A visit to Piper's Hole, a carved sea cave revealed at low tide at the south-west of Crantock Beach, near Newquay in Cornwall.
Within the cave is a carving of a womans face with the words:
Mar not my face but let me be,
Secure in this lone cavern by the sea,
Let the wild waves around me roar,
Kissing my lips forever more.
According to legend the woman depicted was a local woman who, some time in the 1920s, was riding her horse across the beach. The tides on this stretch of coast come in pretty fast and her and her horse got trapped in this cavern, where both her and her horse unfortunately died. Her partner at the time then carved out this image and poem in memory of her. As romantic as this story is, in truth there is no evidence to back any of this up, however as mysterious as the carving is and despite all the local speculation about it, some facts about it have come out within the past few decades.
We know now that the carving was actually done by Joseph Prater, an artist who lived nearby in wooden huts near the beach. Very little is known about Joseph's life, apart from he was born in London in 1862, though had family connections to Crantock, and died in 1932.
Who exactly the woman is though, no one knows. Many people have drowned here due to being cut off by the tide, including Ethel de Medina Greenstreet, a journalist of the time, who's drowning here in 1904 got large media coverage due to her profession. Some have suggested that the carving may be in relation to this, while others suggest it may be of Joseph's sister, who died in 1895, or of a friend. Whatever the truth is behind the mysterious lady and poem is likely something we'll never know.
Of course though, it is likely after all that the carving is of no one in particular and is just a piece of art carved into the rock face with no background origin or hidden meaning.
25 июл 2022
