Million Years Making
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English Here’s a quiz! A. You’ll find granite from Bodmin Q. What connects Beachy Head 400 Moor in all these places. And in roads Lighthouse, the Mole at Gibraltar, and concrete. But there’s still plenty Marks & Spencer in Brussels, New left, helping to make Bodmin Moor Scotland Yard, Calcutta docks, Tower million unique. And the fantastic natural Bridge, Congress House and The shapes of the granite tors have been Stock Exchange? years protected for over a century. A39 in the Granite A30 A395 Launceston Camelford making A30 Peswar A39 cans mylvyl A388 Wadebridge A390 bledhen yn HAL A389 Callington Bodmin Liskeard formyans A38 A390 FAWYTH A390 A30 Saltash A391 A38 Lostwithiel Eden Project St Austell Looe Fowey Plymouth This leaflet has also been printed in Photographs French, German and Spanish. It is © by John Macadam, David Chapman, Tim Dingle, by John Macadam available on the world-wide web Nigel Hoppé, Steve Hartgroves / CAU, Stuart Hutchings, Tim Neale, David Holyoak, in English, Dutch, French, German Colin Butler, Robin Paris, Peter Wakely / and Spanish at: English Nature, & the Environment Agency. www.southeastcornwall.co.uk & Historic photographs provided by the Royal www.bodminmoor.co.uk Cornwall Museum, Cornwall Centre / Kresenn Kernow, Wheal Martyn Museum, Liskeard Funded by English Nature & Caradon & Museum, Liskeard Old Cornwall Society, North Cornwall District Councils. Michael Messenger of the Twelveheads Press, & Neil Parkhouse of the Lightfoot Press. The help of The Best of Bodmin Moor Marketing Group is also gratefully acknowledged. Te x t © John Macadam Earthwords, 2003 www.earthwords.co.uk Illustration by Brin Edwards. Designed by Aawen Design Studio (www.aawen.com) treat Published by Caradon & North Cornwall District Councils, 2003 with care ISBN 0-948410-03-5 Printed on chlorine-free paper Cornwall welcomes you Kernow a’gas dynargh gwreugh hy cherysa Stowe's Pound, a Neolithic enclosure Trethevy Quoit People have been using granite Nor is it surprising that so many as a building material on Bodmin survive today. Initially loose rock at Moor since Neolithic times, that’s the surface – ‘moorstone’- was used. for around 5,000 years. With a But in the nineteenth century the ready supply of durable stone it’s quality of rock needed for civil not surprising that granite was engineering led to quarrying and Altarnun Church used in so many ways: buildings, an export trade which still continues dedicated to tombs, memorials and crosses. today. As a result of this quarrying, St Nonna millions of people have seen Bodmin Moor granite without realising it – or even visiting the moor! You might have even driven across crushed Bodmin Moor, crushed as aggregate in tarmac! Long Tom King Doniert's Stone, memorial to a drowned Cornish King Grooves cut in a moorstone, ready Moorstone, split and abandoned for splitting with wedges 2 Eddystone Rock But the story of Bodmin Moor The few fossils it contained were Lighthouse - 1881 goes back far longer than 5000 deformed too. Around Delabole, in The new lighthouse was being built using years, of course. But we’re the best quality slates, shells got granite from De Lank talking geological, not human, turned into butterflies! Well, that’s Quarry on Bodmin Moor. timescales here. what Victorian tourists were sold! Most of Smeaton’s old candy-striped tower is ‘Delabole Butterfly’, now on Plymouth Hoe It all begins with muddy bottoms Deep beneath the mountains some originally a shellfish not an insect! – bottoms of tropical seas - of the Earth’s crust melted and around 400 to 350 million years popped up towards the surface ago. But then there was a slow like the blobs in a gigantic lava motion shunt and mountains were lamp – with molten granite. And formed as the Earth’s tectonic unlike your docile, domestic lava Baked rock with spots of new minerals plates slid slowly across the planet, lamp the granite blobs were very destroying an ocean and creating a hot, at around 800°C, and some mountain range instead. The mud probably even exploded at the was turned into surface, in volcanoes. But slate, and was most of the granite folded and solidified a couple of faulted. kilometres below the surface, around 290 million years ago, Baked slate with baking the surrounding needle-like crystals slaty rocks. Bodmin Moor granite has been used for farmhouses, terraces, churches, crosses, roundhouses, lighthouses, harbour walls, docks, kerb stones, setts, roads, stone drains and bridges. Including Bombay docks, Beachy Head Lighthouse, The British Museum, Congress House, Copenhagen docks, Devonport dockyard, Eddystone Lighthouse, The Embankment, Liverpool docks, London Bridge, the store formerly known as Marks & Spencer in Brussels, Milton Keynes, New Scotland Yard, Newcastle-upon-Tyne Civic Centre, Portland breakwater, The Royal Academy courtyard in Piccadilly, Southampton docks, Singapore docks, The Stock Exchange, The Tate Gallery, The Mole at Gibraltar, Tower Bridge, Westminster Bridge, Waterloo Station, and Woolworth’s in Oxford Street. 