St Loy's Cove is a small wooded valley and beach in the

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

St Buryan St Buryan () is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of St Buryan, Lamorna and Paul in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. In 2011 the parish had a population of 1412. The village of St Buryan is situated approximately west of ...

Cornwall Cornwall (; or ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is also one of the Celtic nations and the homeland of the Cornish people. The county is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, ...

, England, UK. It is located two miles to the south of St Buryan churchtown, and between Penberth and

Lamorna Lamorna () is a village, valley and cove in west Cornwall, England, UK. It is on the Penwith peninsula approximately south of Penzance. Lamorna became popular with the artists of the Newlyn School, including Alfred Munnings, Laura Knight a ...

. There are just a few buildings in the cove, one of which, Cove Cottage, provides bed and breakfast and a cafe. St Loy's is within the Cornwall

Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty An Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB; , AHNE) is one of 46 areas of countryside in England, Wales, or Northern Ireland that has been designated for conservation due to its significant landscape value. Since 2023, the areas in England an ...

(AONB), the Boscawen SSSI (

Site of Special Scientific Interest A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Great Britain, or an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI) in the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland, is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom and Isle ...

) and is part of a GCR

Geological Conservation Review The Geological Conservation Review (GCR) is produced by the UK's Joint Nature Conservation Committee. It is designed to identify those sites of national and international importance needed to show all the key scientific elements of the geological ...

site. The

South West Coast Path The South West Coast Path is England's longest waymarked Long-distance footpaths in the UK, long-distance footpath and a National Trail. It stretches for , running from Minehead in Somerset, along the coasts of Devon and Cornwall, to Poole Harb ...

passes through the cove.

Geography

The stream at the bottom of the valley flows out to sea under a boulder

storm beach A storm beach is a beach affected by particularly fierce wind wave, waves, usually with a very long fetch (geography), fetch. The resultant landform is often a very steep beach (up to 45°) composed of rounded Cobble (geology), cobbles, shingle be ...

backed by soft orange–brown cliffs of

head A head is the part of an organism which usually includes the ears, brain, forehead, cheeks, chin, eyes, nose, and mouth, each of which aid in various sensory functions such as sight, hearing, smell, and taste. Some very simple ani ...

deposits formed by

solifluction Solifluction is a collective name for gradual processes in which a mass moves down a slope ("mass wasting") related to freeze-thaw activity. This is the standard modern meaning of solifluction, which differs from the original meaning given to i ...

when the climate was similar to that of Greenland's today. These cliffs are easily eroded and amongst the rounded boulders on the beach are irregular shaped granite stones that have fallen from the cliff.

Boscawen SSSI

The Boscawen SSSI, which encompasses the whole of the cove, "is a nationally important site for

Quaternary The Quaternary ( ) is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), as well as the current and most recent of the twelve periods of the ...

geomorphology Geomorphology () is the scientific study of the origin and evolution of topographic and bathymetric features generated by physical, chemical or biological processes operating at or near Earth's surface. Geomorphologists seek to understand wh ...

and Quaternary

stratigraphy Stratigraphy is a branch of geology concerned with the study of rock layers (strata) and layering (stratification). It is primarily used in the study of sedimentary and layered volcanic rocks. Stratigraphy has three related subfields: lithost ...

. Coastal exposures at the site show a sequence of granitic shore platform overlain in turn by raised beach deposits and head deposits".

References

External links

Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty

Boscawen Geological Conservation Review Site

St Buryan Community Site
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Loy's Cove Beaches of Penwith Coves of Cornwall Penwith Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Cornwall