening failed as did another in 1836 when a 40-inch cylinder engine was erected on the shore and sold by auction, four years later in 1840.[24]
While not as rich in tin as the Wherrytown reef the Long Rock reef produced tin between 1819 and 1823. A lode containing
RFA Mount's Bay
Commissioned by the
References
- ^ Place-names in the Standard Written Form (SWF) Archived 15 May 2013 at the Wayback Machine : List of place-names agreed by the MAGA Signage Panel Archived 15 May 2013 at the Wayback Machine. Cornish Language Partnership.
- ISBN 978-0-319-23148-7
- ^ a b Corin, J and Farr, G. (1983) Penlee Lifeboat. Penzance: Penzance and Penlee Branch of the RNLI.
- ^ "Home - South West Coast Path".
- ^ Lawman, J. (1994) A Natural History of the Lizard Peninsula. Pool: Institute of Cornish Studies.
- ^ "GEOLOGICAL SKETCH MAP - MARAZION TO PORTHLEVEN" (PDF). Camborne School of Mines, University of Exeter.
- ^ "SITE NOTIFIED TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE ON 31 MARCH 1995" (PDF). Natural England. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March 2016.
- ^ a b Tonkin, B., Covey, R. and Moat T. (1997) Start Point to Land’s End Maritime Natural Area. A Nature Conservation Profile. Truro: English Nature.
- ^ Ordnance Survey Explorer 7; Land's End, Penzance and St. Ives, 1:25 000 scale. 1996
- ^ a b c Howie, Frank (March 2014). Penzance's 4000 year old Fossil Forest. Cornwall Geoconservation Group.
- ISBN 1-899526-01-3.
- ^ Pool, P. A. S. (1974) The History of the Town and Borough of Penzance. Penzance: The Corporation of Penzance.
- ^ French, C.N. "THE 'SUBMERGED FOREST' PALAEOSOLS OF CORNWALL. Note of a paper read at the Annual Conference of the Ussher Society, January 1999" (PDF). Geoscience in South-west England. 9: 365–369. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 21 March 2015.
- ^ Murphy, R.J., (1986). A Study of Loe Bar. In Cornish Studies 14:23–33.
- ^ May, V.J. Loe Bar. In May, V.J. and Hansom, J.D. (2003) Coastal Geomorphology of Great Britain, Geological Conservation Review Series, No 28, Joint Nature Conservation Committee, Peterborough, 754 pp.
- ^ "The Mounts Bay Marine Conservation Zone Designation Order 2016". legislation.gov.uk. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Retrieved 29 January 2016.
- ^ a b "Mounts Bay MCZ – Feature Maps". GOVUK. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Retrieved 29 January 2016.
- ISBN 978-1-901685-01-5.
- ^ Smallcombe, Mike (19 August 2018). "Incredibly rare white harbour porpoise spotted off the coast of Cornwall". Cornwall Live. Retrieved 20 August 2018.
- ISBN 9780521622332. Retrieved 4 June 2014.
- ISBN 9781786203182.
- ^ "Our Club". Mount's Bay Sailing Club. Retrieved 1 April 2024.
- ^ "Dolly Pentreath - The last native speaker of the Cornish Language". Cornwall Guide. 2 March 2016. Retrieved 24 July 2022.
- ^ Hamilton Jenkin 1962, pp. 17–21
- ^ Hamilton Jenkin 1962, pp. 23–25
- Hamilton Jenkin, A. K. (1962). Mines and Miners of Cornwall. Penzance-Mount's Bay. Truro: Truro Bookshop.