4 De Lank Granite Chalcopyrite, As the granite cooled it shrank and After the granite intruded, much Showery Tor copper ore cracked. Hot water circulated of Britain – probably including & Quartz through the slate, dissolving metals Cornwall - became a desert. then depositing them as minerals in But nothing stays the same for veins as it cooled. long geologically. Britain continued to drift slowly north, sea levels rose But the granite also contains tiny and fell. At one stage the sea amounts of uranium and as this probably covered the whole of slowly decays it produces heat the south-west granite moors. which has helped to keep the But as sea level fell it paused at circulation going: a nuclear- times, so the sea had time to erode powered hot water tank gently broad flat benches in the landscape Cassiterite, circulating water! Hot water has – ancient sea beds! Davidstow tin ore also rotted feldspar in the granite airfield is probably on one at to form china clay. around 300m above present day sea level. You can stand on Roughtor today – at 400m - and imagine the scenery changing as Manganese the sea level fell (but it’s also best ore to imagine the process speeded up or you’ll be there a very long time!) Logan Rock, a rocking stone on Little Roughtor Hematite, iron ore Roughtor Male Wheatear ‘Green Jim’ – uranium mineral 6 The Ordnance Survey mapping included within this publication is provided by Caradon District Council under licence from the Ordnance Survey in order to fulfil its public function to promote the area’s economic regeneration. Persons viewing this mapping should contact Ordnance Survey copyright for advice where they wish to licence 5 i Ordnance Survey mapping for their own use. Based on the Ordnance Survey mapping Hal is moor Davidstow with the permission of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office Crown in Cornish while k Hallworthy copyright. Unauthorised reproduction infringes Crown copyright and may lead to + A39 prosecution or civil proceedings. Caradon District Council LA 077402. 2003. Fawyth (‘Beech O A395 Slaughter Trees’) is Fowey. Bridge Bodmin Moor was CAMELFORD Pipers LAUNCESTON Laneast i 5 P k Foweymoor for i 5 T P Davidstow Pool Woods k % M T + % M k 5 % hundreds of years, P Crowdy Reservoir St Clether Meadow Pipit Delabole Lower Trewen Tregadillett until the Ordnance Moor 5 O Bray High Polyphant Survey renamed it P Down South Helstone Moor Buttern A30 5 % Little Petherwin on their first maps! St Teath Roughtor Hill Altarnun k 420m West Moor i % k Advent Roughtor Fivelanes Lewannick Map Key + Brown Leskernick 5 Louden Hill Hill 5 % O National Cycle Route Willy M + The B3257 k i i Tourist Information Michaelstow Alex Tor Butter's Beacon King Garrow To r Larrick P Car Park k Fox Tor Arthur's To r Tolborough Halvana B3254 T Toilets Downs + To r Plantation A388 + North 5 Pubs & Inns East Moor Coad's 5 % Bolventor Hill k Green Church k i O Hawk's 5 k 5 P To r 0 Watersports Bell Heather 5 % k i Hawk's Trewortha M k To r Twelve % St Breward To r Post Office St Tudy R Men's Moor iver Fow Smallacoombe + + + Bray Shop Historic site + Dozmary Downs Kilmar Tor B3257 De Lank A30 M Museum Pool Langstone Downs % ey 5 River Camel River 5 i Siblyback 5 S Railway Station Brown Sharp Tor Temple Moor Rilla Mill 5 k Blisland Gelly Downs k Colliford Stowe's Hill Henwood 5 % k Brown Linkinhorne B3266 P T Lake + Kelly Bray Gelly Cheesewring 5 % T i 5 i O Carburrow P R 5 % Cardinham Siblyback Craddock Moor Upton iver Lynher To r % M Moor Lake + T Cross Helland P Draynes HAL Tregarrick Tor % Common Minions + Caradon Hill + Penkestle 0 P T Pensilva Moor Common Moor Darite k % T 5 Stowe's Hill A30 Cardinham Warleggan k 5 CALLINGTON Golitha Falls i P k % FAWYTH Treslea P T + Trethevy Quoit Downs King Doniert's Stone + Cardinham St Neot 5 % k BODMIN i 5 T Woods i T 5 St Cleer Tremar O Mount St Cleer St Ive 5 k T i M Phoenix Mine P % M k k % P P T S T Downs P Tawna Goonzion k B3254 Downs Downs A390 A38 River Fowey LISKEARD 5 M T k % P i S Map origination by Bill Scolding of Serpentine Design, Cadgwith S Snipe Heath Spotted Orchid Cotton Grass 8 Belted Galloways Today we are living in an ‘interglacial’ Around 40 or 50 million years – a warmer period. 18,000 people ago the area was land with a live in the Moor’s 18 parishes, mostly warm, humid climate. The granite on the lower ground around the edges. got deeply weathered.