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| Porthminster Beach, St Ives; click here for a larger version of this image (image: Robin Stevens, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). |
The magnificent beaches and dunes of St Ives and its bay, down at the far south-western tip of Britain, have long been known for their ability to swallow buildings and structures whole. For example, Holinshed's Chronicles, written in the later sixteenth century, noted that the 'whole coast from St Ives' was 'sore choked with sand', and John Leland in c. 1538 observed of St Ives that the
most part of the houses in the peninsula be sore oppressed or over-covered with sands that the stormy winds and rages cast up there. This calamity has continued there little above 20 years... The best part of the town now stands in the south part of the peninsula, toward another hill for defence from the sands.(1)This situation was confirmed in the early eighteenth century by John Hicks, a former mayor of the town writing in a now-lost manuscript history of St Ives in 1722. He reported that the original buildings of St Ives lay buried beneath the sands that were blown across from Porthmeor Beach, and C. S. Gilbert, who saw Hicks's history before its loss, noted in 1817–20 that
Mr Hicks says that the ruins of more than forty houses were to be seen in his time, in the north-west part of the town, and that whole streets had been discovered under the sands, at a place called the Floud, near the quay, by men who were digging out stones for building.(2)
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| An aerial view of St Ives and its beaches; the north-western beach is Porthmeor and the southern beach is Porthminster, with the town and the harbour between the two, shown here at low tide when it is dry. Click here for a larger version of this image or here for a zoomable version (Imagery © 2018 Google, TerraMetrics, Data SIO, NOAA, U.S. Navy, NGA, GEBCO, Map data © 2018 Google, used in accordance with their attribution guidelines). |
This inundation of St Ives by the sands of its northern beach, Porthmeor, continued right up until the later eighteenth century and the completion (by 1782) of the high retaining sea-wall at Porthmeor, which John Smeaton had proposed in 1766 in order to stop this repeated burial of the town's houses and the related clogging of its harbour.(3) Of course, St Ives was not alone in having such problems: similar issues were encountered at Lelant, Phillack (Hayle) and Gwithian too, further around St Ives Bay. In 1662, for example, Lelant church was described as 'almost quite covered with sand blown up by the wind', whilst other writers back into the late sixteenth century indicate that Lelant had lost at least some houses to the drifting sands, and this situation continued here too into the eighteenth century, when the churchwardens’ accounts record payments for removing sand from the church. Indeed, the problem was only finally resolved when the dunes were planted with marram grass by the early nineteenth century.(4) Likewise, from Upton Barton in Gwithian parish there are accounts of a farmhouse having been overwhelmed with sand in the course of a single night sometime just after 1650, with the occupants having to escape through the upper windows—the remains of Upton were subsequently briefly visible in the winter of 1808–09 following a temporary shift of sand, but have not been seen again since and are now thought to lie around twenty feet deep within a very large sand-dune.(5)
Bearing all of the above in mind, it is perhaps unsurprising that Porthminster beach at St Ives might similarly seem to conceal evidence of earlier buildings and activity. The primary evidence for such buried structures comes from the late nineteenth century, when the foundations of a chapel/oratory and some graves were reportedly exposed here by the shifting sands. The main account of this is found in John Matthews' 1892 volume entitled A History of the Parishes of Saint Ives, Lelant, Towednack and Zennor, who associates the exposed structure with the medieval church that was presumably responsible for the present-day name of the beach and cove, Porthminster, first recorded in the fourteenth century (Cornish porth, 'cove, harbour', plus *mynster, 'endowed church', the latter element borrowed from English minster):
III. The chapel or oratory which formerly stood on the rocks under Penmester Hill, and which gives its name to the cover and neighbourhood of Porthminster ('the sandy cove of the church')... Some years ago the sand was washed down from the top of the beach, close to the Tregenna stream, leaving uncovered a portion of the foundations of this oratory, near which were found two stone coffins with leaden chalices, marking the interment of priests. It is said that these remains were deposited in the museum at Penzance, but I have never seen them. The find was made in about the year 1870...(6)
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| Porthminster beach, St Ives, in 1845; click here for an uncropped version of this image (image: PD, via the BSJW Trust). |
