Delabole

Cornwall’s only producer of slate today is the massive operation at Delabole Slate Quarry. It claims to be the largest man-made hole in Europe. The high quality dark blue slate has been quarried here without interruption since Tudor times, making it the oldest continuously worked slate quarry in Europe. It is known that in around 2000 BC the Beaker folk on Bodmin Moor used slate as baking shelves. Delabole is almost literally, built of slate: it has been used for houses, walls, steps and the church. Once known as ‘the great slate road’, the lanes to the west of Delabole used to carry vast quantities of stone to the harbours at Port Gaverne, Port Isaac, Port Quin and Boscastle until the railways took over the transport of the stone in the 1890s.

This slate village overlooks both the ocean and the moors, thus affording the onlooker stunning views inland towards Roughtor and Brown Willy, with equally breathtaking seascapes of the North Cornwall coast in the same vista.