Calstock Roman fort
Dr Chris Smart, Professor Stephen Rippon and Dr Peter Claughton
Geophysical survey carried out by Chris Smart and Dr Peter Claughton, Research Fellows in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Exeter as part of the Bere Ferrers Project (directed by Professor Stephen Rippon) has led to the discovery and excavation of a

previously unknown Roman fort.

The site, situated on a spur above the River Tamar on the border between Devon and Cornwall, is adjacent to St. Andrew’s church in the parish of Calstock.
The Bere Ferrers Project has, over the past two years, been investigating the development of the royal silver mines which were worked on the

Devon bank of the Tamar between 1292 and the mid 16th century.

While the mining of ore was restricted to the localised deposits in Bere Ferrers parish, the processing of that ore was carried out away from the mines close to woodland which supplied fuel for smelting and refining.

Documentary evidence suggested that smelting was carried out near to the church of St. Andrew in the parish of Calstock on the Cornish side of the Tamar when woods there were allocated to the mines as there are references to smelting and refining at a curia ‘next to the church’ and vetus castrum de Calistok

(‘at the old castle/fort at Calstock’).

It is known that this curia was an earthen-walled and gated administrative centre containing the King’s hall and the refinery, although previously the vetus castrum de

Calistok has been interpreted as the Iron Age hillfort in the north of the parish.
In the summer of 2006 a high-resolution resistivity survey was conducted on Church Hill to the south of the new burial ground in search of the medieval activity.

Faint traces of the banks and ditches of an enclosure were identified and were interpreted as either the site of the curia, or an earlier prehistoric hillslope enclosure.
In the autumn of 2007,

a magnetometer survey was conducted of a larger area with the specific goal of identifying the locations of furnaces associated with the medieval industry.

This survey gave greater clarity compared to the resistivity results, and revealed the distinctive outline of a Roman fort enclosed by two ramparts and two ditches,. Significantly, a number of anomalies also hinted at the potential sites of smelting furnaces known as ‘boles’.

Our sponsors, The Leverhulme Trust,

kindly agreed to fund an archaeological evaluation of the site, led by Chris Smart, over two weeks in January 2008.

This evaluation had two key aims:

first to date the construction of the fort and second to examine the possible medieval smelting bole.
A single evaluation trench measuring 2m by 45m was positioned to expose a section across the fort’s defences as well as the potential smelting bole.

As the field in which the excavation took place was under permanent pasture and had not been ploughed in the recent past, it was expected that the preservation of in situ archaeology would be good. Overall, the fort measures c.170m by 160m, with substantial defences leaving an internal area of c.140m by 130m (1.82 hectares). Comparison with the internal areas of the two other Cornish forts, Nanstallon (0.72 hectares) and Restormel (0.42 hectares), demonstrates that the fort at Calstock was constructed on a much larger scale. The trench was cut a short distance into the interior of the fort, revealing a possible oven and stoking chamber.

Its position, against the inner rampart, would have minimised the risk to the timber buildings, and is a typical feature of Roman forts. Pottery of various types was recovered from the oven and overlying deposits, and may give an indication of the length of use of the site.
Excavation revealed an inner rampart approximately 5m wide, constructed of clay and shillet cast from the digging of the first ditch, and revetted with timbers on both faces. The outermost revetment was constructed of worked timbers 30cm square, suggesting that they may have formed the basis for a timber super-structure or palisade. A band of blue-grey clay has been interpreted as the degraded remnants of a stack of turves which had been piled upon the natural geology abutting the timber revetment. The two ditches which sat between the inner and outer rampart both had a characteristic v-shaped profile with a square-cut base, typical of Roman military sites.

Each measured 2.8m deep from the modern land surface and was approximately 3.5m wide.

The outer rampart was also approximately 5m wide and appears to have been constructed of the same intermixed deposit of clay and shillet.

Geophysical survey and excavation shows that the outer rampart on the western and southern sides of the fort was capped with large angular and sub-angular sandstone rubble.

The date and purpose of this stone capping has yet to be determined.

Acid soil conditions will have limited the survival of animal bone but sherds of pottery, including Samian, were recovered. Significantly, what have been tentatively identified as pieces of mineralised vein material were recovered from one of the lower fills of the outer ditch, indicating that mined material had been deposited there.