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| Porthminster beach, St Ives, c. 1890–1900; click here for a larger version of this image and here for the uncropped version. The Tregenna stream can be seen as a darker line in the sand on the left of the image, coming down from the higher ground before apparently disappearing into the beach (image: Wikimedia Commons/Library of Congress). |
With regard to the exact location of this buried chapel and its associated graves, Matthews' description quoted above is not entirely helpful, identifying the remains simply as being found at the 'top of the beach, close to the Tregenna stream'. The Tregenna stream nowadays flows out across the south-eastern part of the beach, but as can be seen on early images and the 1877 OS map reproduced below, it originally flowed across what is now the start of the putting green—laid out in 1930—and down the centre of the beach, immediately to the left of the present-day beach shop and chalets when looking out to sea from the beach-front promenade, a course it occasionally partially resumes when it breaks its culvert. As to 'the top of the beach', this is more difficult. The images of Porthminster beach from 1845 and c. 1890–1900 included above show that the relatively steep area now occupied by green landscaping and a putting green were originally used to moor seine fishing boats and could potentially be considered part of the beach, appearing sandy in these early pictures, something apparently confirmed by the depiction of the area on the 1877 OS map. So, was the chapel at the top of this steeper area, or further down the Tregenna stream towards or actually under the beach as it exists today? Two further brief descriptions of the exposed remains by Matthews may be helpful in addressing this question, from earlier in his 1892 history and from his 1884 Guide to St. Ives and its Surroundings:
The Tregenna stream rises on the hill of that name, flows through the grounds of Tregenna Castle, and loses itself in the sands of Porthminster, near the foundations of an ancient chapel... (7)
Porthminster is at present the neighbourhood of the big sands to the south-east of the town. Literally, it is only the name of the beach itself, and signifies “the beach of the church”... After high tides, when the sand has been washed down by big waves, the foundations of the church are uncovered for a time.(8)
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| Porthminster beach, St Ives, on am OS map surveyed in 1877 and printed in 1887; click here for a larger version of this image (image: National Library of Scotland, 2017). |
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| Porthminster beach in 2018 and 1877, with the outline of the modern features transposed onto the 1877 map; click here for a larger version of this image (Left: Imagery © 2018 Google, Map data © 2018 Google, used in accordance with their attribution guidelines; Right: National Library of Scotland, 2017). |
Taken together, these two accounts suggest that the remains were exposed on the upper part of the current beach or the immediately adjacent areas to its rear, rather than on the higher parts closer to the railway viaduct. First, it is said that the Tregenna stream 'loses itself in the sands of Porthminster, near the foundations of an ancient chapel'. This description can perhaps be equated with the depiction of the stream on the photograph of c. 1890–1900, where the Tregenna stream can be seen emerging from the area of seine boats and then disappearing on the beach, with other early photographs showing a similar situation. It is also arguably supported by the OS map surveyed in 1877, above, which shows a straight course for the stream through until just after the current promenade in front of the putting green, when it adopts a more sinuous course. Whatever the case may be, the description would seem to imply a findspot at or close to the top of the current beach for the chapel remains.
Second, Matthews' 1884 comment that 'after high tides, when the sand has been washed down by big waves, the foundations of the church are uncovered for a time', obviously indicates a location that was both normally covered by sand and in an area that the highest tides could reach and temporarily expose before it became covered up by sand once more, rather than it being located well beyond the high tide line in the area of the putting green/former seine boat mooring area towards the railway viaduct. As to where the highest tides reached in the later nineteenth century, this clearly varied just as it does today—the 1877 OS map, for example, places the median high tide line some distance from the current promenade, around halfway down the beach, but 1930s OS maps and the photograph of c. 1890–1900 show it much closer to the promenade, a little way short of where the present-day beach shop and chalets now are sited. Once again, whatever the case may be, the description would nonetheless seem to imply a location for the remains as being both under sand and in the area at or close to the top end of the present beach.
