St Just in Penwith is the most westerly town in England, a small granite-built market town on the rugged Penwith peninsula a few miles from Land's End. It sits in country shaped by tin mining — the clifftops around the town are studded with the engine houses and chimney stacks of former mines, some of the finest industrial archaeology anywhere in Britain.
The town retains a working character that many Cornish villages have lost to tourism. It has a market square, a post office, independent shops, and several pubs. The parish church has two medieval wall paintings, discovered when plaster was stripped during restoration — a rare survival in Cornwall.
Cape Cornwall, a headland a mile to the west, is one of the most atmospheric spots on the Cornish coast: the only cape in England, it was once thought to be the most westerly point of the mainland. The coast path here offers spectacular cliff scenery in both directions, passing the Botallack Crown Mines — engine houses clinging to the cliff face above the sea, part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site — and reaching Levant Mine, where a working beam engine runs under steam.
St Just is an excellent base for the far west: well-served by buses, within reach of beaches including Cot Valley's dinosaur-egg boulders at Porth Nanven just south of town (Sennen Cove is five miles further south), the South West Coast Path, and a remarkable concentration of prehistoric monuments — including the Tregeseal Dancing Stones, Carn Euny with its fogou, and Ballowall Barrow — on the surrounding moorland. The Kenidjack Valley, cutting down to the sea north of town, combines industrial remains with wildlife and is an excellent short walk.