This material, which has yet to be examined in detail, is perhaps the first certain evidence of a Roman military interest in Cornwall’s rich mineral resources.
Investigation of the geophysical anomaly to the south of the fort defences may corroborate this hypothesis.

Prior to excavation it was conceived that this may be the location of a medieval smelting bole referred to in fourteenth century accounts. The feature presented itself as a square or rectangular (it was not fully revealed) stone-lined furnace.

No slag was recovered from the feature but its fill has been sampled and is awaiting further analysis.

The furnace sat within a deposit of intermixed heat-affected natural, charcoal and furnace-lining that extended for approximately 10m south of the outer rampart. Samian pottery was also found in this deposit. Furnace-lining and unabraded Roman pottery, including a sherd of stamped Samian, was also found in a shallow pit at the southern end of this ‘working area’. Radiocarbon dating will hopefully confirm whether the furnace is Roman or medieval, although, at this stage it appears that it was a focus of Roman industrial activity.
Post-excavation analysis and preparation of the written report is now underway. It is anticipated that full details of the excavation will be published in the national journal of Roman archaeology Britannia, as well as the county journal Cornish Archaeology.

It is mentioned in the Welsh tale Culhwch and Olwen which may date from the 11th century.
The story describes the court as being at
Celliwig (callington ) in Cernyw (the Welsh name for Cornwall),
otherwise known as the kingdom of Dumnonia including modern Devon.
The hall is guarded by Glewlwyd Gafaelfawr,
Arthur's porter, and Culhwch has difficulty gaining entrance due to the special laws that restrict entry once a feast has begun.
Though there is no description of the place the implications of the story are of great wealth and splendour.
The story describes Arthur's warriors at the court in depth and says that:
"From here, one of his Warband, Drem, could see a gnat as far away as Scotland; while another, Medyr, could shoot an arrow through the legs of a wren in Ireland!"
Some of the Trioedd Ynys Prydein (or Welsh Triads) mention Arthur and

"Three Tribal Thrones of the Island of Britain" and locate one of his courts at Celliwig:

"Arthur as Chief Prince in Celliwig in Cernyw, and Bishop Bytwini as Chief Bishop, and Caradog Freichfras as Chief Elder."
Caradoc was his chief elder at this court and that Bishop Bytwini or Bedwin was chief bishop.

This is one of the early triads found in Peniarth MS 54 reflecting information recorded before Geoffrey of Monmouth.
The same triad goes on to say Arthur's other courts were at Mynyw and Pen Rhionydd.
The triads also state that at Celliwig Mordred struck Gwenhwyfar a blow.
This may have led to the Battle of Camlann.
The early Welsh poem Pagŵryw'r porthor? may also mention the court.
Celliwig was also known to the Cornish as well, as it appears as Kyllywyc in the Cornish-language play Beunans Ke, written perhaps around 1500.
In the Iolo Manuscripts (1843), a corpus of pseudo-medieval Welsh texts by the renowned literary forger and inventor of tradition Iolo Morganwg (1747–1826),
Celliwig is referred as the former site of the "throne of Cornwall" but the text adds that it is now at Caervynyddawg (Caerfynyddog), a site which is otherwise unattested.
Location A 1302 Cornish legal record mentions a 'Thomas de Kellewik' from west Cornwall, though his exact place of origin is unknown. 
Celliwig was identified by some Cornish antiquaries from 1816 onwards with Callington (occasionally locally attested as 'Callywith') where the ancient monuments of Castlewich Henge and Cadson Bury ringfort are in close proximity.

Their influence gave Callington its modern name in Common Cornish;  Kelly Bray Cornish : Kellibregh 'dappled grove'  is located just to the north. Another suggestion at the time was Kelliwith. Other suggested locations include Gweek Wood and on the coast at Tintagel Barras Nose or Willapark. Rachel Bromwich, the latest editor of the Welsh Triads, matched it to Kelly Rounds, a hill fort in the Cornish parish of Egloshayle.

