page_title: Wherrytown
section_title: Submerged forest
hierarchical_section_title: Wherrytown / Submerged forest
caption_attribution_description: English: On the 0.6metre low-tide line about 100 metres from sea wall, Wherrytown, Penzance, Cornwall
context_page_description: Wherrytown is a small settlement in west Cornwall, United Kingdom, on the east side of the Laregan River, between Newlyn and Penzance. It was formerly in the civil parish of Madron and was incorporated into the Borough of Penzance in 1934 when local government was reorganised.
  The village bore the brunt of the Ash Wednesday storm on 7 March 1962, with most of the buildings destroyed along with nearly one mile of the seafront from the Battery Rocks to Tolcarne heavily damaged. The only Wherrytown building to survive was the Mount's Bay Inn. At low spring tides, and after storms partially fossilised trees can be exposed. The South West Coast Path follows the shore.
context_section_description: Offshore surveys of Mount's Bay have found submerged, erosional plains and valleys containing deposits of peat, sand and gravel. The deposits indicate cyclical changes from wetland, to coastal forest, to brackish conditions have been occurring over the past 12,000 years as sea levels rose. Either side of Penzance, on the beaches at Ponsandane and Wherrytown, evidence of a ′submerged forest′ can be seen at low tide in the form of several partially fossilised tree trunks. Divers and trawlers also find submerged tree trunks across Mount’s Bay and the forest may have covered a coastal plain 2 to 5 kilometres further south than today. The samples of peat and wood around Penzance have been radiocarbon dated and indicate that the forest was growing from at least 6,000 to around 4,000 years ago when rising sea levels finally killed the trees. Artefacts dating from the Mesolithic (10,000 to 5,000 BCE) have been found indicating some occupation contemporary with the forest. Marshes formed and were overlain by sand, gravel and by sand dunes which formed natural barriers to the sea. The Western Green (a sand dune system, now under Penzance promenade) was such a barrier. Storms sometimes destroyed the barriers depositing sand and gravel over peat beds in Marazion Marsh, and in the foundations of buildings in Wherrytown. The submerged forest in the intertidal area between Wherrytown and Long Rock is of national importance and is a Cornwall Geology Site.
caption: Rooted oak stump visible low tide, Spring 2015
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