Wherrytown

Wherrytown is a small settlement in west Cornwall, United Kingdom, on the east side of the Laregan River, between Newlyn and Penzance.

[1][2] The area bore the brunt of the Ash Wednesday storm on 7 March 1962, with most of the buildings destroyed along with nearly one mile of the seafront from the Battery Rocks to Tolcarne heavily damaged.

Offshore surveys of Mount's Bay have found submerged, erosional plains and valleys containing deposits of peat, sand and gravel.

The deposits indicate cyclical changes from wetland, to coastal forest, to brackish conditions have been occurring over the past 12,000 years as sea levels rose.

[4] Either side of Penzance, on the beaches at Ponsandane and Wherrytown, evidence of a ′submerged forest′ can be seen at low tide in the form of several partially fossilised tree trunks.

[5] Divers and trawlers also find submerged tree trunks across Mount’s Bay and the forest may have covered a coastal plain 2 to 5 kilometres further south than today.

The samples of peat and wood around Penzance have been radiocarbon dated and indicate that the forest was growing from at least 6,000 to around 4,000 years ago when rising sea levels finally killed the trees.

Wherrytown was then outside the Borough of Penzance, and to avoid congestion and harbour dues, vessels grounded at the mouth of the Lariggan river to discharge their cargos into carts at low water.

[7] Daniel Defoe, staying in Penzance in circa 1722 wrote in A tour thro' the whole island of Great Britain – " .... the veins of lead, tinn, and copper ore, are said to be seen, even to the utmost extent of land at low water mark, and in the very sea .... ".

In 1762 one-tenth of the Wherry bounds (the boundaries of a tin mine) formed part of the security for a mortgage to Rachel Hawkins of Penquite, Golant.

[8][13] A storm on 12 February 1883 changed the course of the Lariggan stream to the east of the reef and caused erosion to the sea wall, which was blamed on ″the continual removal of sand for agricultural purposes″.

A tour of the works, in 1846, by Prince Albert and the royal family, resulted in an order for mantelpieces and pedestals for Osborne House on the Isle of Wight.

John Organ was one of the prize winners; for a pair of 13 ft (4.0 m) serpentine obelisks which were replicas of Cleopatra's Needle, and a carved font which was later exhibited in New York.

[17] In the International Exhibition in London in 1862 items were again shown, but there was now competition from the Lizard Serpentine Company based at Poltesco, and from Mr Pearce's workshop in Truro.

[17] In 1878 Col Heberden RA, IAAF inspected the 10th Battery of the DCAV (Duke of Cornwall Artillery Volunteers) in the Drill Hall, Wherrytown.

[14][19][20] In 1883 Messrs Freeman and Sons employed nineteen men at the Wherrytown yard, who cut stones from their three granite quarries at Lamorna, New Mill and Sheffield.