Qualla: Peninnis Head https://qualla.com/peninnis-head en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:10 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/g/e/peninnis-head-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Peninnis Head https://qualla.com/peninnis-head Peninnis Head: Introduction https://qualla.com/peninnis-head/ Photo credit Mike Knell, CC BY-SA 2.0. Peninnis Head ends in stone. Walk south from Old Town across half a mile of low maritime heath and the path eventually peters out into a granite chaos: cairns, pillars, balanced rocks, a great squat shape called the Pulpit Rock, all worked over by 300 million years of wind and salt. The headland's Cornish name, penn enys, means island head, which is exactly what it is. Below the cairns the cliff falls away to the Atlantic. Above them, a black-domed lighthouse on a steel lattice has been telling ships how to find Hugh Town harbour since 1911. This is the southernmost piece of St Mary's, the southernmost piece of the most populous Scilly island, and on the right day it is one of the loveliest places in Cornwall to stand still.

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Image: Mike Knell | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/g/e/peninnis-head-wp/gbge-peninnis-head-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Peninnis Head: Granite Carved by Weather https://qualla.com/peninnis-head/ Photo credit Mike Knell, CC BY-SA 2.0. The whole of Peninnis Head is coarse-grained Hercynian granite, part of the same Cornubian batholith that underlies all of Scilly. What makes this headland different is what has not happened to it. The Irish Sea Glacier stopped just north of the islands during the last ice age, w...

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Image: Mike Knell | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/g/e/peninnis-head-wp/gbge-peninnis-head-granite-carved-by-weather.mp3 0:06 2 full Peninnis Head: The Pulpit Rock and Its Companions https://qualla.com/peninnis-head/ Photo credit Mike Knell, CC BY-SA 2.0. The famous shapes on Peninnis Head have names because they have to. Pulpit Rock looks like exactly what it claims, a thick granite platform raised on a thinner column, as if some preacher had walked off mid-sermon. Other formations carry local names that come and go with generati...

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Image: Mike Knell | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/g/e/peninnis-head-wp/gbge-peninnis-head-the-pulpit-rock-and-its-companions.mp3 0:06 3 full Peninnis Head: The Lichen Garden https://qualla.com/peninnis-head/ Photo credit Mike Knell, CC BY-SA 2.0. At the very tip of the headland, where the salt-laden wind never stops, a strange botanical garden survives. The dominant species is common sea ivory, Ramalina siliquosa, the grey-green tufted lichen that thrives at the edge of the British coast. But Peninnis Head also holds Rocc...

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Image: Mike Knell | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/g/e/peninnis-head-wp/gbge-peninnis-head-the-lichen-garden.mp3 0:06 4 full Peninnis Head: The Black-Domed Light https://qualla.com/peninnis-head/ Photo credit Mike Knell, CC BY-SA 2.0. Peninnis Lighthouse sits at the southern extremity of the headland. Built by Trinity House in 1911, it is a 45-foot circular tower of black steel open lattice with a white gallery and a black-domed top, an unusual design that owes more to industrial Victorian engineering than to ...

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Image: Mike Knell | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/g/e/peninnis-head-wp/gbge-peninnis-head-the-black-domed-light.mp3 0:06 5 full Peninnis Head: Rock Hard Peninnis https://qualla.com/peninnis-head/ Photo credit Mike Knell, CC BY-SA 2.0. The headland has another, quieter user community. Climbers have been bouldering and trad-climbing on Peninnis since 1977. Most of the routes on the southern coast of St Mary's are here. The hardest is a route called Rock Hard Peninnis, also known as When The Boat Comes In. It is ...

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Image: Mike Knell | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/g/e/peninnis-head-wp/gbge-peninnis-head-rock-hard-peninnis.mp3 0:06 6 full