This had already been suggested by Charles Henderson in the Cornish Church Guide (1925) (p. 87). Intriguingly, the Ravenna Cosmography identifies a major regional Roman-era settlement as Nemetostatio in central Dumnonia ( identified with North Tawton, Devon) which would translate from Latin as 'The Outpost of the Sacred Grove(s)'.[5] Not far away from the modern Cornish border is the village of Kelly in Devon which takes it name from an ancient local family, attested as far back as the 11th century. However there are also a number of places called Cernyw or containing that name in Wales, e.g. the place name Coedkernew (Coed Cernyw) in Newport. So it has been suggested that this court might be the hillfort of Llanmelin, near Caerwent. As Caradog is connected to the Kingdom of Gwent this might support this idea. There is also a farm called Gelliweg on the Llŷn peninsula in Gwynedd which one pair of Arthurian researchers and writers, Steven Blake and Scott Lloyd, argue may be the location. Celliwic as a fictional place .Those who argue that Arthur is a mythic figure also suggest this court is entirely fictional. Given the name means "forest grove... it may have originally been envisaged as somewhere Otherworldly (sacred groves being common in Celtic myth) and only later might a specific location have been ascribed to it."

 Gorlas. in Arthurian legend , Gorlois (Welsh: Gwrlais) of Tintagel, Duke of Cornwall, is the husband of Igraine prior to Uther Pendragon.

He is the father of Morgan le Fay, Morgause, and Elaine. Gorlois' name first appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae c 1136 , in which Uther falls in love with Igraine and wars with Gorlois to get to her.

Uther asks for Merlin's aid in pursuing her, and Merlin concocts some drugs that disguise Uther in the form of Gorlois.

As Gorlois , he approaches his love easily and they sleep together, conceiving Arthur.

Unbeknownst to either of them, the real Gorlois has been killed in his castle that very night.

Eventually Igraine is convinced to marry Uther.
Later treatments such as the Vulgate Cycle and Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur expand on this outline by having Gorlois' daughters married off to Uther's vassals; Elaine to King Nentres of Garlot, Morgause to King Lot of Orkney, and (after receiving an education in a convent) Morgan to King Urien.

Arthur is spared any knowledge of this when he is whisked away by Merlin to be raised by Sir Ector.

And this murdered King is by tradition also connected with another fortress roughly mid-way between Duloe and Roche - which are south of the Bodmin and Goss Moors respectively - for the field inwhich standsCastle Dore was called Carhurles meaning 'Gorlas's fortress'. It therefore seems that the chieftain could have preceded King Mark of the Tristan saga at this earthwork which is known to have been re-occupied in Gorlas's time having been abandoned during the Roman period. 

Assuming that the traditional link between the Arthurian and Tristan sagas could be factual and that King Mark DID succeed GORLAS and hold this southern territory by the sixth century, not only must Arthur's domain of Camlan, the oldest form of Camelot, and his stronghold Celliwic be sought elsewhere but the suggested area should be required to fulfil certain conditions in order to present itself a feasible proposition. As Arthurian events would have taken place slightly before those of the Tristan saga, an Irish incursion should be in evidence for the saga's prologue depicts theCornish at loggerheads with Irish intruders; and a known Roman cavalry tradition is imperative if we are to believe that the proposed area could produce ahorse-borne, armour-clad warrior together with a Carlyon meaning 'camp of the legion' with which he was reputedly associated. Moreover, the suggested district might the more convincingly offer itself were it adjacent to the easiest route out of Cornwall to facilitate movement up-country to a site where the Battle of Badon halted a seeming English advance westward.

Finally, we should seek an Avalon for the dying King.

