About the reserve

The habitats, plants and animals at Penhale Dunes are of international importance. Sand dunes are one of the most threatened habitats due to development pressure, climate change and management challenges. The area has been selected as 
a Special Area of Conservation – the highest level of recognition in Europe.

Penhale’s dune system is thought to have originated over 5000 years ago and has been used by people ever since for mining, agriculture, religious worship and, more recently, military training, tourism and recreation. Sealed beneath the shifting sands are many signs of past human activity.

An historic landscape

An excavation of the dunes in 2017 revealed the ancient oratory of Piran, a 5th century Cornish abbot and the patron saint of tin-miners. Nearby stand the ruins of the old parish church, dismantled and moved in 1805 as the sands engulfed it. Every year locals and visitors gather on the dunes in early March to celebrate St Piran’s Day.

Alongside the many reminders of Cornwall’s mining heritage, artefacts from World War II have also have left their mark on the area, including a decoy airfield, designed 
to distract enemy planes from the real airfield further west at Trevellas, near St Agnes.

Penhale Sands is a wonderful mosaic of ever-changing dune habitats. Winds constantly reshape the dunes, scouring out wet and dry hollows that form sheltered 
havens for wildlife. The thin soil supports many rare plants such as early gentian, shore dock and the primitive lower plants, petalwort and scrambled-egg lichen. 

An army of insects bring the dunes alive: using every inch of space, they burrow 
into the sand, flit about their food plants and scurry in search of prey. Male skylarks declare their territory, singing high in the sky to distract predators from their female counterparts, nesting on the ground. Numbers of breeding skylarks appear stable at Penhale due to the large area of suitable habitats oering minimal disturbance to 
the nesting birds.

Penhale Dunes is not owned by Cornwall Wildlife Trust, but it’s a site where the Trust work in partnership with other landowners, including.

• Perran Sands Holiday Park (management of Gear Sands)
• Ministry of Defence.  The military training area is used for a variety of training activities and its boundaries are marked by red and white posts. There are no public footpaths through the site, but the South West Coast Path runs alongside the Western boundary.
• Perranzabuloe Parish Council (land near Perranporth Beach)
• Perranporth golf club
• St Pirans Trust who own scheduled ancient monuments (St Pirans Oratory and Church).