Gerran

02/02/2022

The Church and village named not after the Saint but after the word dinas/dynas meaning "fort". The fort stands on the summit of an impressive conical hill just outside the village, has two Iron Age ramparts covering an area of 113 meters in diameter. The inner wall built of stone is now the churchyard wall and the outer rampart can just about be seen in the fields 18 meters nearby.

07/01/2022

The spectacular angular unconformity exposed in the cliffs at Pendower Beach on the Roseland.

This unconformity can be seen at several places around the Cornish coast. At this location it is between the underlying Mid Devonian Pendower Formation and the overlying Quaternary superficial units. It represents a 390 million year chunk missing from the geological record!

The Pendower Formation was deposited in a deep ocean during Devonian rifting. It was then caught up in the Variscan Orogeny, right in the orogenic wedge where it was folded and faulted as two tectonic plates collided.

The overlying Quaternary successions formed over the last couple of hundred thousand (not million) years, and demonstrate huge shifts in our climate. The lower section is part of a raised beach that formed during a period of elevated sea level, about 5 m higher than what it is today. This was around 100-200 thousand years ago. The upper section was deposited in periglacial conditions during one of the last ice ages, around 10s of thousands of years ago.

We can tell a lot about how the Earth evolved here by reading the rocks we see. However, a lot happened in that missing 390 million year gap! Without any geological record it is difficult to tell what happened.

Difficult, but not impossible. What we can do is look elsewhere, regionally or globally, to infer what has gone on and try to fill in the gaps here. We can also look in more detail at the journey these older rocks have been on to get here. Things like understanding how fractures formed over time, faults that might have reactivated, or veins that formed in them.

We’re now starting to fill in the gaps in the Cornish geology puzzle. There is still the question of what happened before, but that’s another post!

30/12/2021

St just in Roseland church / church yard is beautifully lit up and open this evening, Thursday the 30/12/21 from 5 - 8pm for people to visit! Why not take the ferry over for a look and take advantage of the later service running until 8.30pm. Free entry to the church and church yard but donations to the church welcome!
(Photo credit Marianne Bryan)

16/12/2021

The place-name Lammana contains the Cornish place-name elements lann and manach, and means 'the early Christian enclosure or monastery of the monk'. Lammana was the C13 name of a cell, near Looe, of Glastonbury Abbey. The abbey owned land on the mainland opposite St George's Island, and St George's Island itself, and the name was applied to both. However, a document of 1290 states that "Lammana is a certain sea-girt island" - and makes it clear that the name applied originally to the island. The island must have been named from an early Christian lann here. The site of the lann is not known - possibly by the chapel or close to the findspot of imported Dark Age pottery. However on the northern side of the central knoll on the island, a broad ditch appears to surround the summit, perhaps indicating an early enclosed site. If this enclosing earthwork ran continuosly around the summit it would have embraced a rough oval, measuring approx. 25m in length by 15m wide (National Trust Archaeological Survey report for Bodigga Cliff: H**e Point & St George's Island, Cornwall, 1987:7). The fact that Lammana became a cell of Glastonbury after the Norman Conquest may indicate that the Celtic community was of some importance, and survived into the medieval period. The chapel was transferred to the mainland in the C12. The reason for this was because "people who through devotion would have wanted to visit the chapel on St. Michael's Day often lost their lives in the stormy sea". The mainland chapel had monastic buidings associated with it, which were built down the hill in a sheltered spot. The chapel fell into disuse at the time of the Dissolution and was later destroyed. Excavations were carried out in the 1930s by Croft Andrew on the mainland chapel and associated buildings. There is no excavation report for the site but finds, records, and a complete photographic archive remain. A newly discovered document of 1290 makes it clear that this chapel was dedicated to St Michael, and that it pre-dated the mainland chapel. It was a focus for pilgrims on St Michael's Day. The remains of the medieval chapel consist of a few earthworks on a small platform on top of the island and a few carved stones. The stones are oolitic limestone and are parts of a column shaft. Further fragments at the modern house may also have come from the chapel.
On the mainland, a St Michael's Chapel was built by the Abbey of Glastonbury, for their cell at Lammana, possibly in the C12, to replace the chapel on St. George's or Looe Island. St Michael's Chapel was cleared and excavated in the 1930s by Croft Andrew. Remains of it are still to be seen, near the top of a very steep hillslope, opposite Looe Island. It is within a fenced enclosure provided by Looe Old Cornwall Society. The outline of the chapel is fairly complete and is a square structure 10m by 3.5m. There is a square structure 2.0m by 2.0m attached to the exterior of the western end of the south wall. The structure has an entrance gap in the middle of the south side, possibly a porch. The walls can still be seen and are 0.7m high and 0.8m wide. Finds from Croft Andrew's excavation date from the C12 to C16. Photographs taken by Croft Andrew give a good insight into his excavation techniques. The photos and a copy of the pottery report are in an information file at CAU; other records and finds are at the RIC, Truro. The excavation was never written up. A sherd of medieval pottery was found on the hillslope just below the south-west corner of the chapel in 1987. Remains of a rectilinear enclosure, possibly associated with the chapel are visible on aerial photographs. -Info from the Heritage Gateway website.
YT video of Time Team- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5PdeyBZ7lw

12/12/2021

08/11/2021

Portscatho today on the circular walk from Pendower Beach: http://iwkc.co.uk/w/226