 the Earl  (Duke / King  of  Cornwall,
●                                would reign as regent and hold the Kingdom of Britain in trust for the English heiress.
● GokJborough.
 the daughter of the late Anglican heir, Cymen. and his wife, Adela, the Saxon heiress, only child and daughter of England's first Bretwalda. Aella of Sussex Thus, preserving the fiction of centralized rule which was accepted only because the alternative was unthinkable.
● 552-560  GODRICH of Cornwall. Prince-Regent, Earl (Duke/King) of Cornwall, reigned as regent of Britain in the absence of a national-king dunng the interregnum that followed the murder of the boy-king. Huai, and his mother. Queen Lonle [Lenore; Lunette) There were civil wars throughout Britain dunng hts regency The episode of Havelock "The Dane’ takes place dunng the regency of Earl Godrich.
●          CADROD (CATRAUT) the Arthunan heir, established his headquarters at a castle (site unsure) called "CALCHVYNYDD" (‘hill of chalk or lime"), which name came to be his epithet, somewhere in the British midlands between the Thames and the Trent rivers He fights the Cerdicite heir Cynnc "of Wessex"                     . CYNRIC (CUNORIX). the Cerdicite heir, the other claimant to the British throne, held sway south of the Thames in Wessex with his headquarters at Winchester
● One of the surviving ex-tnumvirs, Rrwal of Dumnoma [Devonshire), meanwhile, was expelled from Bntam by Caradoc "Strong-Arm", Count of the Saxon Shore, in another regional-war, and fled to Armonca (Brittany) where he established himself at St. Bneoc. circa 552 Riwal was killed fighting Cynvawr II of Cornwall, circa 555. and his widow married King Cynvawr Pnnce ludwal of Domnonee (son of Riwal, the ex-tnumvir) fled his murderous step-father (Cynvawr II of ComwaH-Brittany) and found refuge at the court of King Childebert I of France (534-558). in 558. Pnnce ludwal of Domnonee retook his throne Cynvawr II withdrew back to Cornwall, area 558. and. circa 560. was murdered along with his wife [name] and son (St Tremeur] St Brieoc is attacked by King Childebert of France, and King Canao II leads the resistance
  Meantime, the civil war between the House of Arthur and the House of Cerdic continued to rage Cynnc repulsed Cadrod s offensive at Old Sarum [Salisbury) in 552. and slew him in battle at Barfcury Castle, near Swindon, Wiltshire, in 556 King Erp (Urban) of Gwent was killed in the battle (fighting for the Arthunan heir); and his kingdom was divided in halves, called Gwent and Ergyng Cadrod ’Calchvynydd" was survived by seven sons and three daughters His eldest son. Cyndywyn. was murdered following his father s death in battle Another son. Cyndeym "Wledic*. rallied his father s old supporters and earned on the struggle  He slew Cynric in battle in 560 and set himself up as an anti-king although technically the throne was vacant while the country was governed by Godrich. the Earl of Cornwall, who officially reigned as regent of Bntain in the absence of a legitimate ’national" king Cynric was survived by three sons Coelm (Ceawlm), Cutha. and Cwichelm. of whom the eldest Ceawlin (Coelm) succeeded to the Wessex kingdom
  The name Ceawlin (Coelin) is Celtic , but the names of his brothers, possibly half-brothers, have a Saxon favor to them Their mother may have been a Saxon princess; or perhaps by this time the influence of Saxon culture was beginning to show itself in the Wessex royal house 560-565 9. HAVELOK "THE DANE", barbanan-kmg. not usually numbered in the  regnal-lists. however, remembered in tradition, legend, and folklore, reigned for three years as King of Bntain. or England. 560-562 The legend of Havelock "The Dane" begins when he was a boy and tells us that a fisherman was ordered by Denmark's usurper-kmg to murder the true heir to the Danish throne. Havelock, then a youth about age eleven, but instead the fisherman allowed the young pnnce to escape to England  Later, when Havelock had come of age. he found employment with an English ealdorman He soon became famous for his prowess at sports, and when this was heard by Eart/Kmg Godrich of Cornwall, the Regent of Britain, he decided to marry-off his ward. Goldborough. the English heiress, to Havelock "The Dane"  

 They were married and Havelock took his new bride with him back to Denmark There, when it was discovered that Havelock was the true heir, the Danish jarls (earls) overthrew the Danish usurper-kmg and invited Havelock to take the throne Havelock then led an invasion of England, defeated and killed Earl Godnch. Regent of Britain, and took the English throne in nght of his wife The civil wars among the Bntons continued throughout his reign. He, soon after obtaining the English throne, however.The British nobles in an attempt to prevent the total dissolution of the state and to end the civil war. gathered in an assembly and agreed on a compromise whereby Godnch. the Earl (Duke/King) of Cornwall, would reign as regent and hold the Kingdom of Britain in trust for the English heiress. GokJborough. the daughter of the late Anglican heir, Cymen. and his wife, Adela, the Saxon heiress, only child and daughter of England's first Bretwalda. Aella of Sussex Thus, preserving the fiction of centralized rule which was accepted only because the alternative was unthinkable.
 552-560 X. GODRICH of Cornwall. Prince-Regent, Earl (Duke/King) of Cornwall, reigned as regent of Britain in the absence of a national-king dunng the interregnum that followed the murder of the boy-king. Huai, and his mother. Queen Lonle [Lenore; Lunette) There were civil wars throughout Britain dunng hts regency The episode of Havelock "The Dane’ takes place dunng the regency of Earl Godrich.

