Laura Knight’s favourite haunt was the rugged cliffs to the west and east of Lamorna Cove. Here she painted some her most arresting pictures of sunlight refracted from the ocean including At the Edge of the Cliff (1917) and The Green Sea, Lamorna (c. 1917). Colonel Paynter, then owner of the Lamorna Cove, even built a small wooden hut for Knight on the cliffs to store her canvases and to offer shelter.

As Knight described in her autobiography, Laura Knight, Oil Paint and Grease Paint, 1936; 'Close by my hut, Carn Bargis [sic] towered. No human hand could have fashioned so architecturally magnificent a pile of granite. On the flat rocks below it were deep pools for swimming and pools in which to paddle. Pinkish fern-like coral, delicate growth of weed, tiny crabs and fish showed clearly in the shallows, as a picture seen through green-tinted glass.'

So it was with considerable excitement in 2025 that we went in search of that ‘magnificent pile of granite’ and found it just to the west of Lamorna Cove, little changed despite a century enduring the prevailing south-westerly storms. Approaching we also realised that Knight’s wonderful work, On the Cliffs (1913), is also set at Carn Barges, as seen from the Lamorna Cove side.