Qualla: Mullion Cove

Mullion Cove: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1895, with pilchards failing season after season and his Mullion tenants near ruin, Lord Robartes of Lanhydrock spent his own money on a harbour. Two stone piers, mostly granite and serpentine bound with a concrete core, curled out from the cliffs and made Mullion Cove - Porth Mellin to anyone speaking Cornish - into a place where boats could actually shelter. The Mounts Bay fishery had a new outpost. The cove had a future. The future would not, in the end, belong to the fishermen. It would belong to the storms.

Read more: Mullion Cove on Qualla

Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 4.0

Mullion Cove: A Ring of Fire

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 4.0. Long before Lord Robartes, Mullion's high cliffs had a different job. After Spanish galleys raided Mousehole, Paul, Newlyn, and Penzance in August 1595 - burning the church at Paul to the ground and chasing the locals inland - Cornwall woke up to how undefended it was. A chain of...

Read more: Mullion Cove on Qualla

Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 4.0

Mullion Cove: Soaprock and Native Copper

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit (Liyster), CC BY 3.0. Mullion's cliffs are layered with stories most beaches do not get to tell. The serpentine here was quarried in the 18th century for a soft, white, magnesium-rich mineral the locals called soaprock or steatite. From the 1750s onward it was shipped, in wooden casks out of Mullion C...

Read more: Mullion Cove on Qualla

Image: (Liyster) | CC BY 3.0

Mullion Cove: The Pilchard Season

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tony Atkin, CC BY-SA 2.0. From a perch on Henscath headland - a small stone hut, roof shaped like an upturned boat - one man watched the sea every working hour. The Huer. When he spotted the bright, oily flash of a pilchard shoal moving through Mounts Bay, he called and directed the seine boats below. Six...

Read more: Mullion Cove on Qualla

Image: Tony Atkin | CC BY-SA 2.0

Mullion Cove: The Sea Is Winning

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SMJ, CC BY-SA 2.0. Lord Robartes' harbour was always going to need maintenance. By 1944 it required extensive repair. From 2003 onward the National Trust, which now owns it, began warning that 'Mullion Cove may not stand the ravages of the sea much longer.' Climate change has raised the bar - liter...

Read more: Mullion Cove on Qualla

Image: SMJ | CC BY-SA 2.0