CADROD (CATRAUT) the Arthunan heir, established his headquarters at a castle (site unsure) called "CALCHVYNYDD" (‘hill of chalk or lime"), which name came to be his epithet, somewhere in the British midlands between the Thames and the Trent rivers He fights the Cerdicite heir Cynnc "of Wessex"

CYNRIC (CUNORIX). the Cerdicite heir, the other claimant to the British throne, held sway south of the Thames in Wessex with his headquarters at Winchester
One of the surviving ex-tnumvirs,

               Rrwal of Dumnoma [Devonshire), meanwhile, was expelled from Britain by Caradoc "Strong-Arm", Count of the Saxon Shore, in another regional-war, and fled to Armonca (Brittany) where he established himself at St. Bneoc. circa 552 Riwal was killed fighting Cynvawr II of Cornwall, circa 555. and his widow married King Cynvawr Pnnce ludwal of Domnonee (son of Riwal, the ex-tnumvir) fled his murderous step-father (Cynvawr II of Comwall-Brittany) and found refuge at the court of King Childebert I of France (534-558). in 558. Pnnce ludwal of Domnonee retook his throne Cynvawr II withdrew back to Cornwall, area 558. and. circa 560. was murdered along with his wife [name] and son (St Tremeur] St Brieoc is attacked by King Childebert of France, and King Canao II leads the resistance
 Meantime, the civil war between the House of Arthur and the House of Cerdic continued to rage Cynnc repulsed Cadrod s offensive at Old Sarum [Salisbury) in 552. and slew him in battle at Barfcury Castle, near Swindon, Wiltshire, in 556 King Erp (Urban) of Gwent was killed in the battle (fighting for the Arthunan heir); and his kingdom was divided in halves, called Gwent and Ergyng Cadrod ’Calchvynydd" was survived by seven sons and three daughters His eldest son. Cyndywyn. was murdered following his father s death in battle Another son. Cyndeym "Wledic*. rallied his father s old supporters and earned on the struggle He slew Cynric in battle in 560 and set himself up as an anti-king although technically the throne was vacant while the country was governed by Godrich. the Earl of Cornwall, who officially reigned as regent of Bntain in the absence of a legitimate ’national" king Cynric was survived by three sons Coelm (Ceawlm), Cutha. and Cwichelm. of whom the eldest Ceawlin (Coelm) succeeded to the Wessex kingdom The name Ceawlin (Coelin) is Celtic, but the names of his brothers, possibly half-brothers, have a Saxon favor to them Their mother may have been a Saxon princess; or perhaps by this time the influence of Saxon culture was beginning to show itself in the Wessex royal house 560-565 9. HAVELOK "THE DANE", barbanan-kmg. not usually numbered in the
 regnal-lists. however, remembered in tradition, legend, and folklore, reigned for three years as King of Bntain. or England. 560-562 The legend of Havelock "The Dane" begins when he was a boy and tells us that a fisherman was ordered by Denmark's usurper-kmg to murder the true heir to the Danish throne. Havelock, then a youth about age eleven, but instead the fisherman allowed the young pnnce to escape to England Later, when Havelock had come of age. he found employment with an English ealdorman He soon became famous for his prowess at sports, and when this was heard by Eart/Kmg Godrich of Cornwall, the Regent of Britain, he decided to marry-off his ward. Goldborough. the English heiress, to Havelock "The Dane" They were married and Havelock took his new bride with him back to Denmark There, when it was discovered that Havelock was the true heir, the Danish jarls (earls) overthrew the Danish usurper-kmg and invited Havelock to take the throne Havelock then led an invasion of England, defeated and killed Earl Godnch. Regent of Britain, and took the English throne in nght of his wife The civil wars among the Bntons continued throughout his reign. He, soon after obtaining the English throne, however.

