CornwallWildlife Trust

Roche Rock& the Tresayes Trail

Protecting Wildlife for the Future

(& rocks!)

Roche Rock is a Cornish icon – visible for miles.

But Tresayes Quarry is a hidden gem.

Roche Rock is owned by the Tregothnan Estate. The quarry is owned by Goonvean but is leased to the Cornwall Wildlife Trust – for one peppercorn a year - as a nature reserve.

Follow the trail and find out more! You can start either at the Rock or the Quarry. And if you want refreshment there is a range of pubs, shops and take-aways in Roche village. Just don’t try paying in peppercorns!

Tresayes Quarryis one of over fifty reserves cared for by Cornwall Wildlife Trust. These range in size from very small ones, like Tresayes Quarry, to large areas of moorland. Most are open to the public at all times.

Cornwall Wildlife Trust Five Acres · Allet Truro · Cornwall TR4 9DJ

To join or for other information

call: 01872 273939 email: info@cornwt.demon.co.uk web: www.cornwallwildlifetrust.org.uk

leaflet written by: John Macadam / Earthwords designed by: Aawen Design Studio photographs by: David Chapman, Neil Lindsay, Bren Unwin, John Macadam, Adrian Langdon, Stuart Hutchings, Jamie MacArthur, Paul Naylor, Ian Bennallick, Colin Butler & Alan James illustration by: Brin Edwards historic photos: China Clay Country Park British Geological Survey Cornwall Record Office air photo: Cornwall County Council

satellite image: Plymouth Marine Laboratory

CornwallWildlife Trust

This project has received support from ALSF Partnership Grants through Defra’s Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund.

You can find out more about Cornwall Wildlife Trust, how to become a member, and about events, and nature reserves -

why not contact us, or look at our website?web: www.cornwallwildlifetrust.org.uk

of Roche – in about

& a few pictures!

y400 million years

400 wordsAround 400 million years ago this was all a shallow sea. Strange creatures lived in Roche! But of course Roche, and Cornwall, and the world looked very different. You would not have been able to recognise today’s continents. Some have been made of bits and pieces of earlier continents, and anyway they have drifted all over the place in the last 400 million years.Sand and mud were eroded off these old continents and dumped on the sea-bed. Then we were in the middle of a slow-speed shunt between Africa and Europe which crumpled the new layers of sand and mud. Slow speed? These old continents came together at the stately pace of about 1 centimetre a year. That’s about the rate your fingernails grow. But imagine growing your finger nails for a million years – they’d be ten kilometres long: no need for extensions!

The crumpled rocks made a mountain chain. Deep beneath the mountains some of the rock melted – and molten blobs popped up (like a ‘lava lamp’) and then solidified as granite a few kilometres below the ground surface. All sort of other rocks – with strange names - were formed: pegmatite, greisen, schorl, spotted slate, calc-flinta, china clay – and ores of metals like tin, tungsten, iron, nickel and uranium. The mountains were worn down – strange reptiles

walked the hot dry plains. Did dinosaurs ramble through Roche? They’d have been way above

our heads! Several thousand metres of rock has been eroded since the

dinosaurs roamed.

About 50 million years ago the climate was warm and wet, and

probably a lot more feldspar rotted to form china clay (kaolin). In fact the

whole of the granite, and the slate around it,

was weathered to quite a depth. Then in the Ice Age of the last couple of million years rapid erosion stripped off this material to leave tors – like Helman Tor and Roche Rock. There were no glaciers here but the conditions changed from arctic – for ten of thou-sands of years – to pleasantly warm, several times. Today we are living in a ‘pleasantly warm’ time. In arctic times Rochewould have been like Siberia today but probablywith the odd herd of mammoths.

Did woolly mammoths once graze where cows and sheep do now?The last glacial period ended about twelve thousand years ago. Since then we’ve changed the area a great deal. Cleared the land and farmed. Built houses, churches, chapels, schools and factories. Dug up metal ores, and dug up china clay.It’s all written into the landscape.

This air photo was taken in 1995 – what changes have taken place since then?

- What changes may take place in the next hundred years?- Another ten thousand?- Will it be warmer - or will there be an Ice Age?- Another few million?

Probably humans will have become extinct by then! What sort of planet will we leave?

Roche

Roche Rock

St Gomonda Church

Prosper Tip

Medieval Fields

Carbis Brickworks

Tresayes Quarry

Trezaise Chapel

UnweatheredGranite

1907

Tin Ore

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Roche Rock 1 has been written about for at least four centuries, and been described in many ways! “Craggy ponderous stones”, “A verie high, steepe and craggie rocke”, and even likened to a huge molar and an upturned bunch of bananas. It’s made of two very tough minerals, quartz and tourmaline, which is why it sticks up. The chapel was dedicated to St Michael in 1409, but has been a ruin since the eighteenth century. The rare Tunbridge filmy fern grows in shady places on the Rock, and a wide range of plants and animals live in the heathland around the rocks.

Follow one of the many paths around the Rock and then the signposted footpath.

