IHBC Yearbook 2017

28 Y E A R B O O K 2 0 1 7 of Cornwall ‘land’ falling within its authority for the sum of £5. This means the trust is fully independent and able to control its own costs. The harbour is run by volunteers and key staff who are paid a small honorarium. The trust provides support for fishing boats, subsidises moorings for local boats and puts sand into the harbour each year to maintain a sheltered beach for visitors. In 2013, car parking on and around the historic quays accounted for 92 per cent of the trust’s annual income. A small surplus is retained each year enabling the trust to plan for future expenditure, barring the catastrophic loss of the quays, which are not insured. Mousehole is one of the best- preserved harbour settings in Cornwall. Yet the importance of the harbour commissioners in sustainably managing this heritage site is largely overlooked. Cornwall Council is the statutory harbour authority for ten harbours. While some have always been local-authority owned, the council has acted as a safety net for failed trust ports such as St Ives and Porthscatho and failed commercial ports such as Portreath. All remain statutory ports and all are loss-making. As most historic harbour structures are uninsured, many are being maintained to defer eventual failure: few harbour authorities have the resources to plan for future adaptation. The government’s Small Ports Recovery Scheme, announced in August 2014 with funding totalling £1.7 million, was an unexpected lifeline enabling many harbours, including Porthleven and Mousehole, to make repairs that were otherwise beyond their modest means but critical to their ongoing code compliance. Where a harbour is closed and no open port duty exists, damage from natural causes may go unrepaired. At Lamorna Cove (left), the 19th-century granite pier, listed at Grade II and privately owned, was not repaired. Wave action since 2014 has reduced it to a stub. Harbours are subject to sweeping natural change and human alteration, characterised by pragmatic rebuilding and structural discontinuity. Minor repairs are often ad hoc, major repairs rely on the ingenuity of the consulting engineer. Often, repairs are carried out in a single stage and specified to anticipate worsening conditions, rather than incremental minimum intervention. While fallen stonework may be recovered, the use of modern materials and techniques is common. Historic inter-tidal structures were not designed to withstand the additional stresses presented by increasing sea levels and storm intensity. Progressive sea level rise in the 20th century means that the effective height of many sea- facing structures has already been reduced, causing amplified wave run-up and an increasing risk of over-topping. At Mevagissey and Looe, for example, over-topping of the quay walls is frequent. But historic masonry structures cannot Mullion Cove: the 19th-century harbour is owned by the National Trust which has been exploring options for its long-term sustainable management. A 2006 study concluded that repair and maintenance until ‘failure’ should be adopted, followed by managed retreat – a controlled process of loss and consolidation, after which the harbour would revert to its natural state as a cove. (Photo: John Such, suchgoodpictures.co.uk) Ruined stub of the privately owned 19th-century granite pier at Lamorna Cove