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The most westerly major town in Cornwall

West Cornwall casts an irresistible spell through its unique and captivating atmosphere, its mystery and romance. Wander across the lonely moors of Penwith and feel the compelling power of the ancient standing stones. St. Michael's ley-line, probably the most famous of the energy sources that are said to criss-cross the earth, starts near Land's End and passes close to St. Michael's Mount before heading across southern England.

Like the enigmatic stone-circles of West Cornwall, ley-lines are thought to be imbued with an earth energy source that has survived intact to this day and which still exercises a magical influence on the enquiring mind. Such inexplicable forces are direct and powerful links with our pagan past, when people gathered at points of contact with earth energy, and there paid tribute to Nature and to the spirits of the earth.

Lanyon Quoit, with its tall upright stones supporting an enormous capstone is a famous monument that stands by the Madron to Morvah road. The famous Bronze Age stone circle of the Merry Maidens stands in a roadside field near Lamorna. Nearby are two tall standing stones known as the Pipers from the legend of their being musicians turned to stone, along with the merry maidens, for daring to play music and dance on a Sunday. Their true purpose was for the no less mysterious pagan ceremonies of the ancient inhabitants of this compelling land.

As well as ceremonial sites, Bronze Age and Iron Age people established secure trading centres and safe havens on strategic hilltops and on easily fortified headlands, such as the 'cliff castles' at Gurnard's Head near Zennor and at the awesome Logan Rock promontory, near Porthcurno.

Domestic life during the Iron Age was centred on clusters of 'beehive' shaped stone dwellings, and at Chysauster north of Penzance, and at Carn Euny near Sancreed are two of Europe's finest examples of preserved villages of Iron Age courtyard houses. At Carn Euny there is a fine example of a fogou, an underground system of passages and chambers, whose true purpose - whether practical or ceremonial - is shrouded in the same intriguing mystery that makes all of West Cornwall's ancient monuments objects of fascination.

Today, in West Cornwall, standing at the stone circles of Boscawen-Un near St.Buryan, or at the Merry Maidens' circle near Lamorna, or passing through the 'holed' stone of Men-an-Tol near Morvah, one can begin to understand and to experience the latent power to which the ancient ones paid homage.

This power rises from the heart of the West Cornwall landscape from granite that now stands unyielding to the sea but which once erupted in a fiery molten mass from deep within the earth. And, through time, every habitation, every church and civic building until our modern age, was built from the rocky bones of the land. Today, the surviving standing stones, the early Christian crosses, the medieval churches are all potent reminders of the need to pay homage to the past.

The Literary Tradition in Penzance

Literature has always been a strong element in the culture of West Cornwall although little remains of the early writings of medieval Cornwall. The area always drew outside interest, however The remarkable diarist Celia Fiennes visited Land's End as early as 1698. A later visit to Land's End by Alfred, Lord Tennyson was followed by a succession of visits by distinguished Victorian writers and diarist's.

In the 20th century, Virginia Woolf was inspired by her association with St.Ives to write her famous novel To The Lighthouse and the remote, haunted countryside of the north coast attracted the novelist D.H.Lawrence who lived for a time at Zennor.

Modern writers, such as the late Derek Tangye lived on the Mount's Bay coast for thirty years and penned his much-loved Minack Chronicles there. The novelist John le Carre has a home on the same stretch of coast. Other modern writers who have drawn inspiration from West Cornwall include, Winston Graham whose series of novels, the Poldark Saga made compelling television viewing.