Most strangers obtain their first sight of Land's End at the conclusion of a direct walk or drive from Penzance. It is generally the first place the stranger desires to see, and he makes directly for it along the high road that runs inland.
The Land's End district, stretching westward from Penzance, forms the hundred of Penwith, a Celtic word meaning the "great, or chief, headland"; and Land's End itself was formerly "Penwithstart," a curious word produced by the association of the Celtic "Penwith," which had in very early times come to mean the district in general, with the purely Saxon "steort," or "start," a word which indicates a projecting point: an object that in fact juts, or starts, out. Hence, for example, the name of the Start, that prominent headland in South Devon, one of the most salient promontories along our coasts.
The aspect of the country, as you proceed from Penzance into the Land's End district, is quite in keeping with the name. Everything appears to resign itself to an ending. The town of Penzance looks like a last great urban effort, and the railway itself seems to come, tired out, to the shores of Mount's Bay, and to expire, rather than come to a terminus. It cannot make an effort even to get up into the town, but stops on the doorstep, so to say. And the large white granite station, with iron and glass roof, more resembles an aviary than a railway terminus, the sparrows assembling there in multitudes on the tie-rods, and chattering in almost deafening fashion. In those very considerable intervals between the coming and going of trains one may stand on the platform and not be able to hold a conversation, owing to the sparrows.
The western suburb of Alverton, with its beautiful gardens, and the birthplace, or early home, of Edward Pellew, afterwards Viscount Exmouth, left behind, and the elm-avenues of Trereife and the stream at Buryas Bridge once passed, on the main road to Buryan and Land's End, you come to an elevated tract of country where trees are few. Cultivation gradually grows the exception, instead of the rule, and there is a look as though Nature herself had grown weary and presently could do no more.
Three miles out from Penzance the road forks. You may go equally well either to right or left. Let us take the left-hand road, through the half-way village of St. Buryan, which itself adds no hospitable note to the scene, but seems to stand on the windy upland as an example of how ashen-hued and weatherbeaten a village may be. The tall, dark church-tower rising from its midst and serving as a landmark for miles, is the most striking feature of the place. St. Buriana, the patron saint, was originally Bruinech, daughter of an Irish chieftain, who adopted the religious life. The existing church, successor of a collegiate establishment founded by Athelstan, the Saxon conqueror of Cornwall, in A.D. 936, stands on the site of her oratory. It was last rebuilt in the Late Perpendicular style prevailing so largely in Cornwall, and is a fine large building. Two ancient granite crosses on steps stand outside; one in the churchyard, the other in the village street.
From St. Buryan the road descends presently to the valley of Penberth a wooded interlude, and thence rises to other bare and bleak heights, passing at one mile from Land's End the turning that leads to Sennen, on the alternative road.
Sennen takes its name from Senan, one of the numerous Irish missionary saints. He returned to Ireland, and died there. It was perhaps the friendship he cultivated with the Welsh St. David that led to Llansannan church in Denbighshire being dedicated to him.
Sennen is the very negation of life. Conceive a village that is no village, but only a small, grey, solemn church, a plainly built inn with creaking sign, swaying in the wind, a few whitewashed granite cottages, and a gaunt granite chapel. Through the place runs the road to the Land's End, and all around are fields enclosed within stone hedges. Never a tree in sight. That is Sennen. If you be a painter, you will not need to set your palette with many or brilliant colours to represent it as it is. It does not seem attractive; but in spite of all this gaunt, weatherbeaten character Sennen is not unlovely. The pearly, often opalescent, qualities of the Cornish skies are capable of transcending even four-square grey granite houses with slate roofs, and ugly chapels of the like, and of glorifying even stone hedges and unfertile fields; and so long as Sennen remains true to itself and innocent of red brick and ornament, which would be alien here, and therefore vulgar, even its weatherbeaten self is not without charm.
But if Sennen be indeed in the restricted key of grey and white, there is plentiful colour on the moorland around it, where the gorse spreads like lavishly flung gold, mingled with abundant purple heather. Not the scent of the sea, but the honey-like fragrance of those blossoms, pervades the place. The sea, indeed, although only a mile distant, whether at Land's End or at Sennen Cove, is not in view, nor is there any hint of it. Only the treeless land, the sudden gusts of wind that come booming along in a clear sky, and the sign of the inn give any idea of its neighbourhood. The sign reads, as you go west, "The Last House in England," and as you return it is "The First." But effluxion of time and the insistence of enterprise have qualified these legends, and there are two others, at Land's End itself: "The Land's End Hotel," and a little shanty where refreshments are to be had.
And from the turning to Sennen one comes thus along an unromantic final stretch of road to Land's End.
