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Very early one morning a year ago, in the late summer of 2003, my adult daughter, who lives in Mawnan Smith, had a strange experience. Being a thoughtful neighbour, and not wanting to disturb anyone, at 2:00 a.m. she and a friend had wanted to listen to some pop music. So she took her car up to the car park of the old local church because it’s such an isolated spot. After about ten minutes my daughter and her friend suddenly became aware of a block of blue/white light above their heads. It was pulsating in that it stopped and then started again, for seconds at a time, although it remained stationary and constantly overhead. Neither were aware of any missing time, but they also had no idea how long they remained near the churchyard before they went home. And, when they reached home, both were so tired that they simply went to sleep without checking the clock.
While
doing an Internet search, to see if I could find any similar experiences, I came
across an article, by Paul Devereux, in which he tells of a block of light materialising
above the church in November 1996. You can read the full account here:
http://www.lightworks.com/MonthlyAspectarian/1997/April/0497-21.html
It wasn’t exactly the same as that which my daughter saw, but it does lessen the
odds that she was mistaken, or misperceived something.
For
many, when I say that the church was The Old Church in Mawnan Smith, near Falmouth,
in Cornwall, this will mean nothing at all. However, back in the middle of the
1970s it was the place where the Owlman first appeared, together with reported sightings of Morgawr in Falmouth Bay. Given my daughter’s experience,
and the connection between UFOs and Cryptozoological creatures in some instances,
it made me take another look at what happened in Cornwall back then.
Mawnan
Old Church is situated on top of cliffs, about four miles south-west of Falmouth Bay, the third largest deep-water sea port in the world, with the Helford River
lying just south of that. 
The church, dedicated to St. Mawnan, (Maunanus) a Celtic saint, and St. Stephen, is one mile from the village centre, and was built
in the 13th Century. It stands in the middle of an Iron Age Earthwork known
as the Round; part of which can still be seen in the surrounding hedge. In the
grounds there is also an ancient Holy Well that has a head carved into the stones
over its entrance. History has it that tin traders from Europe, and maybe from even
as far afield as the Mediterranean, came to Mawnan in Celtic times. Enduring
Cornish legends also maintain that Jesus visited Cornwall, possibly as a ship’s
carpenter.
The
village takes its name from the Old Church, and the Smithy in the middle of the
village itself. The Smithy was built where two ancient tracks meet, and many believe that the Church lies on a Ley Line. If you’re interested
in the history of the village the following link gives much more detail:
http://www.mawnansmith.org.uk/HTML%20Sheets/Council/History.html
A local Cornish friend of mine will tell you the following about the county:
Cornwall is a focal point for Spiritual Energy. In places there is a spiritual heaviness in the atmosphere. Sometimes you can feel high/elated, while at other times depressed. It’s like a tide that ebbs and flows between good and evil. The Cornish have an innate awareness of it. Most members of The Fundamentalist churches in Cornwall say they can feel it all the time, and often liken it as akin to the atmosphere between Palestine and Israel.
History is both made and unmade in Cornwall. From Exmoor downwards, (but not from Glastonbury), right down to Heamoor, overlooking Zennor/Penzance. Down Penzance way you can feel a tangible difference in the atmosphere, and at St Mawes, opposite the Roseland, at Place Manor, you can feel a calming influence. Marizion, near Penzance, is a Phoenician word that means The Tribe of Elders, that's elders as in trees.
The same friend also reminds me that the Cornish don’t "open- up" to outsiders, or Incomers as they’re called. You have to live here for around thirty years before you’re seen as a local. And for that very reason it is possible that not all cryptid sightings in the county will ever get into the main stream of public knowledge.
