The valley is privately owned from The Wink (public house) down to the cove, which is reached by a narrow lane to the car park and quay.

[5][6] In the 17th century a privateer vessel owned by the Penrose family was regularly moored in the cove and was wrecked during a storm.

At one time five cannon were on the sea floor in 15 m (49 ft) of water, and one is now at Stoney Cove, Leicestershire where it is used at an underwater archaeological training area.

[9] On the slopes, daffodils and early potatoes were grown; the flowers were sent to markets at Covent Garden (London), Birmingham and Wales.

[10] Waste tips on the eastern side of the cove are a reminder of the granite quarries first opened by John Freeman, on St Aubyn land, in 1849 and continued working until 1911.

[11] Famous buildings and constructions include Admiralty Pier at Dover, London County Council offices, the Thames Embankment and Portland Breakwater.

A plinth weighing 20 tons was sent to The Great Exhibition of 1851 by sea but eventually, due to the hazards of loading ships, granite was sent by road via Kemyal and Paul Hill through Newlyn, to the cutting yards in Wherrytown.

An area of 20 acres (8.1 ha) and known as the ″Lamorna Harbour Works″ was put up for auction at the Mart, Tokenhouse Yard, City of London on 16 June 1881.

The property, on both sides of the valley, included ″the exceedingly valuable″ granite quarry with harbour, wharf and pier, a powder magazine, lime and mill house, carpenter's shops, 12 horse-power water-wheel, foreman's residence and a "substantial and superior" dwelling-house.

This period is dramatised in the 1998 novel Summer in February by Jonathan Smith, which was adapted for the 2013 movie directed by Christopher Menaul.

Lamorna was the village used in the novel The Memory Garden by Rachel Hore (2007) and was a location used for the shooting of Sam Peckinpah's 1971 thriller Straw Dogs.