Kelly’s Directory of Cornwall 1893

ST. SENNEN is a parish 9 miles south-west from Penzance and 1 east from the Land’s End, in the Western division of the county, hundred of Penwith, petty sessional division of Penwith West, Penzance union and county court district, rural deanery of Penwith, archdeaconry of Cornwall and diocese of Truro: this is the most westerly parish in England and contains the Land’s End. The church of St. Sennen is an ancient building of granite, in the Perpendicular style, consisting of chancel, nave of four bays, south aisle, transept, south porch and an embattled western tower, with pinnacles containing 5 bells, 3 of which were recast and two added in 1889: a Latin inscription round the base of the font records that the church was consecrated on the Festival of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, Aug. 29, 1442 or 1443: portions of the rood stairs remain, and at the east end of the aisle is a fragment of a fresco preserved at the restoration: a decapitated figure, probably of the Virgin and Child, is in the transept: there are four stained memorial windows: the church was restored in 1867, at a cost of £1,000, and has 200 sittings. A very fine and ancient granite cross stands in the centre of the new churchyard; near Trevilley is another cross, with a carving of the “Crucifixion;” a third, now standing at the south entrance to the churchyard, was removed thither from a hedge close at hand, and there is also one in a field on the Mayon estate. The register dates from the year 1700. This place was formerly included ecclesiastically in the royal peculiar of St. Buryan, which see. The living is a rectory, tithe rent-charge £230, average £175, net yearly value £150, in the gift of H.R.H. the Duke of Cornwall, and held since 1892 by the Rev. John Henry Michell. There is a church mission room at Sennen Cove, and a Sunday school built and presented by the Rev. R. J. Rowe M.A. a former rector. There are Baptist, Wesleyan and Bible Christian chapels. The lords of the manor and principal landowners are Viscont Falmouth, Lord St. Levan, the Hon. Mrs. Gilbert, of Trelissick, Mrs. Symons, of Torre House, Washford, Somerset, Rev. R. J. Rowe M.A. and Mr. Henry Harvey. The soil is skillet; the subsoil is granite. The chief crops are wheat and potatoes; most of the land is pasturage. The area is 2,235 acres, 70 of which are water; rateable value, £2,825; the population in 1891 was 676. Treeve is the church town. Trevescan, half a mile south, and Trevilley, three-quarters of a mile south, are villages. Mayon, or Mean, is a small village near the Land’s End. Here is a stone called Table Mean.

Sexton, William Thomas.

Post, M.O. & T.O., [Money Order & Telegraph Office] S.B. [Savings Bank] & Annuity & Insurance Office. (Railway Sub-Office. Letters should have R.S.O. Cornwall added).—Mrs. Martha Trahair, postmistress. Letters arrive at 9.50 a.m. (north mail) & 6.50 p.m.; dispatched at 7.15 a.m. (north mail) & 2.30 p.m.

A School Board of 5 members was formed June 7, 1876; John Trewhella, jun. Treeve, St. Buryan, is clerk to the board & attendance officer

Board School (mixed), built in 1880, for 158 children; average attendance, 103; Thomas John Polkinghorne, master & Miss Alice Williams, infants’ mistress

Coast Guard Station, Thomas Stone, chief officer & five men

Conveyance to Penzance.—Combe’s ’bus at 2 p.m. daily; Trewhella’s, 9 a.m. tues. thurs. & sat. returning from Penzance same day at 6.30 p.m

The Land’s End is a mile south-west from the church and Peal Point is the most westerly extremity; the cliff here is 60 feet high, but at points in the immediate vicinity it is nearly four times that height; the rocky promontory is pierced by two natural archways. Three-quarters of a mile west of the church is Gamper Bay with Maen Castle, a lofty rocky headland; Gamper Hole is a spacious cavern in the cliff: the Irish Lady, Kettle’s Bottom, Armed Knight and Enys Dodnan are rocky islets off the coast; the last-named being pierced by a natural archway. Three-quarters of a mile north-west of the church, at the western extremity of Whitesand Bay, is Sennen Cove, with crab and lobster fishery: a coast guard station here has telegraphic communication with St. Just; the cables of the Western Union Company are here connected with the land wires. Whitesand Bay is noted for its beautiful beach; Athelstan, Stephen and John are all said to have landed here, and the Pretender Perkin Warbeck also disembarked on this shore 27 Sept. 1497, and captured St. Michael’s Mount. On Carn Brâs, one of a group of rocky islets, 1¼ miles from Land’s End, is the Longships Lighthouse, a structure of grey granite, built in 1883 by the Trinity House, furnished with an occulting light of over 700 candle power, eclipsed three seconds in every minute, and visible for a distance of 16 miles: the original lighthouse was built in 1795 by a Mr. Smith as a private beacon; the rock rises over 70 feet above low water at spring tides, and the height of the structure is over 55 feet, the circumference at the base being 62 feet. The Land’s End hotel, situated on the cliff, is 225 feet above the sea level.