Porthleven is a town, civil parish and fishing port in
CornwallCornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...
,
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, near
HelstonHelston is a town and civil parish in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is situated at the northern end of the Lizard Peninsula approximately 12 miles east of Penzance and nine miles southwest of Falmouth. Helston is the most southerly town in the UK and is around further south than...
. It is the most southerly port on the island of
Great BritainGreat Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
and was originally developed as a harbour of refuge, when this part of the Cornish coastline was recognised as a black spot for
wrecksA shipwreck is what remains of a ship that has wrecked, either sunk or beached. Whatever the cause, a sunken ship or a wrecked ship is a physical example of the event: this explains why the two concepts are often overlapping in English....
in days of sail. Nearby Loe Bar was particularly infamous, with swimmers and surfers being warned off the area to this day.
History and geography
Historically and for local-government purposes, Porthleven was included within the town boundaries of nearby
HelstonHelston is a town and civil parish in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is situated at the northern end of the Lizard Peninsula approximately 12 miles east of Penzance and nine miles southwest of Falmouth. Helston is the most southerly town in the UK and is around further south than...
. After years of growth, it now has its own
town councilA town council is a democratically elected form of government for small municipalities or civil parishes. A council may serve as both the representative and executive branch....
. Its population in 2001 recorded by the
UK censusA nationwide census, known as Census 2001, was conducted in the United Kingdom on Sunday, 29 April 2001. This was the 20th UK Census and recorded a resident population of 58,789,194....
was 3,190.
Including tourists and surfers would swell that number considerably. Porthleven has exploited its location and exposure to powerful
swellsA swell, in the context of an ocean, sea or lake, is a series surface gravity waves that is not generated by the local wind. Swell waves often have a long wavelength but this varies with the size of the water body, e.g. rarely more than 150 m in the Mediterranean, and from event to event, with...
to become one of the best-known and highly-regarded
surfingSurfing' is a surface water sport in which the surfer rides a surfboard on the crest and face of a wave which is carrying the surfer towards the shore...
spots in Britain.
WavesThe WAVES were a World War II-era division of the U.S. Navy that consisted entirely of women. The name of this group is an acronym for "Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service" ; the word "emergency" implied that the acceptance of women was due to the unusual circumstances of the war and...
regularly exceeding 2 metres break on the shallow
reefIn nautical terminology, a reef is a rock, sandbar, or other feature lying beneath the surface of the water ....
that was shaped by blasting the harbour. Due to the
prevailing westerly windsThe Westerlies, anti-trades, or Prevailing Westerlies, are the prevailing winds in the middle latitudes between 30 and 60 degrees latitude, blowing from the high pressure area in the horse latitudes towards the poles. These prevailing winds blow from the west to the east, and steer extratropical...
it was very easy for a ship under sail to become entrapped within the bay and be cast up on the rocks which made up the small fishing coves of
MullionMullion is a civil parish and village in Cornwall, United Kingdom. It is situated on the Lizard Peninsula approximately five miles south of Helston....
,
KynanceKynance Cove is a cove in southwest Cornwall, United Kingdom. It is situated on the Lizard peninsula approximately two miles north of Lizard Point...
and
the LizardThe Lizard is a peninsula in south Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The most southerly point of the British mainland is near Lizard Point at ....
.
Arguably, Porthleven's most recognisable building is the Bickford-Smith Institute which is next to the pier and harbour entrance. With a tower of about 70 foot in height, it has the appearance of a church but currently is used as a snooker club and houses the town council offices. It featured (along with various other scenes from the town) as the incident room in an episode of the TV detective series
WycliffeWycliffe is a British TV series, based on W. J. Burley's novels about Detective Superintendent Charles Wycliffe . It was produced by HTV and broadcast on the ITV Network, following a pilot episode on 7 August 1993, between 24 July 1994 and 5 July 1998. The series was filmed in Cornwall, with a...
.