THE OWLMAN
Beginning
in the Spring of 1976 some very weird events happened in the Falmouth and Mawnan Smith area of Cornwall. The weather unseasonably fluctuated between droughts
and floods, heat waves and cold snaps. There were reports of women being tapped
in their homes by flocks of birds that beat themselves to death on the windows,
and of feral cats that kept one lady incarcerated in her house. There was also
an increase in dog attacks, and reports of some dolphins attacking swimmers while others rescued them from drowning. Local farmers reported that cows were
being "teleported" out of their fields only to be found in different locations. Added to all this was an increase in the number of UFO sightings,
together with reports of cryptids being seen.
The first
report of the Owlman came on the Easter weekend of 17th April 1976. Two young
girls, June and Vicky Melling, aged twelve and nine, saw what they described
as a big feathered birdman hovering over the steeple of Old Mawnan Church.
In fact the children were so frightened by the experience that their family
cut short their holiday and went home.
Three
months later, on 3rd July 1976, around 10:00 p.m. but not quite dark, Sally Chapman, age fourteen, and her friend Barbara Perry were camping in woods around the
church. They heard a hissing sound and saw what looked like an owl as big as
a man, with pointed ears, and red eyes that were glowing. It was standing near
the pine trees and flew straight up into the air, which made them scream.
At that point
they could see that its feet were like pincers. But their first reaction was
that someone had dressed up to scare them. Both drew pictures of what they’d
seen and, although similar, the pictures were different enough to refute any collusion.
The following day, on 4th July 1976, Jane Greenwood and her sister saw the creature. They described it as being as large as a man, with silver-grey feathers that also covered the legs and body. It had a wide mouth, slanted red eyes, and huge black crab-like claws. They thought it looked like something from a horror film. Again it flew straight up into the air, after which:
there were crackling sounds in tree-tops for ages.
In a letter to local paper Jane said:
It was Sunday morning and the place was in the trees near Mawnan Church, above the rocky beach. It was in the trees standing like a full-grown man, but the legs bent backwards like a bird's. It saw us and quickly jumped up and rose straight up through the trees. My sister and I saw it very clearly before it rose up. It has red slanting eyes and a very large mouth. The feathers are silvery grey and so are his body and legs. The feet are like big, black crab's claws. We were so frightened at the time. It was so strange, like something in a horror film. After the thing went up there was crackling sounds in the treetops for ages. Later that day we spoke to some people at the camp-site, who said they had seen the Morgawr Monster on Saturday, when they were swimming with face masks and snorkels in the river, below where we saw the bird man. They saw it underwater, and said it was enormous and shaped like a lizard.
From June to August 1978 there were additional sightings in area of the church. In early August 1978 a sixteen-year-old girl, "Miss Opie," saw what she described as:
a monster, like a devil, flying up through the trees near old Mawnan Church.
And, on 2nd August, three young French girls, staying in Redruth while attending Camborne Technical College, now known as Cornwall College, told their landlady they’d seen something:
very big like a big furry bird with a gaping mouth and round eyes.
The report was made to Doc Shiels, a very well-known local "character," and someone who seems to figure somewhere in most of the Owlman reports.
Sometime during 1980 an enormous bird-like creature was seen flying over the Helford River and into trees near Grebe Beach. This is the closest named beach to the church.
In
1989 Gavin and his girlfriend Sally, (both pseudonyms), were two young teenagers
on a walking holiday. They were on the fringe of woods and shining their torch beam
across trunks of trees about fifteen feet off ground. The trees are recalled
as possibly being large conifers. At about 9:30 p.m. they too saw the Owlman,
and describe it thus:
it was standing on a thick branch with its wings sort of held up at the arms. I’d say that it was about five feet tall. The legs had high ankles and the feet were large and black with two huge ‘toes’ on the visible side. The creature was grey with brown and the eyes definitely glowed. On seeing us its head jerked down and forwards, its wings lifted and it just jumped backwards. As it did its legs folded up. We ran away.
This is the only sighting that definitely can’t be linked to Doc Shiels.
Apart
from Gavin, the Owlman seems to only be seen by girls aged from eight or nine
up to sixteen years old.
