History of Penzance

spear-head, a knife, and pins, along with much pottery and large quantities of charcoal were discovered when building a new housing estate, at Tredarvah, to the west of Alverton. The defensive earthwork known as Lescudjack Castle is not excavated, but almost certainly belongs to the Iron Age. A single rampart encloses three acres of hilltop, and would have dominated the approach to the area from the east. There are no signs of the additional ramparts reported by William Hals in about 1730, and the site is now surrounded by housing with allotments. Excavations in 2008 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) to the west at Penwith College found an enclosure ditch and pottery indicating a settlement and, an evolving field system with ditches and interconnecting pits suggesting water management. There are traces of a rampart and ditch to the west of Penzance at Mount Misery, and an oval rampart and ditch at Lesingey above the St Just road, which together with Lescudjack, overlook the coast of Penzance and Newlyn.

Until recently, there was little evidence for anything but an early and short Roman occupation of Cornwall. The fort at Nanstallon was occupied from AD 54 to AD 80. With the recent discovery of a Roman fort at Calstock, and a site with multiple complexes near the Norman castle at Restormel, now tentatively accepted as being occupied from AD 54 into the 3rd or 4th century in east Cornwall, the Roman occupation appears more extensive than archaeologists formerly believed. The only evidence so far found, of the Romans in Penzance, are three finds. In August 1899 two coins of Vespasian (69–79 AD) were found in an ancient trench in Penzance Cemetery. The coins were eight feet below ground together with some cow bones, and are now in the Penlee House Museum. A 1934 find from the Alverton area is described as a ″coin of the reign of Constantine the