The
Royal National Lifeboat InstitutionThe Royal National Lifeboat Institution is a charity that saves lives at sea around the coasts of Great Britain, Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, as well as on selected inland waterways....
stationed a
lifeboatA rescue lifeboat is a boat rescue craft which is used to attend a vessel in distress, or its survivors, to rescue crewmen and passengers. It can be hand pulled, sail powered or powered by an engine...
at Portleven in 1863. A boat house was built at Breageside from where the boat was taken to the water on a carriage. A new boat house on the west side of the harbour entrance was opened in 1894 with a slipway to make launching easier. The station was closed in 1929 as the neighbouring stations at and had been equipped with motor lifeboats that could cover the whole of Mounts Bay. The slipway was dismantled and the boat house saw use as a store for a while but has since become the Shipwreck Centre museum.
There are four Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) sites close to Porthleven. Three of them,
Porthleven Cliffs SSSI ,
Porthleven Cliffs East SSSI and
Wheal Penrose SSSI are also
Geological Conservation ReviewThe Geological Conservation Review 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 and geomorphological features of Britain...
(GCR) sites. The ″Giant’s Rock″, within Porthleven Cliffs SSSI, is an
erraticA glacial erratic is a piece of rock that differs from the size and type of rock native to the area in which it rests. "Erratics" take their name from the Latin word errare, and are carried by glacial ice, often over distances of hundreds of kilometres...
with unknown origin and unknown mode of transport to its present site near the entrance of Porthleven harbour. The Wheal Penrose SSSI is a disused lead mine half a kilometre to the south with “…. good examples of typical lead zone mineralisation …”. The fourth Loe Pool SSSI is Cornwall’s largest natural lake formed by a barrier beach, known as Loe Bar, which dams the
River CoberThe River Cober is a short river in west Cornwall, United Kingdom. It rises near Porkellis Moor in the former Kerrier District and runs to the west of the town of Helston before entering the largest natural lake in Cornwall – Loe Pool. The water is impounded by the natural barrier, Loe Bar, and...
.
Notable residents
Porthleven was the birthplace of the Victorian theologian and religious writer
Pender Hodge CudlipRev. Pender Hodge Cudlip was an English Anglican High Church clergyman, theologian and writer. He was a well-known preacher in Cornwall and Devon during the mid-to late 19th century, spent several years in Paddington, London, and headed the Sparkwell Vicarage from 1884 until his death...
.
Porthleven was the home town of the
DambustersOperation Chastise was an attack on German dams carried out on 16–17 May 1943 by Royal Air Force No. 617 Squadron, subsequently known as the "Dambusters", using a specially developed "bouncing bomb" invented and developed by Barnes Wallis...
' Commanding Officer,
Guy GibsonWing Commander Guy Penrose Gibson VC, DSO & Bar, DFC & Bar, RAF , was the first CO of the Royal Air Force's 617 Squadron, which he led in the "Dam Busters" raid in 1943, resulting in the destruction of two large dams in the Ruhr area...
, and there is a road named in his memory. Former motor racing driver Chris Craft - who competed in the
24 Hours of Le MansThe 24 Hours of Le Mans is the world's oldest sports car race in endurance racing, held annually since near the town of Le Mans, France. Commonly known as the Grand Prix of Endurance and Efficiency, race teams have to balance speed against the cars' ability to run for 24 hours without sustaining...
race for over a decade, including a third-placed finish in
1976The 1976 24 Hours of Le Mans was the 44th Grand Prix of Endurance, and took place on June 12 and 13 1976.-Race:The regulations for Le Mans were changed again, with the fuel limitations removed and Group 5 cars were allowed to compete with Group 6 cars. Porsche entered two 936s and one 935, while...
, as well as two races in
Formula OneFormula One, also known as Formula 1 or F1 and referred to officially as the FIA Formula One World Championship, is the highest class of single seater auto racing sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile . The "formula" designation in the name refers to a set of rules with which...
- was born in Porthleven.
Porthleven is the hometown of the internationally renowned operatic Heldentenor John Treleaven.
External links