To the
people of Cornwall Doc Shiels is a very well known name, although he no longer
lives in the county. In the early 1960s he became a professional showman,
and called himself the Wizard of the Western World. But he is really better
known as a surrealist painter, and has had numerous exhibitions. Some of his
paintings have been hung in the Tate Gallery. And you can find a list of some of his books and articles here:
http://www.dragonskull.co.uk/t_shiels.htm
But, unfortunately that list doesn’t include his famous book Monstrum!:
A Wizard's Tale (1988) about the strange events in Cornwall.
Jonathan
Downes, writing in his book The Owlman and Others (2001 CFZ Communications), gives a very good refutation of an article by Mark Chorvinsky who believed that
Doc Shiels had hoaxed it all. In Chapter Eight Downes gives some very
good reasons as to why the sightings were not mis-identifications of owls. In
the same book, on pages 190/191, he alludes to Rudyard Kipling’s idea
that The People of the Hills came to the British Isles as part
of the beliefs held about gods and demigods by various invaders. Then, at
a later time, they became marginalised to the point that, as Downes says:
These are what we now know as earth spirits, and some of them could well be described as zooform phenomena.
For
those who haven’t read the book, you can find long excerpts from it on
the Internet at:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/chris.mullins/OWLMAN.htm
As the site states, the extracts were posted with the permission of the author.
The Cornish Guardian newspaper says, in a round up of most of these sightings, that:
Its description is normally always the same, a creature of between 5-7 feet tall with grey feathers, clawed feet and glowing red eyes. Pictures and descriptions of the creature often include two tufts of feathers that stick up on either side of the head behind the eyes. The Owlman seems to bear a remarkable similarity to the infamous Mothman who is claimed to be seen in parts of America. The Mothman investigators have alleged that they can trace the legend back to ancient religions in the Middle East.
http://www.cornishguardian.co.uk/
So, has
anything similar to the Owlman been seen in any other parts of the UK? Well
oddly enough, yes it has. There was a report from 1981, on the Fortean Times
web site, of a sighting similar to the Owlman, that happened near Luton.
Then, in
March 2004, the ufoinfo web site carried a report of an event at Wolverhampton,
in the West Midlands. The description of the creature that was seen is very
evocative of the Owlman. You can read the report, entitled Winged Wierdie
seen in West Midlands, here:
http://www.ufoinfo.com/roundup/v09/rnd0911.shtml
It
often seems that strange events happen in clusters at certain distinct places around the world, and sometimes even only at what might be predetermined times.
Could some, as yet undiscovered, energies cause them? As for the woods around
Mawnan Old Church, it has long had a reputation as an eerie place. And, unfortunately, not very many years ago it was even the scene of a suicide when a man hung himself
from one of the trees.
In the second half of the book entitled Into the Bermuda Triangle, by Gian J. Quasar, (2004 McGraw-Hill), the author examines such theories as:
antigravity, atmospheric ionization and pollution, atoms, brain functions, electromagnetic anomalies/pollution, gravitational fields, gravitational waves, ELF, ESP, magnetic anomalies/vortices, megaliths, Moon and Mars anomalies, psychic abilities, radiation, sea serpents, space probes, space-time, supernatural phenomenon, UFOs, ‘Watchers’, and zero-point energy.
Could any of these be responsible for the crackling sounds
and hissing noise that were heard during some of the Owlman experiences? You
can find Quasar’s web site here:
http://www.bermuda-triangle.org/
It also contains a database of all the ships and planes that have disappeared
in that area.
Another suggested explanation for the Owlman has been that it was an escaped
Eurasian Eagle Owl. These can grow more than two feet long, have a wingspan
of five to six feet, and if kept in captivity can live for up to forty years, although in the wild their life expectancy is normally from twelve to fifteen years. It is probably the largest owl species but, of course, it isn’t
native to the British Isles.
