Penhale Camp

Penhale Camp was established in 1939 on the coast near Holywell Bay as an emergency anti-aircraft training camp. The army arrived in a landscape that already held farms, mine workings and much older archaeological remains.

Its wartime history was not merely a matter of exercises. A memorial records the servicemen killed when the camp was bombed on 7 July 1940. Training continued after the war, and military use of the built camp ended in 2010.

The former camp and the wider Penhale training area are different things. A story about the sale or redevelopment of the buildings does not mean that every neighbouring piece of defence land became publicly accessible. Likewise, the old mine count house is evidence of a mining landscape reused by the military, not a building first constructed for the camp.

Penhale belongs in both Holywell’s modern history and its longer story of changing land use. For the current position on redevelopment, follow dated planning records rather than assuming that a permission is a completed neighbourhood.