MARAZION, CORNWALL

things you might not know about

THE tiny Cornish town of Marazion has applied for city status as part of a competition for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations.

Here are some facts about what could become Britain’s newest, and smallest, city:

1

MARAZION is two miles east of Penzance.

2

THE population in 2011 was 1,440 and the electoral ward population which includes surrounding villages was 4,625.

3

THE tidal island of St Michael’s Mount

( above) is half a mile offshore. At low water a causeway links it to the town and at high water passenger boats carry visitors between

Marazion and St

Michael’s Mount.

4

TIN smelting probably took place in the town in ancient times but it is not even mentioned in the Domesday Book.

5

THE name probably comes from the Cornish word Marghasbighan,

“small marketplace”.

6

IT’S reputed that Marazion once had the right of returning two members to Parliament but, that owing to its inability to pay the members’ expenses, the right was lost.

7

MARAZION was a flourishing town, owing its prosperity to the throng of pilgrims who came to visit St

Michael’s Mount. But that dwindled when pilgrimages were discouraged during the Reformation.

8

THE town is in one of the last areas where the Cornish language was generally spoken. There are 43 words for “cream tea” in Cornish.

9

AT the end of the Second World War a number of naval vessels, the most famous of which was the battleship HMS Warspite were broken up on the beaches at Marazion.

10

MARAZION railway station closed to passenger traffic in October 1964.