Corners of Britain #3: The Lizard Peninsula
Corners of Britain #3: The Lizard Peninsula
Exploring the southernmost tip of Britain
The first mention I ever heard of the Lizard Peninsula came from a history teacher in primary school.
She introduced herself as from the Lizard and informed the class of her home’s claim to fame as the southernmost tip of Britain.
Sometimes a place name can stick in your mind, even if you have never been there. Cornwall is particularly rich in these types of places, due to its Cornish language and its particular blend of Celtic Christianity.
The Lizard is one such place.
Previously in this series:
Welcome to the Lizard Peninsula
The Lizard is a sparsely populated part of Cornwall, in the West Country of England. Only 8,968 people lived there in 2022, according to the Office for National Statistics estimate.
The Lizard lies in the southern tip of Cornwall, as we can see from this map:
A brief history of Cornish national identity
Cornish people have always been a distinctive minority group within England. The county’s position in the far southwest of England meant the Romans and then the Saxons struggled to conquer and assimilate it into their kingdoms.
Cornwall did eventually become part of England. It was surveyed as part of the Domesday Book of 1086, indicating that it was within William the Conqueror's domain.
The Cornish language survived but was pushed further and further west as the centuries ticked by.
The Reformation in the 1500s dealt a heavy blow to the Cornish language. The Catholic Church had been tolerant of Cornish although Mass was celebrated in Latin.
After Henry VIII broke from Rome, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, introduced the Book of Common Prayer in English into the kingdom.
Cornishmen rose up in revolt. This was brutally suppressed by the forces of the Crown, leading to the deaths of many Cornish-speaking men in what became known as the Prayer Book Rebellion.
The Book of Common Prayer and the Bible were not translated into Cornish at the time. This led to the language rapidly becoming low status.
By 1776 the situation was dire enough for William Bodinar to write (originally in Cornish):
“There are no more than four or five in our village who can speak Cornish now, old folk of fourscore years. Cornish is all forgotten by young people.”
The nadir for Cornish culture came in the nineteenth century when their language vanished from everyday speech.
Its revival began in 1904 when Henry Jenner published his practical guide to using Cornish: A Handbook of the Cornish Language. As there were no living native speakers, the language had to be pieced back together from surviving records.
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Cornish national identity began to re-emerge as well, in tandem with Welsh and Scottish national feeling.
Cornish national identity in the Lizard
At the last Census a total of 103,230 people in Cornwall said they were Cornish and 14,120 in the rest of England and Wales did so. You could identify as Cornish through your national identity, ethnic group or main language
In the Lizard, 22.4 per cent of people said they were Cornish. This was higher than the Cornish average of 18.1 per cent.
Much like the language map, generally the further west you travel in the county the more likely you are to encounter people who consider themselves Cornish.
The strongest Cornish national identity of all is to be found in Penzance, the most westerly major town in the county.
Tourism in the Lizard
Cornwall’s fine weather and beautiful coastline have made it an attractive destination for tourists ever since the railways arrived in the Victorian era.
The county’s economy is very dependent on tourism, especially since another industry it was known for, mining, has dried up.
This is particularly true for the Lizard. The entire area is covered by the Cornwall National Landscape (these used to be called Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty) and large stretches of the coast are managed by the National Trust.
Some 1.1 per cent of working people in England and Wales told the Census they made a living in the hospitality industry as “[m]anagers and proprietors in hospitality and leisure services”.
In Cornwall the figure was double the national average at 2.2 per cent and in the Lizard it was higher still at 3.0 per cent.
Second homes in the Lizard
There were 220 second homes in the Lizard according to the last Census. Second homes made up about one in every 24 homes in the peninsula.
If this sounds like a lot; it’s because it is. Only 78 neighbourhoods in England and Wales out of more than 7,000 overall have a higher share.
As we can see from the map above, holiday homes in Cornwall tend to be concentrated around the coast. The highest proportion of all is around Padstow in northern Cornwall. Some of the interior parts of the county have fewer than 10 holiday homes each and appear greyed out.
An older population…
Like other parts of rural England, the Lizard has a comparatively old population.
The average resident of the peninsula is 53 years old - a full 13 years older than the England and Wales average.
Only a quarter of households in the Lizard contain children aged under 16 (or under 18 if they are still in education).
…Owning older homes
A slim majority of households in the Lizard own their homes outright.
This is unusual: about 93 per cent of neighbourhoods in England and Wales don’t have a majority of homes owned without mortgages.
Furthermore, one in 21 homes in the Lizard don’t have central heating. This is more than three times higher than the national average.
If we use no central heating as a proxy for old homes, we can conclude that the housing stock in the Lizard is older.
Think quaint stone houses like the one below:
The Lizard and Cornwall’s hospitality industry is seasonal, bringing large influxes of tourists in the summer looking for good weather.
As we've seen, in some cases these people buy holiday homes that are left empty for much of the year.
Nonetheless the tourism industry keeps many people in the Lizard in employment. Ironically though for such an in-demand area, Cornwall’s transport and infrastructure links with the rest of the country aren’t the strongest.
The purple shaded areas on this map show how far you can get from the Lizard in one hour using public transport.
“Public transport” effectively means by bus, given that the nearest railway stations are in Truro and Falmouth.
As you can see, it takes at least an hour to get to the National Rail network from the Lizard.
Much of Cornwall is in a similar position relative to the rest of England. Of course, it’s this isolation of course that has helped to produce the particular Cornish identity in the first place.