Zennor Village
Zennor is a small and ancient village on the north coast of the Penwith Peninsula in west Cornwall, a scattered settlement of granite farmhouses and cottages in the characteristic Cornish moorland landscape between the high ground of Penwith Moor and the dramatic coastal cliffs that drop to the Atlantic below. The village is known for the mermaid legend associated with its medieval church, the remarkable quality of its prehistoric landscape and its brief but intense association with D H Lawrence during the First World War.
The Church of St Senara in the village contains the famous Mermaid Chair, a bench end carved with the figure of a mermaid holding a comb and mirror, the best-known example of a widespread coastal church carving tradition. The legend attached to the carving tells of a beautiful woman who attended services at Zennor and lured a chorister named Mathey Trewella with her singing to follow her into the sea at Pendour Cove below the village, where both were turned into mermaids and can sometimes be heard singing beneath the waves. The chair is estimated to date from the fifteenth century.
D H Lawrence and his German wife Frieda lived at Zennor from 1916 to 1917, attracted by the remoteness of the Penwith landscape and seeking relief from the pressures of wartime England. Lawrence wrote parts of Women in Love at Zennor and his time in the village, ended by expulsion under the Defence of the Realm Act following suspicion of signalling to German submarines, is recorded in his memoir Kangaroo and in various letters that describe his intense and contradictory relationship with the Cornish landscape.
The prehistoric landscape around Zennor includes the chambered tomb of Zennor Quoit, one of the finest megalithic monuments in Cornwall, visible on the moorland above the village.