Qualla: Western Rocks, Isles of Scilly

Western Rocks, Isles of Scilly: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Knights, CC BY-SA 2.0. Pednathise Head is the southernmost point of the United Kingdom. There is no marker. No tea room. No road to it. It is a tooth of late Carboniferous granite poking above the Atlantic, ringed by a tumble of smaller rocks with names that sound like a sailor's curse: Gilstone, Hellweathers, Rosevear, Crebawethan, Gorregan, Melledgan, Jacky's Rock, Silver Carn. Together they make up the Western Rocks - an archipelago of uninhabited skerries that has done more damage to British shipping than any reef in the country. It is also, somehow, a wildlife reserve so rich that landing on most of the islands is forbidden, and the storm petrels that nest here are of national importance.

Image: Richard Knights | CC BY-SA 2.0

Western Rocks, Isles of Scilly: Granite That Refused to Match the Charts

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daniel Bagshaw, CC BY-SA 2.5. All of the Western Rocks are made of the same stuff - Hercynian granite from the late Carboniferous, the deep stone backbone of Cornwall and Brittany surfacing for one last gesture into the Atlantic. They sit southwest of St Mary's, with Annet and St Agnes immediately to the nort...

Image: Daniel Bagshaw | CC BY-SA 2.5

Western Rocks, Isles of Scilly: Shovell, Cargill, Schiller

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roger Cornfoot, CC BY-SA 2.0. On the night of 22 October 1707, Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell led a fleet of twenty-one ships homeward from the Mediterranean. His flagship HMS Association struck the Gilstone. Three more ships went down with her. More than 1,400 men drowned in a single night - the deadliest pe...

Image: Roger Cornfoot | CC BY-SA 2.0

Western Rocks, Isles of Scilly: Where the Petrels Nest

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lambert, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1971 the rocks were designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest - not for what they had taken from the sea, but for what they gave back. Eleven species of seabird breed here. European shag and European storm petrel are of national importance; the eleven Scilly colonies of...

Image: Lambert | CC BY-SA 2.0

Western Rocks, Isles of Scilly: Salvage and Solitude

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rear Admiral A Mostyn Field, Public domain. Some of the rocks have been inhabited, briefly. Rosevear is the largest of the Western Rocks at just over two hectares. In 1709 and 1710, salvage crews lived on its relatively flat top while they worked the wreck of HMS Association and the other ships lost in 1707. A century and ...

Image: Rear Admiral A Mostyn Field | Public domain