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St Levan

Civil parishes in CornwallEngvarB from June 2016PenwithVillages in Cornwall
St levan church porthcurno
St levan church porthcurno

St Levan (Cornish: Selevan) is a civil parish in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The parish is rural with a number of hamlets of varying size with Porthcurno probably being the best known. Hewn out of the cliff at Minack Point and overlooking the sea to the Logan Rock is the open-air Minack Theatre, the inspiration of Rowena Cade in the early 1930s. St Levan lies within the Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and the South West Coast Path, which follows the coast of south-west England from Somerset to Dorset passes by on the cliffs. There are two Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), designated for the vegetation and geology, and Gwennap Head in particular, is favoured by birdwatchers, many who travel the length and breadth of Britain to watch rare seabirds.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article St Levan (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 50.041 ° E -5.662 °
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Porthchapel Cream Teas


TR19 6JT
England, United Kingdom
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St levan church porthcurno
St levan church porthcurno
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Minack Theatre
Minack Theatre

The Minack Theatre (Cornish: Gwaryjy Minack) is an open-air theatre, constructed above a gully with a rocky granite outcrop jutting into the sea. The theatre is at Porthcurno, 4 miles (6.4 km) from Land's End in Cornwall, England. The Minack's performing season runs from Easter to the end of October and includes a wide range of music and theatre. Each year, the Minack produces several professional productions as well as hosting visiting companies. It has appeared in many lists of the world's most spectacular theatres.The theatre was the brainchild of Rowena Cade, who moved to Cornwall after the First World War and built a house for herself and her mother on land at Minack Point for £100. Her sister was the feminist dystopian author Katharine Burdekin, who lived with them from the 1920s. In 1929, Rowena Cade became involved with a local village group of players who staged Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream in a nearby meadow at Crean, repeating the production the next year. They decided that their next production would be The Tempest and Miss Cade offered her cliff garden as a suitable location for the play. Miss Cade and her gardener, Billy Rawlings, made a terrace and rough seating, hauling materials down from the house or up via the winding path from the beach below. In 1932, The Tempest was performed with the sea as a dramatic backdrop, to great success. Miss Cade resolved to improve the theatre, working over the course of the winter months each year (with the help of Billy Rawlings, Charles and Thomas Angove and other friends), to create the theatre that exists today. She was still working on it well into her 80s. Rowena Cade died in 1983 shortly before her 90th birthday. In 1944, the theatre was used as a location for the Gainsborough Studios film Love Story, starring Stewart Granger and Margaret Lockwood but inclement weather forced them to retreat to a studio mock-up. In 1955, the first dressing rooms were built. In the 1970s, the theatre was managed by Lawrence Shove. Since 1976 the theatre has been registered as a charitable trust and is now a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO). The theatre is open for visitors throughout the year though visiting days are limited in the winter. The 90th anniversary of the Minack was celebrated with a production of The Tempest performed by Hertfordshire Players in August 2022.

Gwennap Head
Gwennap Head

Gwennap Head (Cornish: Toll Pedn Pennwydh, meaning holed head of Penwith; grid reference SW3621) is a headland on the south coast of the Penwith peninsula, Cornwall, United Kingdom. It is within the parish of St Levan and approximately 4 miles (6.4 km) south of Land's End, and less than 1 mile (1.6 km) north-west of Porthgwarra, the nearest village. The area of Gwennap Head is designated as part of the Penwith Heritage Coast and also designated as part of the Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The South West Coast Path closely follows the coastline around the headland. Its intricate and varied granite cliffs include the famous Chair Ladder crag, making it a popular destination for recreational climbers of all abilities. The older and more correct name for the headland is Tol-Pedn-Penwith (locally "Tol-Pedn" for short) which comes from the Cornish for 'the holed headland of Penwith', referring to the awesome vertical blowhole from the clifftop to a sea cave. From 1888 the name was changed to Gwennap Head, perhaps named after a local family, but the new name did not enter local usage until the 1970s.The inshore waters around the headland are busy with shipping of all sizes. There is a Coastwatch station on the headland in the former coastguard building. The area is also popular with naturalists who, at the appropriate time of the year, can see rare animals such as chough (Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax), great shearwater (Puffinus gravis), basking shark and ocean sunfish (Mola mola).