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| The Porthminster beach shop and chalets (right, with multi-coloured doors) and the Porthminster Beach Café (on the left); the beach-front promenade runs between the putting green and the beach and behind the beach shop/chalets. Note, the Treganna stream is also present in the foreground, where it has re-emerged in the centre of the beach on its former alignment after apparently breaking its culvert in the winter of 2017–18; click here for a larger version of this photograph (image: C. R. Green). |
All told, then, the available evidence suggests that the buried chapel and coffins observed in the late nineteenth century lay underneath sand somewhere in or close to the top area of the main beach, rather than much further up the slope towards the viaduct, probably in the approximate vicinity of the current beach shop or a little to its north-west based on the nineteenth-century course of the Tregenna stream. Turning to the question of just what this chapel represents and its likely date, Matthews associates it with the former medieval settlement of Porthminster. John Hicks, in his now-lost 1722 manuscript history of St Ives mentioned above, seems to have had access to town records that are no longer extant and noted the following for the reign of Henry VI (1422–61), according to the extracts of Hicks' MS published by C. S. Gilbert in 1817–20:
four French ships hovered round the coast of Cornwall, burnt the town of Marazion, and afterwards sailed round the Land's End, and landed at Porthminster, about a mile from St. Ives, which they burnt to the ground, and it has never since been re-built. They also killed twenty men, and carried much plunder on board their ships, with which, and other booty, they sailed for France.(9)
If this account is reliable, then it would offer us a potential terminus ante quem for the buried structure of the mid-fifteenth century, although one might wonder whether the reign of Henry VIII was not actually meant, rather than Henry VI, given that the town of Marazion is indeed recorded as having been burnt by the French in 1514 during his reign.(10) In any case, a terminus ante quem in either the mid-fifteenth or early sixteenth century would accord well with Susan Pearce's observation that the 'two stone coffins with leaden chalices' that Matthews records exposed near to the remains of the chapel/oratory are 'clearly full medieval'.(11)
Whether the chapel itself was purely 'full medieval' or had earlier origins/phases is, of course, uncertain, in the absence of solid archaeological or documentary evidence. On the one hand, whilst the chapel was presumably in existence before 1301, when the name 'Porthminster' is apparently first recorded, if 'Porthminster' does indeed refer to it then the somewhat curious presence of the English loanword mynster, 'endowed church' (< Latin monasterium), in the name might suggest a late foundation for the site and a possibly monastic character.(12) On the other hand, Imogen Tompsett has considered the Porthminster find to be a potential early medieval chapel/oratory site in her recent survey of the evidence from the South-West.(13) Certainly, it wouldn't be the only example of a buried early medieval chapel along the coast of Cornwall. For example, the so-called St Gothian’s Oratory ('the chapel in the sands') at Gwithian, St Ives Bay, was uncovered in 1827 and visible as a ruin until the early twentieth century before it was re-engulfed, and this seems to have been a small tenth-century church that was abandoned to the blowing sand after c. 1200, with a sequence of finds that could extend back as far as c. AD 700. Likewise, the well-known site of St Piran's Oratory near Perranporth—a probably tenth- to twelfth-century building with a likely unexcavated eighth-/ninth-century stage given the radiocarbon dates obtained from burials recently found there—was largely swallowed by shifting sand dunes sometime during the medieval period before being occasionally re-exposed and then partially excavated in 1835 and 1843 (it was reburied to protect it in 1980), and a potentially early chapel was uncovered underneath the sands of Lelant Towans in 1875 during the building of the railway link to St Ives.(14) However, given the sparseness of the documentation and the apparently late place-name and burials at Porthminster, such a possibility cannot be pushed too far at present.
Whether the chapel itself was purely 'full medieval' or had earlier origins/phases is, of course, uncertain, in the absence of solid archaeological or documentary evidence. On the one hand, whilst the chapel was presumably in existence before 1301, when the name 'Porthminster' is apparently first recorded, if 'Porthminster' does indeed refer to it then the somewhat curious presence of the English loanword mynster, 'endowed church' (< Latin monasterium), in the name might suggest a late foundation for the site and a possibly monastic character.(12) On the other hand, Imogen Tompsett has considered the Porthminster find to be a potential early medieval chapel/oratory site in her recent survey of the evidence from the South-West.(13) Certainly, it wouldn't be the only example of a buried early medieval chapel along the coast of Cornwall. For example, the so-called St Gothian’s Oratory ('the chapel in the sands') at Gwithian, St Ives Bay, was uncovered in 1827 and visible as a ruin until the early twentieth century before it was re-engulfed, and this seems to have been a small tenth-century church that was abandoned to the blowing sand after c. 1200, with a sequence of finds that could extend back as far as c. AD 700. Likewise, the well-known site of St Piran's Oratory near Perranporth—a probably tenth- to twelfth-century building with a likely unexcavated eighth-/ninth-century stage given the radiocarbon dates obtained from burials recently found there—was largely swallowed by shifting sand dunes sometime during the medieval period before being occasionally re-exposed and then partially excavated in 1835 and 1843 (it was reburied to protect it in 1980), and a potentially early chapel was uncovered underneath the sands of Lelant Towans in 1875 during the building of the railway link to St Ives.(14) However, given the sparseness of the documentation and the apparently late place-name and burials at Porthminster, such a possibility cannot be pushed too far at present.
