St Just

St Just is the most westerly town in mainland England, sitting on the high granite plateau about a mile inland from the coast near Land’s End. It has a working, lived-in feel that many Cornish villages have lost — a proper town square with independent shops, a bakery, two good pubs, a hardware store and a sense that real people live here rather than just visiting. The town square hosts a regular market and occasional outdoor performances in the medieval playing place, or “plen-an-gwary.”

The mining heritage here is among the most dramatic in Cornwall. The cliffs between St Just and the sea are riddled with old mine workings, many of them part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site. The coast path from Cape Cornwall — the only cape in England — runs south past Botallack and the famous Crowns engine houses, perched impossibly on the cliff face above the crashing sea. This stretch of path is not to be missed, particularly in late afternoon light when the old granite buildings glow against the dark Atlantic.

Cape Cornwall itself is a rugged headland owned by the National Trust, with views to the Brisons rocks and across to Pendeen Watch lighthouse. The Levant Mine and Geevor Tin Mine, both open to visitors, tell the story of the men and women who worked these extraordinary cliff-face mines. St Just is proper, raw, end-of-the-land Cornwall — no twee gift shops, no harbour-view restaurants, just honest granite and Atlantic wind.