2015 marked the 50th anniversary of the Neptune campaign. To celebrate this, we introduced some outdoor artwork to some of our places and you’ll find one such piece in the Porth Mear valley. The coastline of North Cornwall has a long history of shipwrecks with its jagged headlands and dangerous currents. This inspired us to commission a shipwreck sculpture to showcase the wild character of the coast.
Created by chainsaw sculptor Matthew Crabb, the sculpture is made from beech and oak, appearing as a shipwreck cast onto the shore of the reedbed. The shipwreck will fade in and out of the seasons as the vegetation grows and dies back around it. We invite you to look out for it when exploring this tucked away valley.
Intriguing archaeology
Visible from the coast path are six Bronze Age barrows (burial mounds) which probably date from between 1200-2500BC and an Iron Age cliff castle.
The cliff castle, situated across the neck of Park Head, is a good example of its kind. Two defensive banks are separated by a ditch. Cliff castles are common features on the Cornish coast, and archaeologists now think they were not temporary sites but permanently occupied, demonstrating the inter-tribal rivalries of the times. Normally one or two round houses would have stood inside the defences, sometimes against the back of the inner rampart. This site was probably used in the first centuries BC.