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| Plan and drawing of the tenth-century St Gothian's Oratory, Gwithian, from J. T. Blight, Churches of West Cornwall (London, 1885), pp. 138–39; see C. Thomas, Gwithian: Notes on the Church, Parish and St Gothian’s Chapel (Gwithian, 1964), for a slightly more accurate plan of the oratory and a conjectural section based on earlier accounts (image: Internet Archive). |
Notes
1. John Leland, Itinerary, iii.21, quoted in J. H. Matthews, A History of the Parishes of Saint Ives, Lelant, Towednack and Zennor (London, 1892), p. 48, and K. Newell, Cornwall and Scilly Urban Survey. Historic Characterisation for Regeneration: St Ives, HES Report no. 2005R069 (Truro, 2005), p. 19; note, I have modernised the spelling here.
2. C. S. Gilbert, An Historical Survey of the County of Cornwall (Plymouth, 1817–20), vol 2, part 2, p. 710.
3. See J. Smeaton, Reports of the Late John Smeaton, F.R.S., 2nd edn. (London, 1837), pp. 199–204 at pp. 201–02 and plate 17. The retaining sea-wall at Porthmeor was apparently completed by 1782, see Cornwall & Scilly Historic Environment Record no. MCO56020.
4. C. Noall, 'Nineteenth-Century discoveries at Lelant', Cornish Archaeology, 3 (1964), 34–6, who gives details of the inundation of Lelant and mentions that of Phillack; D. Gilbert, The Parochial History of Cornwall (London, 1838), vol 3, pp. 5–6 (Lelant) and pp. 339–40 (Phillack).
5. C. Thomas, 'Minor sites in the Gwithian area (Iron Age to recent times)', Cornish Archaeology, 3 (1964), 37–62 at pp. 52–3; D. Gilbert, The Parochial History of Cornwall (London, 1838), vol 2, pp. 149–50.
6. J. H. Matthews, A History of the Parishes of Saint Ives, Lelant, Towednack and Zennor (London, 1892), p. 36; O. J. Padel, Cornish Place-Name Elements (Nottingham, 1985), pp. 167, 300; O. J. Padel, A Popular Dictionary of Cornish Place-Names (Penzance, 1988), pp. 194, 200; Cornwall & Scilly Historic Environment Record nos. 29909 & 29909.01. Note, the South West Coast Path's St Ives Station–Carbis Bay walk guide, online at https://www.southwestcoastpath.org.uk/print-walk/471/, claims that 'Around 1875, the construction work on the railway line unearthed a number of shallow graves in the sand at Porthminster, followed by the discovery of several stone-built cists, buried more deeply. Nearby was a primitive building, thought to be an oratory or chapel.' This appears to be a mistaken application of the Lelant Towans finds of Spring 1875 to Porthminster beach, however, as it fits the description of the former exactly both in terms of finds and date (see C. Noall, 'Nineteenth-Century discoveries at Lelant', Cornish Archaeology, 3 (1964), 34–6), whilst differing significantly from all other accounts of the Porthminster finds.
7. J. H. Matthews, A History of the Parishes of Saint Ives, Lelant, Towednack and Zennor (London, 1892), p. 2.
8. J. H. Matthews, A Guide to St. Ives and its Surroundings (St Ives, 1884).
9. Transcribed in C. S. Gilbert, An Historical Survey of the County of Cornwall (Plymouth, 1817–20), vol 2, part 2, pp. 710–11; J. H. Matthews, A History of the Parishes of Saint Ives, Lelant, Towednack and Zennor (London, 1892), pp. 36, 47. See footnote 12, below, for some fourteenth- and fifteenth-century references to the settlement of Porthmenstre (Porthminster).
10. W. Page (ed.), Victoria History of the County of Cornwall (London, 1906), p. 484. Of course, an unrecorded mid-fifteenth-century event is by no means impossible: Fowey was certainly burnt in 1457 (see Page, Victoria History of Cornwall, p. 483), and a fortification was moreover built at St Ives in 1490, just to the east of the medieval pier and quay—known as the 'Castle', elements of it may survive in Quay House on the harbour front, see K. Newell, Cornwall and Scilly Urban Survey. Historic Characterisation for Regeneration: St Ives, HES Report no. 2005R069 (Truro, 2005), p. 18).
