[1] The cove became popular in the early Victorian era, with many distinguished visitors including Queen Victoria and Prince Albert[2] and the poets Alfred Tennyson and Algernon Swinburne.

One of the rocks (peridotite) is rich in magnesium and iron, and changed through heat and pressure to serpentinite as it pushed upwards from the Moho, the boundary of the Earth's crust and mantle.

The rock mass, which became the Lizard peninsula, passed the Tropic of Cancer less than 100 million years ago and finally reached 50° north at about the start of the last Ice Age.

[6] Kynance Cove is an important site for geologists because of the exposures of the two types of ophiolitic serpentinite, together with granite and gneiss pods within the serpentine.

[7][8] There are a number of small tidal islands and stacks within Kynance Cove which were formed because the tremolite serpentine was broken into blocks and invaded by other types of rock, including granite and basalt.

[12] Kynance Cove was the venue for the first British record of Porter's rustic (Athetis hospes), a rare migrant moth from southern Europe.