Topography and Landscape
CHAPTER III TOPOGRAPHY AND LANDSCAPE This section considers the environment forming the geological formations have given rise to other areas backdrop to this study of early Cornish sculpture. of higher ground, like the Staddon Grit (the St Dictated by the underlying geology, influenced by Breock Downs south of Padstow: Bristow 2004, 48). the prevailing climate, moulded by human activities, Through mineralization associated with its intrusion, and coloured by the plants growing on it, the physical the granites have had a great influence on Cornwall’s aspects of a county need to be understood in order to economy. The granite moors decrease in extent and appreciate the way people have interacted with it over height along the length of the county from Bodmin millennia. To aid understanding of a county which to Moor in the east, crowned by Brown Willy which at outsiders is still recognised as somehow ‘different’ from 420 m is the highest hill in Cornwall, to the western the rest of England, this account is in three parts. The first tip of Cornwall, where the granite cliffs, though considers the strictly geographical factors. In the second majestic and impressive, stand less than 00 m high. part, these basic facts are enlivened with the personal Further west, though not a part of this land-mass, the accounts and reactions of early visitors to Cornwall Isles of Scilly are the final link in the granite chain. who then, as today, perceived Cornwall as somehow The granite areas are characterised by rolling uplands ‘different’. The final part is a brief summary of the from which occasional craggy tors erupt, surrounded historic landscape character of Cornwall.
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