Lizard

The most southerly village in mainland Britain, and the only one south of the 50th parallel, Lizard is a place of craft shops, cafes and art galleries all clustered around the village green. Following a visit to Cornwall by Queen Victoria in the 19th century, when she ordered many items made from Serpentine stone for her new house on the Isle of Wight, Osborne, this richly coloured green stone has been popular and Lizard is a centre for its polishing and fashioning into ornaments.

A staple diet for Cornish dwellers for centuries, Ann Muller has been making pasties for over 20 years from her little shop in the Lizard. Following in her mum’s footsteps, Ann swears by the core ingredients: sliced onion, potato, turnip and chopped beef skirt wrapped in a firm but light pastry case with crimped ends to keep it all together. The pasty has connections with the mining industry, when miners relied on the fact that a pasty stays warm for over an hour, but Ann reckons it’s a myth that the crimped edge was created as a disposable handle for miners.

In past centuries the Lizard was at the centre of Cornwall’s smuggling industry, and the area is crammed with tales of Cornish ‘free-traders’ sneaking barrels of liquor and contraband goods under the noses of government Preventive boats. Some smugglers even became local legends – the most notorious was John Carter, the so-called King of Prussia, after whom Prussia Cove near Rosudgeon is named.

To the south of the village lies Lizard Point, whose three sides of high cliffs are lashed by the waves whatever the season. Here, stands the Lizard Lighthouse. There has been a form of lighthouse on Lizard Point since the early 17th century. The present twin-towered lighthouse, which provides a welcoming landfall light to vessels crossing the Atlantic Ocean, was built in 1751 despite protests from the locals fearing that they would lose a regular source of income from looting ships wrecked around the point. Another feature are the twin horns of the fog horn, which still boom out over the waters once every 30 seconds when the weather is bad. In 2008 a Lottery heritage fund was granted to modernise and rebuild the Lizard Lighthouse Heritage Centre. The improved facility opened in spring 2009 and offers visitors information about the structural, technical and social history of Lizard Lighthouse and the associated southwestern offshore Rock Lighthouses, using interactive and audio-visual displays.

The Lizard also played an important role in the history of modern communications. At nearby Bass Point, The Lizard Wireless Station is the oldest surviving wireless station in the world, built by Marconi in 1900/1.