Kynance Cove, Landewednack, Cornwall, England, UKi

Regional Level Types
Kynance Cove	Cove
Landewednack	Civil Parish
Cornwall	County
England	Constituent Country
UK	Country

This locality is situated on the border between Landewednack and Mullion civil parishes.

Kynance Cove (‘Porth Kewnans’, meaning ravine cove, in Old Cornish) is a cove on the eastern side of Mount’s Bay in Cornwall. It is located on the Lizard peninsula approximately 3 km (2 mi) north of Lizard Point. The cove became popular in the early Victorian era, with many distinguished visitors including Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and the poet Alfred Tennyson. Much of the Lizard peninsula is known for its botany and geology, and about 375 million years ago the molten rock, which eventually became the Lizard, was about 10 km (6 mi) below the surface of the earth and under immense heat and pressure. One of the rocks (peridotite) is rich in magnesium and iron, and changed through heat and pressure to serpentinite as it pushed upwards from the Mohorovičić discontinuity, the boundary of the earth's crust and mantle. It finally reached the crust's surface, about 30° south of the equator as part of an ocean ridge, in the Rhein Ocean. Over the next 80 million years the Rheic Ocean disappeared and the mass of rock headed north crossing the equator about 250 million years ago. The rock mass, which became the Lizard peninsula, passed the Tropic of Cancer less than 100 million years ago and finally reached 50° north at about the start of the last Ice Age.

Cornish geology typically consists of black, folded slates and pale grey, blocky granites. At Kynance Cove however, the cliffs are made up of dark green and red rocks, polished by thousands of years of crashing waves to look like shiny snakeskin. These rocks are types of serpentinite, and occur with dark grey igneous rocks (gabbro) and striped metamorphic rocks (amphibolite) along the Lizard coast from Mullion to Porthallow.

Cornwall written evidence of serpentine usage dates back to 1828, however local traditions would have existed significantly earlier. The popularity of Cornish serpentine as a building material took off after the Great Exhibition of 1851, in which Prince Albert ordered several pieces and souvenirs to be displayed. The Lizard Serpentine Company established a factory at Poltesco in 1855, producing serpentine stonework until 1870. Due to rising costs and falling demand the factory shifted focus to working with marble until finally closing in 1893, the remains of which can still be seen at Carleon Cove. Most of the smaller family-run workshops surrounding Kynance Cove have also since closed, and today only a few local craftspeople remain.

[The name Lizard for the peninsula is most probably a corruption of the Old Cornish name ‘Lys Ardh’, meaning high court; it is purely coincidental that much of the peninsula is composed of serpentinite-bearing rock.]

Geochronology

Geologic Time				Rocks, Minerals and Events
Phanerozoic
	Paleozoic
		Permian
			Guadalupian	ⓘ Major polymetallic mineralization ~270 Ma Cornwall, England, UK
			Cisuralian	ⓘ Porphyry dikes intruded (latest age) ~275 Ma Cornwall, England, UK ⓘ Greisenization (latest age) ~280 Ma Cornwall, England, UK ⓘ Porphyry dikes intruded (earliest age) ~280 Ma Cornwall, England, UK ⓘ Formation of metallized pegmatites ~285 Ma Cornwall, England, UK ⓘ Greisenization (earliest age) ~285 Ma Cornwall, England, UK ⓘ Emplacement of major plutons ~295 Ma Cornwall, England, UK

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References