The Telecoms Coast (A History of Terrestrial, Sub Sea and Space Communication in Cornwall)

A fascinating story of telecommunications in Cornwall from 1830 through to the present day, spanning the earliest days of the terrestrial telegraph network, the laying of subsea cables from 1850 onwards, high power long distance radio from 1900 and satellite communication from the early 1960s.

We start at the Geevor tin mine in Pendeen then head down the coast to Land’s End, the most westerly point of the English mainland (the shortest route to New York).  From Land’s End we come first to Porthcurno where the first subsea cable to India came ashore on 8th June 1870, then via Newlyn, Penzance, Marazion and Porthleven to Poldhu Cove near Mullion from where (30 years later on 12 December 1901) Ambrose Fleming summoned sufficient radio energy to send the Morse code letter S (three dots, no dashes) to Marconi in Newfoundland. From Poldhu we head a few miles inland to Goonhilly where on the 11th July 1962 (another sixty years on), TV signals from the newly built satellite communications antenna, Arthur, were transmitted and received via a beach ball sized satellite called Telstar. Fast forward another sixty years (2022 onwards) and those legacy dishes support NASA and ESA space missions. There is also a state of the art data centre and a Low Earth Orbit ground station.

The Telecoms Coast is not written as a guide book but if you were minded to head down the coast from Pendeen with a compass and a smart phone you could be relaxing a mere 100,000 steps later with a well-earned gin and tonic in the bar of the Housel Bay Hotel. There you can reflect that with the benefits of a time machine you could have crossed paths with John Pender in 1870 in Porthcurno as he planned the next long distance subsea cable to arrive on the sandy beach. Fast forward thirty years to 1900 and you could have been chatting to Mr Marconi and Major Flood Page as they planned the new generation of high power long distance radio stations along the Cornish Coast. A quick teleport to the present day and you could find a bevy of satellite engineers from Goonhilly enjoying a beer or three in the hotel bar while discussing radio networks on the Moon or how to talk to Mars.