In all of the reports of the Owlman there doesn’t appear to be any missing time but, even so, could it be a screen memory?
Owls as Screen Memories
Owls
have long been revered as symbols of wisdom, and the symbolism of the owl occurs
in many belief systems, such as Shamanism. Today it is sometimes being seen
as a screen memory in abduction experiences. Although Freud maintained that screen memories are those produced by the mind to hide a traumatic experience.
An article
by Bill Chalker, entitled Alien abductions - a shamanic perspective on UFOs (originally published in Nature & Health (Australia),
Vol. 11, No. 1, Autumn, 1990), looks at the relationship between the screen
memories found in abduction reports and the symbolism of Shamanism. You can read the full text here:
http://www.theozfiles.com/ufo_shaman.html
Of
course one of the best-known abductees is Whitley Strieber. He describes seeing
a barn owl staring at him through his bedroom window, and attributes it to a
screen memory. Interestingly, in an article entitled Aliens. Mind or Reality? by Jim Lindsay, he refers to Strieber’s experience and examines the relationship between the owl symbolism and screen memories:
http://www.gardenof-eden.com/aliens__mind_or_reality.htm
One of
the earliest mentions of an owl as a screen memory comes from the Betty Andreasson case back in January 1967. Under hypnosis she recalls seeing a fifteen-foot
tall birdlike creature during her abduction. If you don’t remember the
case you can refresh your memory with this account:
http://ufocasebook.com/Andreasson.html
And
in a piece by Budd Hopkins entitled Abduction and Deception, on
the FSR web site, [Republished by FSR with permission from IUR Reporter, September/ October
1990], he refers to an abduction case where a lady saw a five- foot tall owl.
(The article is the second item on the page):
http://www.fsr.org.uk/fsrart20.htm
Also, in
an extract from the book he co-authored with Carol Rainey, entitledSight
Unseen, you can read the following:
The idea that these images are not self-generated but are implanted in the minds of abductees by their captors is supported by the fact that two or more people in the same encounter saw exactly the same (impossible) five-foot-tall owl staring at them, the same pileup of six empty cars on a deserted road, or the same telepathic deer.
http://krater01.tripod.com/sight_unseen.htm
Whilst
we mostly hear of alien abduction reports from the USA, there is a very good article by the late Johannes Fiebag, Ph.D entitled UFO Abductions In Germany, Austria and Switzerland that you can read here:
http://www.alienjigsaw.com/Part_II/ufo-abdu.html
However,
that wasn’t the only sighting of a strange creature in Cornwall at the time.
MORGAWR
Colloquially
it is said that the Cornish name Morgawr translates as Sea Serpent, but I haven’t 
been able to substantiate that. Nevertheless, Morgawr is the name given to the
Loch Ness type monster reported to have been seen in the waters around Falmouth Bay, and until the middle of the last century is was simply presumed to be just another Cornish legend. Most of the sightings have occurred between Rosemullion
Head and Toll Point, and this stretch of coastline is now known as Morgawr’s Mile.
In
both 1875 and 1925 fishermen netted an unidentified long-necked creature in those waters; but they may just have been the decomposing bodies of dead basking
sharks. However, in September 1975, while out walking, a Mrs. Scott and a Mr. Riley reported seeing:
a hideous hump-backed creature, with ‘stumpy horns’ and bristles down the back of its long neck
They saw the creature swimming off Pendennis Point. In addition to which numerous mackerel fishermen confirmed the sighting.
Also
in 1975, or possibly January 1976, there was mention of something strange being spotted from Durgan Beach on the River Helford, just one beach along from Mawnan
Smith, when an unknown carcass was washed ashore. Meanwhile a swimmer off Rosemullion
Head claimed to have seen a creature with a long neck and, according to some reports, a length of thirty to forty feet.