11. S. M. Pearce, South-western Britain in the Early Middle Ages (London, 2004), pp. 102–03.
12. As noted in K. Newell, Cornwall and Scilly Urban Survey. Historic Characterisation for Regeneration: St Ives, HES Report no. 2005R069 (Truro, 2005), p. 15, and Pastscape Monument no. 424926. Cornwall & Scilly Historic Environment Record no. 29909 notes that the name Porthminster is first recorded in 1301 and it furthermore occurs in the name Walto Porthmaystre, Walter of Porthminster, in 1327 (J. H. Matthews, A History of the Parishes of Saint Ives, Lelant, Towednack and Zennor (London, 1892), p. 49). In 1362–3 it is found as Porthmenstre in the context of a writ of April of that year directing the Sheriff of Cornwall to restore property in a number of settlements, including Porthmenstre, to Henry son of Richard Trewennard and Richard Tyrel and Rose his wife (H. C. Maxwell Lyte (ed.), A Descriptive Catalogue of Ancient Deeds: Volume 4 (London, 1902), deed A. 10422 at p. 555), and it is mentioned again as Porthmenster in 1375 (H. C. Maxwell Lyte (ed.), A Descriptive Catalogue of Ancient Deeds: Volume 5 (London, 1906), deed A. 12086 at p. 240, cross-referenced to deed A. 10422). Other instances include a William Porthmynster who appears in the Penwith Hundred Court Roll for 1486–7 for assaulting William Bolenov 'with force of arms, namely with sword and stones, beat, wounded and maltreated him, in breach of the king's peace' (CRO AR/2/101/1); a Vivian Aunger of Porthmynster, 'fyssher', who appears alongside a Henry Aunger of Porthia [St Ives], 'fyssher', in 1433 (Calendar of Close Rolls, Henry VI: Volume 2, 1429-1435 (London, 1933), p. 287); and a reference to 'lands, &c. in the Gewe of Porthmynster' in 1483 (Lyte (ed.), Descriptive Catalogue of Ancient Deeds: Volume 4, deed A. 10054 at p. 500). For the meanings of minster/mynster in Middle English, see S. M. Kuhn (ed.), Middle English Dictionary (Ann Arbor, 1977), pp. 508–09.
13. I. Tompsett, Social Dynamics in South-West England AD 350–1150: An Exploration of Maritime Oriented Identity in the Atlantic Approaches and Western Channel Region (University of Nottingham PhD Thesis, 2012), pp. 126 (fig. 40), 128 (fig. 42), 379. On the name 'Porthminster', see Cornwall & Scilly Historic Environment Record no. 29909; O. J. Padel, Cornish Place-Name Elements (Nottingham, 1985), pp. 167, 300; O. J. Padel, A Popular Dictionary of Cornish Place-Names (Penzance, 1988), pp. 194, 200.
14. St Gothian's Oratory: J. A. Nowakowski et al, 'Return to Gwithian: shifting the sands of time', Cornish Archaeology, 46 (2007), 13–76 at p. 58; A. Preston-Jones & N. Thomas, St Gothian's Oratory, Gwithian, Cornwall: Survey and Fencing, CAU report no. 2001022 (Truro, 2002); C. Thomas, Gwithian: Notes on the Church, Parish and St Gothian’s Chapel (Gwithian, 1964). St Piran's Oratory: I. Tompsett, Social Dynamics in South-West England AD 350–1150: An Exploration of Maritime Oriented Identity in the Atlantic Approaches and Western Channel Region (University of Nottingham PhD Thesis, 2012), pp. 126 (fig. 40), 133, 334; S. Turner, Making a Christian Landscape: How Christianity Shaped the Countryside in Early-Medieval Cornwall, Devon and Wessex (Exeter, 2006), pp. 38, 49; D. Cole & J. Gossip, St Piran's Oratory, Perranzabuloe, Cornwall: Results of Evaluation, CAU report no. 2010R140 (Truro, 2010); J. Gossip, 'Dark Age skeletons found at Cornish chapel were early Christian children and women who could have been from same family', Culture24, 20 August 2015, online article. Lelant Towans: I. Tompsett, Social Dynamics in South-West England AD 350–1150: An Exploration of Maritime Oriented Identity in the Atlantic Approaches and Western Channel Region (University of Nottingham PhD Thesis, 2012), pp. 134 (fig. 45), 375 (fig. 201), and 379–81; C. Noall, 'Nineteenth-Century discoveries at Lelant', Cornish Archaeology, 3 (1964), 34–6; Cornwall & Sicily Historic Environment Record no. 31061; C. Thomas, And Shall These Mute Stones Speak? Post-Roman Inscriptions in Western Britain (Cardiff 1994), p. 198, fig. 12.1.
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