A Guided Walk Around Pentire and The Rumps, St Minver led by Pete Herring and Iain Rowe
This is a two-walk day. We will have a shorter more easily accessible walk in the morning (10.00 to 12.30), using well-maintained and straightforward paths that take us to a good place to view and discuss The Rumps cliff castle. In the afternoon (13.30 to 17.00) there will be a longer walk to the cliff-castle along rougher tracks and paths.
Both walks are led by Pete Herring of CAS and by Iain Rowe of the Monumental Improvement project being run by the Cornwall National Landscape team. They each commence at the Pentire Glaze Lead Mines car park:
- SW 9409 7999
- What3Words: ample.bonfires.files
Wear clothing and footwear for rough ground and to suit the weather forecast.
The silver-lead lode worked in the Pentire Glaze mine is visible in cliffs 2000 feet east of Pentire farm. William Carnsew mentioned it in 1580 and the mine worked sporadically from then on until the 1850s when an engine pumped the levels. Sites of shafts are now indicated by their burrows, and a drainage adit was driven in from just above sea level.
Between the mine and Pentire Farm the lane passes through a complex of apparently prehistoric features spotted on aerial photos. These include round barrows, round houses, and small curvilinear enclosures. Archaeological field walking has also produced evidence for scatters of prehistoric flints.
Pentire Farm has a grand farmhouse and substantial stone and slate farm buildings, including cow, calf and
cart houses, and a horse engine attached to a barn.
The lane becomes a path as it runs through fields with medieval shapes and beautifully built hedges. Early summer flowers should be in their prime and on a good day the air is busy with farm and sea birds.
We reach the coast on the east side of the mouth of the Camel between Pentire Point and The Rumps.
The Rumps cliff castle is one of the most dramatic in Cornwall. Three lines of banks and ditches cut off a headland that rears up into hillocks, the rumps. It was the subject of one of CAS’s early excavations, directed by RT Brooks between 1963 and 1967. Pottery and other artefacts date from the later Iron Age and Roman period. We can discuss the detail on the day, either from the morning’s viewing point or from vantage points within the cliff castle in the afternoon.
We may also talk about the use of the sea and the shore along this often wild coast.
“From Padstow Point to Hartland Light,
Is a watery grave by day or night”
The afternoon walk weaves along the coast path to Pengirt Cove, passing ‘Cruel Coppinger’s Cave’ at Com Beach, a cave supposedly large enough to conceal his smuggling ship The Black Prince within it.
For further information, see event flyer: Pentire and The Rumps, St Minver Walk
The Rumps, Cornwall and Scilly Historic Environment Record. Photo taken by Steve Hartgroves, October 31st, 2008.