This was
followed by another sighting in January 1976 when two ladies from London claimed
to have seen a creature that was twenty-five feet in length, resembling a prehistoric
animal, with a neck the length of a lamp-post.
Then in February 1976 a lady who called herself "Mary F" published two photos purporting to show just such a creature swimming off Trefusis Point. It was said to be at least fifteen to eighteen feet long, and here’s how she described it:
It looked like an elephant waving its trunk, but the trunk was a long neck with a small head on the end, like a snake's head. It had humps on the back that moved in a funny way.
The colour was black or very dark brown, and the skin seemed to be like a sea lion's... the animal frightened me. I would not like to see it any closer. I do not like the way it moved when swimming." She also regretted the poor quality of her pictures saying: "The pictures are not very clear because of the sun shining right into the camera and a haze on the water. Also I took them very quickly indeed.
When her photos were published in the local Falmouth Packet the newspaper received a deluge of letters from readers who also said they had seen Morgawr.
On Good Friday, in April 1976, (the same weekend that the first reported sighting of the Owlman took place), a fifteen-year-old boy took a photo of a similar looking monster, twenty-five feet long, and his photo was shown on television. One month later, in May 1976, two bankers from London reported seeing a pair of monsters swimming in the waters at the mouth of the Helford River.
In
July 1976 fisherman George Vinnecombe, part of the crew of a fishing boat in the waters off The Lizard, saw what at first was taken to be the hull of an overturned boat. But it soon became clear that it was a living object with a leathery scale-less skin, and humps along its eighteen to twenty-foot back. He had been a fisherman for over forty years and had never seen anything like
it. Part of his description included a head and neck that rose three feet above
the water, ahead of the body, with large eyes similar to those of a seal.
There were
more sightings in August 1976. The first was when a sailor saw a forty-foot
long 
"worm-like" creature while sailing thirty miles northwest of
the Scilly Isles. Then, just a few weeks later, a couple in a motorboat saw two
large, mottled-grey, humps while cruising off Restronguet Point. And, later, a man saw a hump-backed creature, like a large eel, that was fifty to sixty feet
long, while he was on Gyllyngvase Beach in Falmouth.
It would be remiss of me not to mention that Doc Shiels claims to have photographed Morgawr in July 1976, but in view of his involvement with the Owlman, this might have been just another hoax.
In
July 1985 writer Sheila Bird, and her brother, reported seeing Morgawr while walking at Porthcurnow, near Truro. She described it as being mottled-grey, about twenty-feet long, and with a tail of the same length. She added that it held its head up like a camel, and she thought it was a descendant of the plesiosaurs.
Then
in January 1992 a couple walking on the Falmouth cliffs reported seeing a creature
similar to the Loch Ness Monster.
In
an article by David Hatcher Childress he makes brief mention of a possible sighting
of Morgawr that happened in early September 1995, by a lady on Golden Bank Beach
in Falmouth. The description is very similar to that of the creature seen by
Sheila Bird in July 1985.
During
the summer of 2002 a diver who was diving off Black Head, Cornwall, relates what might have been a sighting of Morgawr. It seems the creature had already
been seen off The Manacles during that summer, and in fact there had been two sightings in those summer months.
In
July 2002, a Mr. Holmes, who was a former employee of the Natural History Museum, claimed to have filmed a snake-like creature that might have been Morgawr, back
in 1999. The same day that he filmed it a St. Piran patrol boatman, and a Falmouth
fisherman, also claimed to have seen it in the same area. A full report of this
sighting can be found here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2070000.stm
You
can also read mention of this sighting at:
http://www.100megsfree4.com/farshores/ccornmon.htm
On the same page, the next post down, it says that the film reawakened the memories
of a ninety-two year-old lady who lives by the Helford River. She had a sighting,
in the early 1980s, when she saw something strange in the water. (The same
link contains a fuller description of Sheila Bird’s sighting).
