Poldhu

Poldhu is a small area in south Cornwall, England, UK, situated on the Lizard Peninsula; it comprises Poldhu Point and Poldhu Cove. Poldhu means "black pool" in Cornish. Poldhu lies on the coast of Mount's Bay and is in the northern part of the parish of Mullion; the churchtown is to the south-east. On the north side of Poldhu Cove is the parish of Gunwalloe and the village of Porthleven is a further to the north. Poldhu Point became the site of one of the main technological advances of the early twentieth century when, on 12 December 1901, a wireless signal was sent by Thomas Barron in Poldhu to St. John's, Newfoundland, and received by Marconi. The technology was a precursor to radio, television, satellites and the internet, with the earth station at Goonhilly Downs a nearby example. The beach at Poldhu was heavily mined during World War II to prevent any prospect of a German force landing there. As an unfortunate result, on 24 April 1943, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve members Mair Myfannwy Richards and Reginald Thomas Smith both died instantly when Mair trod on an unmarked mine. In January 2016 Poldhu Cove was inundated with thousands of pink plastic bottles, brought onto the beach with successive tides. The National Trust said it believed a container had gone overboard from a ship, during the stormy weather. The site is famous as the location of Poldhu Wireless Station, Guglielmo Marconi's transmitter for the first transatlantic radio message on 12 December 1901. Marconi received the transmission on Signal Hill, St. John's, Newfoundland. The station was built partly on cliff top pastures that had been enclosed in 1871 and partly on medieval fields belonging to a nearby settlement, Angrouse. The fifty acre (200,000 m2) plot was bought in 1900 and building work ran from October 1900 to January 1901. During the work two Bronze Age barrows were flattened and a bronze dagger and urn were recovered. To design the spark transmitter, the first high power radio transmitter in the world, Marconi hired Prof.