The name, "Land's End," has an eloquent appeal understood, or if not really and truly understood, certainly felt, by all. When one first heard of Land's End, it was in those early years, when it indicated an actual ending, in which the lesson presently to be learnt—that the earth is round—had no part. The image then figured in the mind was that of a place truly ultimate, unqualified by the statement that it is so many thousands of miles across the seas to America, where the land commences again. To know that it does commence again is perhaps disappointing: just as a sequel to a story is an ill thing alike for the dramatic ending of that story and for the sequel itself.
And now we all know that, as the world is round, there cannot be any land's end, anywhere, here or at Finisterre, or in any other country; and that in the quest of it we should be like so many futile Wandering Jews. One almost envies those heretics—that small but constant band—who persist in their faith that the earth is flat; for that view surely connotes a Land's End, somewhere. Meanwhile, we must put up with the chastened feeling of romance with which a journey to the Land's End of Cornwall is first undertaken.
I cannot, at any rate, find fault with the circumstances of my own first journey to this spot, from London, many years ago. It was before photographic and other illustrations had multiplied so vastly, a time before even the untravelled were very well acquainted with the general appearance of the most distant and obscure places; and one could still cherish some feeling of curiosity. In those days the Great Western Railway, while issuing excursion tickets to Penzance and elsewhere, did so as though it were a weakness, of which it were well to say as little as possible. The hoardings did not in those times flame with pictures of places which were apparently created for the benefit of enterprising railway companies.
I made that excursion journey alone from Paddington to Penzance; and when the long day was drawing to its close and the train, having left Truro, and most of the other passengers, behind, began to wind through the mining-fields of Chacewater and Scorrier, where the deserted mines and their ruined chimney-stacks and 'count-houses looked in the gathering twilight like so many weird beasts of the world's youth, then, as I gazed pale-faced, from a corner of the unlighted carriage, I felt I was indeed coming to the Land's End. Perhaps, also a little sorry for having come. But that was the dramatic, and therefore the right, way. Penzance formed a cheerful interlude for the night, and then on the morrow came the ten miles' walk to Land's End itself.
One has plenty of company here. Brake-loads of people, cyclists, motor-cars, all day long: contemplative people, reverent people, disappointed and irreverent people, a little contemptuous. You can see the thought, "Is this all?" visibly expressed upon their faces. I don't know what they expected: perhaps something in the nature of that childish vision of an abysmal ending, with a horned and hoofed personal devil over the edge; or, at the very least, whales spouting and sharks swimming. And really the cliffs are but some sixty feet high, and it is not a difficult matter to scramble down to the shore, such a tiny exigent bit of shore as there is, at low-water.
The very worst thing to do, to get an adequate idea of Land's End, is to stand upon Land's End itself. It is not impressive, and you want that which you will hardly get here, except on a winter's day or late in the evening: solitude. It is, in fact, not so much the comparative tameness of the spot as the too much company that is really at the bottom of the not very reasoned dissatisfaction most people feel here; and the guides who wish to point out "Dr. Johnson's Head," the "Armed Knight," and other rock-resemblances, are a nuisance. No: go rather a little to the north of Land's End, and then look back upon it, and thence you will see the little crowds of people clustered about it, giving a much-needed idea of scale; and the natural arch beneath it then is visible, and Enys Dodnan and other rocky islets come properly into perspective, with the Longships lighthouse yonder; and, if it be sunset, you may see the round red face of the sun setting on the distant horizon, with some scattered black specks in front. Those are the Isles of Scilly, twenty-seven miles away. The sea in between is "Lethosow," traditionally the site of that lost land of Lyonesse which, with its one hundred and forty churches, was suddenly overwhelmed by the sea in a great storm, vaguely about a thousand years ago. Carew indeed gravely tells us that fishermen at the Seven Stones (a lonely reef thirteen miles north of St. Mary's Island, marked by a lightship) have drawn up with their nets pieces of doors and windows! The Fishermen even to this day call the spot "The City."
The Longships lighthouse is about a mile and a half out at sea, but such is the deceptive purity of the atmosphere that, to a Londoner, it looks less than half that distance. Carn Brâs, the reef on which it stands, rises forty-five feet above the sea at low water, and all around it are numerous rocks, marked on Ordnance maps "Kettles Bottom." The original lighthouse, built in 1793, was a very stumpy affair, and was rebuilt in 1872. It has a singularly tragic record. Four of the lighthouse men have at different times been washed off the rock and drowned, the last in 1877; another died in the lighthouse, one went raving mad, and another committed suicide. He lacerated himself severely and his two mates staunched his wounds by stuffing them with tow. They hoisted signals for assistance, but stormy weather severed all communication for some days, and he was at last landed only to die. It is a melancholy history, and that and the weird noises made by the sea in caverns under the reef make the Longships one of the least desirable of berths at the disposal of the Trinity House.
Here in November 1898 the steamship Bluejacket ran at full speed upon the rocks.
The Wolf lighthouse, eight miles from shore, is a picture of utter loneliness. It was built between 1862 and 1869 on the reef of that name, awash with the tide at high-water, and cost £62,726.