Long Rock

Long Rock (Cornish: Carrek Hyr) is a village in west Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) east of Penzance and 1 mile (1.6 km) west of Marazion in the civil parish of Ludgvan. The village is named after the tidal Long Rock just offshore at grid reference SW498308.^[1] Long Rock is on the shore of Mount's Bay at the centre of the three-mile beach which stretches from Penzance to Marazion. The beach is backed by a seawall along which runs the main line railway and the South West Coast Path.

The rock offshore that the village is named after

Long Rock Cornish: Carrek Hyr
Long Rock from a helicopter
Long Rock Location within Cornwall
OS grid reference	SW497315
Unitary authority	Cornwall
Ceremonial county	Cornwall
Region	South West
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	PENZANCE
Postcode district	TR20
Dialling code	01736
Police	Devon and Cornwall
Fire	Cornwall
Ambulance	South Western
UK Parliament	St Ives
List of places UK England Cornwall 50.12891°N 5.50067°W / 50.12891; -5.50067

Facilities

There used to be a public toilets, but these closed and were sold at auction for £160,000

The nearest primary schools are located in Gulval and Ludgvan, with the nearest secondary school, Humphry Davy School, in Penzance. Village facilities include a shop, post office, two pubs (one offering B & B), a care home, an equestrian and agricultural supplier, a hall which can be hired, two motorbike training places, a car rental business and several car sales businesses. The industrial estate contains a glass merchant, a computer repairer, a vet and a solar energy firm.

Long Rock Playing Field Association recently received a grant to install new play equipment. Penwith District Council built a new 'amenity area' in a field close to the A30.

Marazion Marsh, an RSPB nature reserve leased from Lord St Levan, is situated half-a-mile east of the village.^[2]

The local community radio station is Coast FM (formerly Penwith Radio), which broadcasts on 96.5 and 97.2 FM.^[3]

A Wesleyan chapel, on the old A30 between Long Rock and Newtown, opened on 21 June 1889. It was a replacement for an old, decaying ″clob″ building at Newtown.^[4]

Transport

The GWR depot at Long Rock

A train runs along the Cornish Main Line

Long Rock is the site of a locomotive shed. Formerly catering to steam locomotives, it is the most south-westerly depot on the former Great Western Railway's system. Now known as Penzance TMD, it is a refuelling and servicing depot for diesel locomotives and HST sets.^[5]

Long Rock has regular bus services to Penzance and Truro and is on The Cornish Way network of cycle paths.

A dual carriageway bypass carries the A30 road north of the village and the land beside the road has been extensively developed with light industry and a retail park. Penzance Heliport is situated between Long Rock and Penzance. The original heliport was demolished in 2014 and a Sainsburys supermarket, car park and trading estate was built on the site. In 2019 new heliport was built on a site opposite the heliport trading estate a hundred yards away from the original heliport and in the spring of 2020 commenced a scheduled service to the Isles of Scilly.

Cornish wrestling

William Couch Jeffery (1826–1899),^[6] was from Long Rock and was champion middleweight^[7] of Cornwall for a quarter of a century including the 1840s and 1850s.^[8][9][10] He won many prizes in Cornwall as well as London.^[10] He was initially a miner and then a market gardener and fisherman.^[6] He spent some time in Australia and it was said that he had beaten the Australian champion wrestler, who was an Irishman after walking 160 miles to the match.^[11][10]