Curiously,
in September 2004 there was a report from Whitehaven, on the coast of Cumbria,
of a "mini Loch Ness" being washed ashore. It was described as having
a seal’s body, the tale of a whale, fins on the top and sides, plus claws and sharp teeth. The original report comes from the Whitehaven News at:
http://www.whitehaven-news.co.uk/leisure/viewarticle.asp?id=133786
But unfortunately the link does not appear to be working. However, there was a brief mention of it, plus a photograph, on this web site:
http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/
Under the
pseudonym of A. Mawnan-Peller a booklet was written about the Morgawr sightings. Some think this was an alias used by Doc Shiels, but it seems it was more likely to have been written by a journalist on one of the local newspapers. You can
read the text in full here:
http://www.cfz.org.uk/features/morgawr.htm
For a wider view of Cornish sea monsters I can recommend a new booklet that came out this year, 2004. It’s entitled Mystery Sea Serpents of the South West, by Chris Moiser, and it is published by Bossiney Books Ltd. The reports contained in it go right back to 1875, and they end with a sighting in May 2000. The booklet is small but it is very comprehensive, and it also takes a look at the various theories of what Morgawr might be.
There
are many theories to explain what people have seen, but the most currently accepted
one is that it is some kind of unknown, long-necked, seal. It is possible that a new seal species may inhabit the waters off Falmouth as many seals are seen
in the area, often in the harbour itself, and there have occasionally been sightings
of Black Seals, which are not native to this part of the UK.
However, bearing in mind that the prehistoric coelacanth was thought to be long
extinct, until it’s rediscovery in the 1930s, should we too surprised if a plesiosaur-type creature was found? Scientists maintain that the waters around Falmouth are too cold to support any reptilian type of creature, and
that if Morgawr is real it must be warm-bloodied. As for the waters being too
cold for many marine species - a barracuda was caught off Cornwall in 2002!
One
other major explanation for the sightings of Morgawr comes from those scientists who tell
us it is probably a sunfish. 
These have one soft and spiny dorsalfin,
one anal fin with at least three spines, and a tail fin that is usually forked. The main types of this species are the
Panfish of North America, including the 
Bluegill, and the
Bass, which also includes the
Spotted Bass.
An
article entitled Monsters of the English Channel, that also takes
a look at the stories of Morgawr, can be found on the Paranormal News web site
at:
http://www.paranormalnews.com/article.asp?ArticleID=1021
At the end of that article is a link to the Global Underwater Search Team, at:
http://www.bahnhof.se/~wizard/GUSTeng03/okandadjur_morgawr.html
This second link gives some very interesting facts about the topography of the English Channel and Falmouth Bay, including some very good graphics. One map
shows where the largest fish catches take place, together with the places where Morgawr has been seen; both of which coincide.
Another article, entitled The Definitive Sea Serpent, by Matthew
A. Bille, examines the case of two zoologists, British naturalists, who encountered
a sea monster in 1905, during a research trip near the mouth of Brazil’s Parahiba
River. The case is little known these day and it makes extremely interesting reading. It includes a graphic that compares the head profiles of the animal that was seen with that of: a Plesiosaur, a Common Eel, and a Leopard Seal. It can be read here:
http://www.strangemag.com/definitiveseaserpent.html
UFOs
OVER CORNWALL
So where does all of this leave us in relation to UFOs? Well, of course, Cornwall has its fair share of UFO sightings, and the first one I can find a reference to comes from the FSR Magazine. Apparently, on 18th October 1955, a blue/white object, with flames coming from its tail, was seen over North Devon and Cornwall in the very early hours of the morning. It made a sizzling sound, and when it hit the sea it sounded as though it had exploded. (Reference: Flying Saucer Review Vol. 17, No. 5 September/October 1971, p. 29)
Then,
in 1975, a group of three UFOs were seen over Falmouth Docks; while in March
1976 a pair of flying saucers was reported over Perranwell. Both of these reports
are only very briefly mentioned in the Cornish Guardian newspaper at:
http://www.cornishguardian.co.uk/
UFOs were also reported over Falmouth Bay in the August or September of 1976, but trying to track the stories down has so far proved fruitless.
