Peninnis Head

Nearest town:
Newlyn (58km ENE)
OS reference:
SV911093
OS sheet:
203
Latitude:
49° 54' 11.97 N
Longitude:
6° 18' 9.71 W
Added to TMA by

Images

Image of Peninnis Head (Natural Rock Feature) by thesweetcheat

The speculative High Stone from the ferry. If it (or another stone in this vicinity) ever stood, it would have been a prominent landmark for boats coming to the islands.

Image credit: A. Brookes (20.6.2014)
thesweetcheat
thesweetcheat Aug 17, 2014
Image of Peninnis Head (Natural Rock Feature) by thesweetcheat

Deep rock basins in the upper surface of the granite of the speculative High Stone. If the stone was upright in the 1750s, these must have been caused prior to its erection, when it was lying flat. I’m not convinced that this monster stone ever stood.

Image credit: A. Brookes (20.6.2014)
thesweetcheat
thesweetcheat Aug 17, 2014
Image of Peninnis Head (Natural Rock Feature) by thesweetcheat

The “base” of the speculative High Stone. I can’t see this ever having stood upright, the erosion creating an overhang is consistent with it having been in this position always.

Image credit: A. Brookes (20.6.2014)
thesweetcheat
thesweetcheat Aug 17, 2014
Image of Peninnis Head (Natural Rock Feature) by thesweetcheat

This is the stone Vivien and Robert Seaney have identified as possibly being William Borlase’s “High Stone”. The picture in Meyn Mamvro No. 84 from this same angle shows it as rather longer and slimmer though, maybe that photo has been stretched?

Image credit: A. Brookes (20.6.2014)
thesweetcheat
thesweetcheat Aug 17, 2014
Image of Peninnis Head (Natural Rock Feature) by thesweetcheat

Scalloped by wind and weathering, the top piece of Pulpit Rock from the seaward side.

Image credit: A. Brookes (22.6.2011)
thesweetcheat
thesweetcheat Jul 11, 2011

Articles

Peninnis Head

thesweetcheat
thesweetcheat Aug 17, 2014

Peninnis Head High Stone

Writing in Meyn Mamvro 84 (Summer 2014), Vivien and Robert Seaney mention a lost standing stone on Peninnis Head referred to by William Borlase in 1756: “The High Stone, fronting ye Rock bason Karn at Peninis 30 ft high”.

30ft high? Yep, that’s what he said. His depiction of the stone is of a tapering stone with a series of curved indentations down one side. The Seaneys have found a recumbent stone on Peninnis Head, 90 metres east of the lighthouse that certainly looks similar to the shape of Borlase’s stone.

So as we’re on St Mary’s (20 June 2014), it seems too good to miss. After a revisit of the Salakee Down cairns and the possible lost stone circle there, we walk round Old Town Bay and back up to the wonderful Peninnis Head.

The stone is exactly where the Seaneys place it, easy to find as it’s somewhat apart from the main outcrops on the headland. It’s blooming massive.

However, to me it seems very doubtful that the stone ever stood. It looks like it’s always been recumbent and the curved indentations are the edges of a number of rock basins on its upper surface. Is this the High Stone? Was Borlase being fanciful when he showed it upright? Or was there another stone, 30ft high, now vanished?

Whatever the truth, go and see for yourself, the fantastic sculpted granite makes Peninnis Head a wonderful place regardless of whether this is the lost High Stone.

Folklore

Peninnis Head
Natural Rock Feature
Rhiannon
Rhiannon Jul 12, 2011

If the rocks look like this, I’m not surprised.

Under the cliffs of Peninnis Head on St Mary’s there is a cavern, termed the Piper’s Hole, which extends a long distance under ground, and is absurdly said to communicate with another cave of the same title, the entrance to which is in the island of Tresco. This legend would make the length of the cavern at least four miles; and the inhabitants of the locality tell you of dogs let in at the one entrance coming out, after a time, at the other with most of their hair off, so narrow are some parts of the cave. So there is a tradition in Scotland of a man getting through a similar cave, but paying the penalty in the loss of all his skin.

From ‘Rambles in Western Cornwall’ by J O Halliwell-Phillipps (1861).

Sites within 20km of Peninnis Head

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