THE IRISH AND CARLYON

The place name Celliwic occurs not only in the Arthurian legend but also,

as the variant Caellwig* in later Cornish history and is therefore certainly an area of the county and probably one of the Moorland.

Although its site is in dispute,

the signs are that It will eventually be permitted to settle where it already hovers between the hill forts of  96 35 32. 2 Killybury and Canyke-by-Callywith ,

that is in the Camel Valley.

And this could be to the dismay of sceptics for Camlan also seems to fit this district.

(*page IS) too Charters clearly demonstrate that the present misnomer A| len,

by which the RiverCamel's tributary is known instead of by its correct name Laine, originally applied to the* Camel itself and was accurately rendered ALAN.

As this River Alan or Camel twisted and turned, the Cornish epithet 'cam' meaning 'crooked' apparently prefixed not only the word 'heyle' meaning 'estuary' but also on occasion the name Alan. Thus, it would seem that the present name Camel is a corruption of one or both of the Cornish names for this river - Camheyle and CAMALAN. ° It might therefore be interesting to seek the required conditions in the Camel Valley.

Of six known stones in Cornwall which are inscribed in the Irish script copipri- sing unconnected strokes and called Ogham,

five are on Bodmin Moor and three of these in the Camel area. Should the sixth seem curiously remote from the others at Truro, w© maybe forgiven for remembering that one of Arthur's reputed battle sites was on the'River Treuroit . However and regarding names on the three Camel Ogham stones, that at St. Endell ion-which also bears the early ChristianChi Rho symbol, 'XP‘,the first two letters of the Greek word for Christ - commemorates 'Brocagnus', identified^with the Irishman Brychan

who arrived in Cornwall via Wales.

Both names on the Worthyvale Ogham stone are Roman as is the one on the St. Kew memorial.x

An Irish incursion is certainly evident as is also a lingering Roman usage.

Th© latter is hardly surprising in an area where Roman road stones at Boscastle and Tintagell and a 'camp of the legion' at Tregear have been found. Moreover, even AFTER the Roman cavalry station at Nanstallon meaning'Vale of Alan'was abandoned, it is apparent that agents of Rome used the most accessible route to and fromEngland across this north coast district at least as late as the fourth century when the Tintagel stone was inscribed.

Ami, as some 300 years of contact with Roman custom appears to have influenced the local

48                              GUIDE TO NORTH CORNWALL.

X.—St. Cubert and the Lost Church of St. Piran.
Distance from Newquay to St. Cubert Road, four miles.

The church site is about two miles beyond.

The new line between Newquay and Perranporth has rendered this excursion possible to every one.
Refreshments at the St. Cubert Post Office, Mrs; Anthony’s Tea Rooms.
St. Cubert (or Cuthbert, to be accurate) is a much-visited little village, because it is a comfortable, pleasant walk of four miles from Newquay, passing several streams. The scenery, consisting of blown sandhills, is unique.

The remains of a church, 1,500 years old, can be inspected.
St. Cubert-is proud of its little church.

The pillars have some quaintly-carved capitals, and the roof has remnants of wood carving of the Decorated period.

The font is of Norman design, but of later date, and, like others in the county, preserved its ornamentation in troublous times by a covering of plaster.

The narrow belfry arch is exceedingly graceful.

Outside the church tower, about three feet from the ground, is a rough, irregular “ inscribed stone ” built into the west wall.

The inscription is: “CONEC-TOCI FI LI TEJERNO MALI,” without doubt a memorial stone to one Conectocius, son of Tejerno.
The Holy Well is in a cave, access to which can be had at half tide.

The distance from the church is about two and a half miles, and a signboard points the way.

Hals wrote (circa 1720) : “ The virtues of this water are very great.

It is incredible what numbers in summer season frequent this place and waters from counties far distant.

” Faith was strong in those days, for analysts have since shown the water to be without any special efficacy.

The situation and appearance of the well, however, account for much of its reputation.
Half a mile to the east of Holy Well is Porth Joke, a picturesque V-shaped beach between the cliffs, fed by a stream.

