Rame Head

Rame Head is a coastal headland on the Rame Peninsula in south-east Cornwall. It stands above Whitsand Bay, a wide sweep of sand backed by low cliffs. The land rises steeply from the sea to a flat summit where a small chapel and a coastwatch lookout share the view. The Iron Age promontory fort still shows its central causeway and round-house platforms. A narrow neck of land once linked the head to the mainland before further excavation. The site carries traces of early Christian worship. A chapel dedicated to St Michael was first licensed for Mass in 1397 on the site of a Celtic hermitage. Ordwulf, a West Country landowner and uncle of King Ethelred the Unready, gave Rame to Tavistock Abbey in 981. During the Second World War a repair ship named HMS Rame Head served until 2009. The headland also appears in the sea shanty ‘Spanish Ladies’. Visitors walk the steep footpath to the chapel shell and the coastwatch lookout. Dartmoor ponies graze the slopes while deer, sheep and cattle move across the open ground. From the summit the view stretches over Plymouth Sound and the English Channel. The headland belongs to Mount Edgcumbe House and Country Park, managed by Cornwall Council and Plymouth City Council. Rare plants such as early meadow-grass and slender bird’s-foot-trefoil grow within the Site of Special Scientific Interest.