The name Hendra 2 has been found back to 1270: it signifies a permanent farm, with buildings (rather than a temporary place for a shepherd to sleep in near his flocks). Hendre vighan is mentioned in a document of 1302 – Little Hendra. The ruin beside the track was once a cottage.

At the tarmac road turn left until it ends, then follow the track to the right, gently uphill to the nature reserve.

The scrubby area 3 in the shallow valley is now called Stennacks which means tinworks, but in the 19th century it was called Stennack Ladron – Thieves’ Tinworks. The sands and gravels in the valley bottom were turned over for tinstone, leaving the characteristic landscape of ridges and troughs, bumps and pools – as you can see in the air photo.Tresayes Quarry 4 had two quite different products at different times. The quarry is mostly known for its very long feldspar crystals. The rock was quarried then the feldspar hand-picked by women – balmaidens –

using hammers. At one stage the quarried rock was loaded into wagons, sent down a tramway and then tipped down to women working in open sheds below. The feldspar was worked on and off in the 19th century with short re-openings in both world wars. The material was used in glazes, glass and porcelain. In the 20th century a very hard rock (like Roche Rock) was quarried

for roadstone but this quarry is now under the tips 5 of Wheal Prosper clay

works, while evidence for the rock crushers, stock piles and

waste tips is now hidden under the vegetation beside the track. The rock was called blue elvan by the quarrymen, but this name is also used in Cornwall for ‘greenstone’, which is usually a dolerite, a quite

different rock.

You can start this trail either from the Roche Rock or from Tresayes Quarry. Part of the route is across fields and can be muddy. There are also stiles to cross.

Roche Rock& the Tresayes Trail

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The quarry is now a nature reserve with willow cloaked in lichens and ferns and mosses. On the dryer part you will find heathers and other wild flowers. Many birds find shelter and food in the willows. Cornwall Wildlife Trust pays one peppercorn per year as rent to Goonvean – a bargain!

The place-name Tresayes has been traced back to 1260 – when it was spelt Treseis. Seis was probably a person’s name, so Treseis means ‘The farm belonging to Seis’. Today there are several ways of spelling Tresayes. Seis would probably be quite at home in the flower-rich heathland around the Rock: it has not changed much in a thousand years, but his animals would have kept the gorse, bracken and brambles down!

Retrace your steps back to the road, and continue towards the main road until just past a farmyard - then look back!

The end wall of the barn 6 has an amazing collection of the local stones – all the rocks in the neighbourhood are here: different granites, quartz-tourmaline rock (‘schorl’, or ‘blue elvan’ to the quarrymen), killas (baked slates), ‘spar-stone’ (quartz), and more.

Continue to the end of the road.

Trezaise Chapel 7 was built in 1883 but incorporates an

earlier building’s dedication stone. The Bible Christians broke away from the Wesleyan Methodists, but later rejoined. Beside the main entrance is some fancy carving in a limestone, brought in from around Bath. John Wesley

visited Roche in 1768.

Opposite the chapel is a modern Cornish hedge made of Cornish Stone, brought in from a quarry at St Issey or Liskeard or

somewhere. Certainly there is no stone like it found in the

area. Using waste rock from the claypits would have been more in character. At the top of the hedge is some zig-zag work – Jack and Jills, or curzey-way – commonly seen in North Cornwall.

You can either turn back down Prosper Road and then go down the track and across the fields to the Rock, or follow the main road back, past the new cemetery to the parish church and on to the Rock.

The church 8 is dedicated to St Gomonda. It was rebuilt twice in

the nineteenth century but at least the Norman font of Pentewan stone

survives. There are similar fonts in Bodmin and St Austell parish churches. In

the churchyard there’s an unusual medieval cross and some fine carved slate tombstones. The walls of the church are made of blocks both of granite and of darker schorl – the quartz-tourmaline rock which makes up the Rock: can you tell which is which?

Neolithic pottery was found under the new housing estate 9, so Roche has been inhabited for at least five thousand years.

A short drive down the road towards Bugle, and the mostly off-road Clay Trails, is Carbis Brickworks. There’s no pavement so best not to walk down the road, but you could follow a footpath downhill from Hendra.

Carbis brickworks 10 is on private property but you can see the kilns and chimney stack from the road. It produced bricks for furnaces, calciners, smelting houses and foundries. You can also find white bricks stamped CARBIS used in more humdrum situations. On both sides are old clay dries, converted for modern uses.

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Cemetery

Feldspar

Long-tailed tit

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5TP Space to park a car Toilets Public HouseKey - Route + Route

Roche Rock 1 has been written about for at least four centuries, and been described in many ways! “Craggy ponderous stones”, “A verie high, steepe and craggie rocke”, and even likened to a huge molar and an upturned bunch of bananas. It’s made of two very tough minerals, quartz and tourmaline, which is why it sticks up. The chapel was dedicated to St Michael in 1409, but has been a ruin since the eighteenth century. The rare Tunbridge filmy fern grows in shady places on the Rock, and a wide range of plants and animals live in the heath-land around the rocks.

Tunbridge filmy fern