One bright clear morning, on 30th June 1988, a couple, and their friend, were at Mounts Bay, Penzance, when they saw a small round object circling a jet. As they watched it faded and vanished as if it had disintegrated.
As reported by the Cornish Guardian on 13th February 1997, although it happened a year previously, a student claimed he had to do an emergency stop in his car near Pensilva, south-east Cornwall, when he saw four different coloured lights in a square formation. The lights seemed to be very low, right over his car, but with no mass to them, and he felt as though he was being watched.
In Jonathan Downes’ book, (referenced above), on pages 90/92, he has also turned up a report, from the same time period, of three unidentified fireballs being seen over St. Mawes, and Flusing; together with the details of a UFO sighting over a Redruth school. Three teachers and ninety children saw it and, according to the head teacher, UFOs had been seen in the same area a few years previously.
More Bizarre Explanations?
Cornwall is full of myths and legends, it has a truly Celtic heart and, although a genuine belief in fairy-type beings has largely died out, they are still talked about with affection. Cornish sprites come in various shapes, with various names, but the two best known are the Piskies and the Knockers. However, there is also a species called the Spriggins, who are said to live in the ancient sites such as standing stones and barrows. They are credited with being shape-shifters who can change in size from very small right up to being gigantic grotesques.
And in an essay entitled The Elfin Creed of Cornwall you can
read yet more about them here:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/prwe/prwe023.htm
If
you’re interested enough to want to know about the folklore of Cornwall
there is a very good bibliography, compiled by Jeremy Harte, which contains
many references to Cornwall. His book is entitled Alternative Approaches
to Folklore, and you can read extracts here:
http://66.102.11.104/search?q=cache:lngMqQcR8rIJ:www.hoap.co.uk/
He also wrote a work entitled Research in Geomancy that has a
section on Cornwall. You can read extracts of that here:
http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:NqHNXuLLZw8J:www.hoap.co.uk/
Is there a basis in fact for some of these legends; are these fairy beings real? Could they be responsible for the sightings of Owlman?
There is one final idea to add to this eclectic mix of possibilities, and that concerns the now decommissioned RAF Portreath base at Nancekuke, on the northern coast of Cornwall. In actual fact Portreath and Falmouth lie directly opposite each other on the map, with just about twelve miles between them.
But, in a nutshell, it started out as a Fighter Section during WWII, and then became a transport-training unit. In May 1950 it was taken over by the Ministry of Supply, to be developed as the Chemical Defence Establishment (CDE) Nancekuke. It closed on 30th September 1980 when it was formally handed back to the RAF. During that time, amongst other things, it produced VX nerve gas.
In
2000 the M.P. for the area took up the cases of local people who claim to have been poisoned while working at the base during the time that Sarin was being produced. You can read the BBC report here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/608113.stm
And in July 2001 the M.P. asked a question about it in Parliament:
http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/
By late 2001 the local Surfers Against Sewage group, locally called S.A.S., were finally allowed to look around the site. The S.A.S. group were also invited to take part in the preliminary discussions regarding the clean up.
And
in August 2003 a chemical clean up was at last announced:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/cornwall/3161887.stm
The project finally began in the summer of 2004.
If
you’d like to read more background information on this issue, this
final link will tell you the story of a very redoubtable lady who spent most
of her adult life fighting for justice. The article is from October 1995 and
entitled The Toxic Avenger:
http://john.tillotson.com/The%20Toxic%20Avenger.htm
Could there be a link, even a tenuous one, between the nerve agents produced at Nancekuke and some of the local cryptozoological sightings? Was the Owlman all a hoax? Does Morgawr exist?
We may never really know the answers, but at least living in this part of Cornwall is interesting!