Helston and Loe Pool

Everyone knows that Cornwall is a place of beauty, magical coves and a sub-tropical climate – [beware this last bit, think warm and wet jungle rather than lying on a beach sipping cocktails!]  But Cornwall also has a very proud history and heritage that is also well worth exploring….not to mention a bucket load of myths and legends!

I was born and raised in the small market town of Helston, ‘gateway’ to The Lizard Peninsula.  It’s a modest town with a rich history.  Maybe you’ve heard of the Floral Dance?  Yep, that Helston.  For those who don’t know, Helston is ‘famous’ for it’s welcoming of Spring festival known as Flora Day.  Adults and children alike take part in several formal dances through the streets during the day, led out by the band playing the Floral Dance tune (made famous by Terry Wogan back in the day!!).  The dancers dress up, the spectators line the streets, the band take a deep breath, and away we go from around 7am in the morning until the pubs shut in the evening.  Street performers re-enact tales of good versus evil whilst waving branches of greenery and sycamore in the Hal-an-Tow, too many pints of the local ale Spingo are consumed, and general mayhem and merriment flows through the fair. 

I digress, this blog post is about some of the lesser known tales of Helston, or rather of it’s nearby fresh water lake, Loe Pool. At the bottom of the town of Helston, there is a walk that joins the town to Porthleven on the coast.  The area is known as Penrose and passes alongside Loe Pool before going out to the coast – with the coastal side culminating in a sand bar.  Loe Pool has a circumference of around 8 miles and is the largest natural lake in Cornwall.  It is home to loads of wildlife and is a popular local beauty spot with walkers, runners and cyclists. 

But it is also packed full of local legends, including the sinister tale that the pool claims a life every 7 years.  I remember being fascinated (and a little scared) by this as a teenager and, unfortunately, there have been quite a number of drownings both accidental and suicidal in and around the pool over the years. Some of these can be attributed to the particularly treacherous section of sea at the sand bar and, despite warning signs on the beach, do continue to happen.

The Pool is said to have had a plane crash into it with the loss of two airmen, and there are tales that a Spanish galleon laden with coins was thrown into the pool over the sand bar in a particularly ferocious storm, but, to be honest, there’s barely a beach on this coast that doesn’t have a similar story of Spanish gold attached to it!  It has also been suggested that the Barnes-Wallace bouncing bomb was tested on the Pool too, although I’m not sure there’s any actual evidence of this.

To bring us back to Helston, Flora Day, and more specifically, the Hal-An-Tow, we need to mention that mythical mainstay, the dragon.  It is fabled that the tradition of Hal-An-Tow began with a dragon.  The people of Helston (known as Helstonians) were one day alarmed to see a dragon flying towards their town (well, you would be, wouldn’t you!) breathing fire and threatening to burn them all to a crisp.  In an attempt to escape the fiery beast, they ran towards the surrounding countryside, and as luck would have it, the dragon plopped itself into Loe Pool and extinguished his fire. Phew!

As you can probably tell from this snapshot, there is no shortage of myths and legends in this area.  Watch this space, I’ll be adding to this taster in the future.

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