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Cornwall

Gunwalloe Cliff Castle walk

Illustration of a representation of what Gunwalloe Cliff Castle would have looked like. a collection of huts on a prominent cliff, surrounded by a wooden wall. — Illustration by Cornwall National Landscape Monumental Improvements Project for Gunwalloe Cliff Castle | © Cornwall National Landscape Monumental Improvements Project

Discover the history behind Gunwalloe. This 2 mile (3.2 km) walk themed around the archaeology of the area, will help illuminate the past; passing the site of Bronze Age settlements, an Iron Age fort, round barrows dating from 1110BC and a church built in the 13th-century.

Near to

Start point

Gunwalloe National Trust Car Park, TR12 7QE.

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Trail information

Difficulty*

Full trail

DistanceMiles: 2 (km: 3.2)

Duration1 hour

Dog friendly**

*Steep climb, uneven paths, may be muddy
**Church Cove council enforced seasonal ban 10am - 6pm, 1 July - 31 August. Dollar Cove dog friendly all year. Keep dogs under close control. Be aware of cliff edges when on the coast path.

Cliff edges and metal detecting

Stay away from the edge of cliff tops. Metal detecting is not permitted.

Address
Gunwalloe National Trust Car Park, near Helston, Cornwall, TR12 7QE
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Directions via Google Maps
By road
From Helston take the A3083 south towards Lizard. After the bridge Gunwalloe is signposted on the right (before the roundabout). Continue for 3.3 miles along this road and park in the National Trust car park. Parking: National Trust pay and display car park at Gunwalloe. Sat Nav: Use postcode TR12 7QE or what3words:///coffee.marzipan.segments
Total stages: 7
Total stages: 7
Start point
Gunwalloe National Trust Car Park, TR12 7QE.
Stage 1
Leave the car park and turn left down the road past Winnianton Farm
Winnianton Farm
You’re now walking over what was, from the seventh to the eleventh centuries, the largest rural settlement yet discovered in Cornwall, long since buried by windblown sand or lost to the encroaching sea. By the time of the Domesday Book in 1086, this settlement had become the royal manor of Winnianton, one of the most important in Cornwall, and the administrative centre of a region stretching from Lizard Point to Stithians. It had its own chapel, a manor house and 186 households.
Stage 2
At this point you may want to explore Jangy e-ryn (Dollar Cove), if not, move on to stage 3.
Dollar Cove
Jangy e-ryn beach is also known as Dollar Cove because silver coins have been known to wash ashore at Jangy e-ryn, and legends persist of a vast fortune of silver dollars from a Spanish ship which was wrecked in an inlet of Castle Mound in the 1780s. Here you’ll see dramatic folds of killas – metamorphosed sedimentary rocks – in the cliffs, the result of supercontinents colliding 350 million years ago. In summer, sand martins nest in the uppermost cliffs.
View overlooking Dollar Cove | © National Trust Images
Stage 3
On the left side, by the entrance to Dollar Cove, a path winds up onto Castle Mound. Follow this path to the top, on your left you will spot a way marker post with a QR code to find out more about the Cornwall National Landscape Monumental Improvements Project at Gunwalloe.
Gunwalloe Cliff Castle
Gunwalloe Cliff Castle is a Bronze Age burial site and Iron Age fort, with views stretching west to the Penwith peninsula. The steepsided inlet on the southern flank of the promontory is where the various doomed attempts to salvage the silver dollar treasure were made. Square holes seen at low tide indicate the position of the 1845 coffer dam. Once at the top of the Mound, stand with your back to the sea, imagine the landscape lying before you over the last 3,000 years. Around 1100BC Bronze Age people were settling here; A burial cist (a slate-lined box), pottery and deer antlers from the period have been unearthed on the Mound. By 400BC, you’d be standing in the middle of an Iron Age fort, protected from the land by ramparts, manned by warriors armed with slings and sling-stones. Parts of the hilltop settlement were paved with slate flagstones, and the inhabitants wore shale bracelets and used cooking pots with slate lids. Around the sixth century AD the early Christian missionary St Winwaloe arrived from Brittany, and dwelt in a cell cut into the rock (where the church tower now stands). His hermitage and holy well became a place of pilgrimage, and a sizeable fishing and farming community grew up here in the Dark Ages. The people lived in thatched huts or stone houses, in hollows amongst the dunes; their dwellings and domestic rubbish tips have been discovered in the eroding cliffs, together with pottery, cauldrons, plates and dishes.
Path up to Castle Mound, Gunwalloe. Showing the Cornwall National Landscape Monumental Improvements project sign. | © National Trust Images
Stage 4
You can return down the mound the way you came (recommended) or follow a path around the mound and descend a steep slope and some steep uneven steps behind the church.
Church of the Storms
The church was gradually rebuilt from a chapel: the detached tower went up in the thirteenth century, and the church itself over the following two centuries. It has a barrelvaulted roof, a painted rood screen made from timber from the St Anthony, wrecked nearby in 1527, and a Norman font dating from about 1100. In the churchyard of St Winwaloe, also called the Church of the Storms, you’ll see the graves of two boys killed on Fishing Cove minefield, a drowned German pilot, and memorials to the 16 crew of the Heidrun, lost in 1915. From 1906 until 1970 the church stood in the midst of Mullion golf course, and players such as JM Barrie and AA Milne would attempt a brave tee-shot from Winnianton Farm across the chasm of Jangy e-ryn to the 12th hole beside the graveyard.
Gunwalloe Church and Church Cove seen from Castle Mound | © National Trust Images
Stage 5
As you enter Church Cove, follow the path to the left and over the bridge.
Stage 6
Follow the path to climb the coast path to Carrag-a-pilaz, pass through the car park and follow the path down to Poldhu Cove.
Stage 7
Once you have explored Poldhu Cove, return to Gunwalloe by the same route. You can skip Castle Mound and walk directly from Church Cove to the car park (via Gunwalloe Kiosk – seasonally open).
End point
Gunwalloe National Trust Car Park, TR12 7QE.
Trail map
Numbered map of Gunwalloe Cliff Castle walk | © © Crown copyright and database rights 2013 ordinance survey
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Gunwalloe kiosk to The Stables cafe

This long leisurely out & back walk follows the wild coastline from Gunwalloe to the heaped shingle beach at Loe Bar and through the woodland at Penrose to The Stables cafe, and back again.

Gunwalloe, near Helston, Cornwall, TR12 7QE

gunwalloe@nationaltrust.org.uk

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