Not actually all made of serpentine; the European plate moved northwards, and literally crashed (as much as a geo-plate can) into the British plate; in the process, some of the Earth s liquid layer squeezed up between the plates, leaving an area along the cliffs that is neither one plate or the other.
I have all the geological details here, plate techtonics and all, alignments, spread, types colours etc ... somewhere, it is just not handy at the moment, I seem to remember it (in terms of maps) is shaped like a heart with a side shoot. Serpentine is rare, it is the substance on which our plates float.
The Lizard is best described as a crumple area, that splintered and developed faults, the sudden crunch of the two plates trapped a section of the mantle, and forced it up between the two plates; Lizard Point itself is Schist, the area behind that up to and including Goonhilly is Serpentine, in fact you could say a lot of it was gneiss (very gneiss). Can t remember quite, but I thought it was a part of Spain that we crunched into, after Britain rose above sea level. Britain started off as two blocks of land under water, until Scotland joined on, in the Southern hemisphere; who knows where we will be in 400 million years from now. It really is so pathetic the way we try and protect the land; it has been on the move for millions of years and is still moving; sea levels are changing whether we want them or not, irrespective of any human additional damage. I will have a look for my maps and notes sometime, but that is all I can remember now. Oh yes, it was when Africa/South America crunched into North America/Europe, gave the rest of the parts a kick.
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