Cornwall (UK)

County in southwest England including the Isles of Scilly (Scillies).

Area
(excluding Scillies) 3,550 sq km/1,370 sq mi

Towns and cities
Truro (administrative headquarters), Camborne, Launceston; Bude, Falmouth, Newquay, Penzance, St Ives (resorts)

Physical
Bodmin Moor (including Brown Willy 419 m/1,375 ft); Land's End peninsula; rivers Camel, Fal, Fowey, Tamar

Features
St Michael's Mount; Poldhu, site of first transatlantic radio signal (1901); the Stannary or Tinners' Parliament; Tate St Ives art gallery; the Mineral Tramways Project, which aims to preserve the mining landscape, once the centre of the world's hard-rock mining industry; Eden Project, two ‘biomes’ (tropical rainforest and Mediterranean) built in a disused china-clay pit near St Austell, formed a Millennium Commission Landmark Project, the first part of which opened in 2000; the ‘Lost’ Gardens of Heligan; the Minack Theatre, carved from the cliff face at Porthcuno

Agriculture
crops are early in some places: fruit, oats, and vegetables, including swedes, turnips, and mangolds (a root vegetable used as cattle fodder); spring flowers; cattle and sheep rearing; dairy farming; fishing (Mevagissey, Newlyn, and St Ives are the principal fishing ports)

Industries
tourism; electronics; kaolin (a white clay used in the manufacture of porcelain; St Austell is the main centre for production)

Population
(1996) 483,300

Famous people
John Betjeman, Humphry Davy, Daphne Du Maurier, William Golding