Porthcurno Telegraph Museum - Geograph

Porthcurno ( kw, Porthkornow, Porthcornow, meaning ''"pinnacle cove"'', see below) is a small village covering a small valley and beach on the south coast of Cornwall, England in the United Kingdom. It is the main settlement in a civil and an ecclesiastical parish, both named St Levan, which comprise Porthcurno, diminutive St Levan itself, Trethewey and Treen.

It is centred west of the railway, market and resort town of Penzance and from Land's End, the most westerly point of the English mainland. Road access is via the north end of the valley along a long cul-de-sac with short branches off the B3283 and land traditionally associated with the village, including its beach, is on the South West Coast Path.

Amenities and homes

The village comprises houses and apartment blocks together with a few commercial premises along the access road known as "The Valley". The road curves inland past Minack Point to St. Levan's Church about from the village. At the southern end are:
*Large public car park
*A small seasonal café
*A public house.
*The South West Coast PathSt. Levan Parish Plan (2006); p 5

The route is marked as two hours from Land's End or about four hours walk from Penzance for the most agile cliff-side path walkers.Ordnance Survey Explorer Map, 1:25,000 scale, Sheet 102 Land's End

A low-frequency bus service links Penzance, Lands End and nearby villages and hamlets including Newlyn, Paul, Sheffield, Lamorna, St Buryan, Treen, Trethewey, Polgigga and Sennen.

Porthcurno is largely not farms or fisherman's cottages today, having its linear centre inland, centred west of the railway, market and resort town of Penzance and from Land's End, the most westerly point of the English mainland. In the most local-level organisational and community bodies, it is in civil and ecclesiastical parishes named Saint Levan and usually spelt as St Leven since the 18th century.Ordnance Survey Landranger Map, 1:50,000 scale, Map Sheet 203 Land's End and the Isles of Scilly

The Cable Station and Engineering College

Porthcurno is unusually well known for its size because of its history as a major international submarine communications cable station. In the late nineteenth century, the remote beach at Porthcurno became internationally famous as the British termination of early submarine telegraph cables, the first of which was landed in 1870, part of an early international link stretching all the way from the UK to India, which was then a British colony.Godwin; p 67 Porthcurno was chosen in preference to the busy port of Falmouth because of the reduced risk of damage to the cables caused by ships' anchors.Hart-Davis; p 102 In 1872, the Eastern Telegraph Company (ETC) Limited was formed which took over the operation of the cables and built a cable office in Porthcurno valley. The concrete cable hut, where the cable shore ends were connected to their respective landlines, is a listed building and still stands at the top of the beach. ETC and its cable operations expanded through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in 1928 to merge with Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company Limited to form Imperial and International Communications Limited which was renamed Cable and Wireless Limited in 1934. Cable and Wireless Limited was a predecessor company of Cable & Wireless Worldwide and Cable & Wireless Communications.

In the inter-war years, the Porthcurno cable office operated as many as 14 cables, for a time becoming the largest submarine cable station in the world, with the capacity to receive and transmit up to two million words a day. Porthcurno is still known colloquially by the acronym 'PK' being represented in Morse code as 'di-dah-dah-dit' followed by 'dah-di-dah', communicating with a line operator and testing connections, an acronym often sent.Bell; p 4

Over the years, many apprentices were trained at the Porthcurno cable office in telegraphy and supporting skills, initially by ETC and then by Cable and Wireless. In 1950 the latter, nationalised, opened its Porthcurno engineering college which provided many courses in branches of telecommunications for employees, secondees and external students. The cable office closed in 1970, exactly 100 years after the first cable was landed, but the college remained open, receiving substantial investment in buildings and training equipment through the 1970s and 1980s; however, due to its isolation from towns, it closed in 1993. Some of its buildings were demolished. After the closure of the college, the award-winning Porthcurno Telegraph Museum was opened. This museum has been featured locally and nationally on educational programmes, including the BBC
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