1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Boscastle

BOSCASTLE, a small seaport and watering-place in the Launceston parliamentary division of Cornwall, England, 5 m. N. of Camelford station on the London & South-Western railway. Pop. (civil parish of Forrabury, 1901) 329. The village rises steeply above a very narrow cove on the north coast, sheltered, but difficult of access, vessels having to be warped into it by means of hawsers. A mound on a hill above the harbour marks the site of a Norman castle. The parish church of St Symphorian, Forrabury, also stands high, overlooking the Atlantic from Willapark Point. The tower is without bells, and the tradition that a ship bearing a peal hither was wrecked within sight of the harbour, and that the lost bells may still be heard to toll beneath the waves, has been made famous by a ballad of the Cornish poet Robert Stephen Hawker, vicar of Moorwinstow. The coast scenery near Boscastle is severely beautiful, with abrupt cliffs fully exposed to the sea, and broken only by a few picturesque inlets such as Crackington Cove and Pentargan Cove. Inland are bare moors, diversified by narrow dales.