Numerous picnics are held here, the distance from Newquay being only three and a half miles.
St. Piran in the Sands.

—These remains are most difficult to find and visitors have been known to wander for hours among the sandhills without coming across them. Any of the village children will readily act as guides.

From St. Cubert Church strike off in a south-westerly direction across the undulating piles of blown sand.

In a few minutes you come upon a leat, now a broad, dry path, winding between the mounds;

follow this in the same south-westerly direction until on the higher ground inland is seen on the left an old cross.

The ruins are in a slight depression immediately on the right, and not many yards from the leat.

An iron railing surrounds this remnant of an ancient church, the history of which is as follows :—
St. Piran was an Irish saint (legend declares he floated over from Ireland on a millstone), who arrived in Cornwall about the year 550, and built his church (the remains of which are now seen) close to the spot where he was shipwrecked.

At the close of a long and successful ministry he was buried beneath the altar of his oratory.

About one hundred years or so afterwards, during an unprecedently violent storm, the sands were swept for miles over the land, burying, inter alia, the church. Instead of recovering their lost church, the populace built another one, further inland, on the spot where now stands the cross already alluded to.

This building remained, although frequently threatened by the sand with the same fate as its predecessor, until 1420, when it was replaced by a larger church. The latter continued until 1804, when, further inundations of sand being imminent, it was removed to Perranzabuloe, two miles inland from Perranporth. All the while the first church had remained buried in the sands. It was not until 1835 that, owing to the shifting of the sands, it was discovered.

The dimensions were : length (internal), twenty-five feet; height of walls, twenty-five feet; breadth, twelve and a half feet. There was one doorway and an opening for ventilation, but no windows.

The headless remains of St. Piran were found beneath the altar.
From 1835 to the present day the public have shown their appreciation of the magnificent relic, nearly 1,500 years old, by carrying away stones from the fabric.

These disgraceful acts of vandalism were continued even last summer, and the remonstrances of the villagers are in vain.

At present four low, broken-down walls remain, that at the west end barely showing its pointed apex.

The altar stone is still there, and will probably remain until a relic-hunter more shameless than his fellows arrives with a vehicle.
The bones discovered beneath the altar were considered to be those of the saint himself, because (a) it was customary during that period to bury the remains of the holy men

nia aurum et argentum, et alia metalla pretium victoriae #

These metals have,

in later times, been got in qualities sufficient to prove, that they might, at an earlier period,

have been an object worthy of conquest.

In the reigns of James IV. and Y. vast wealth was procured in the Lead Hills,

from the gold collected from the sand washed from the mountain. In the reign of the latter, not less than to the value of three hundred thousand pounds sterling.

In another place, a piece of thirty ounces weight was found.

Much also was obtained in the time of the Regent Morton7,.

The search is now given over; but bits are still found accidentally.

Lord Hopton, owner of the Lead, Hills, is in possession of a specimen that weighs an ounce and a half #
Gold is to this day found in Cornwall  #

 

mixed with tin and other substances 

The largest piece that has been yet discovered, is equal in weight to three guineas.

It is probable that it was the Cornish gold which proved the lure to the Romans; for it was impossible they or the Phoenians cians could be ignorant of it, who had such long commerce with the country, and who were acquainted with the manner of obtaining it in other places.

Pliny, speaking of tin, says, that there is found in the gold mines of Spain and Portugal, a sort called Elutiah (which a Cornish man would call stream tin), being washed from the vein by water, and gathered up in baskets along with the gold0.
Strabo and Tacitus agree, that we had mines silver. of silver.

In the reigns of Edward I. and III. there were very considerable works at Combmar-tin in Devonshired: three hundred and thirty-seven miners sent for out of Derbyshire, were employed in them; and the produce was so great as to assist Edward the Third to carry on the war with France.

In the beginning of this century, much native silver was found on the estate of Sir John Ershine, in the county of Stirling; but the vein was soon exhausted.
The Britons were acquainted with the uses of gold and the art of coining before the arrival of the Romans; witness the golden sickles of the Druids, the coins found at Carnbre in Cornwall,
 To prevent antiquaries being further misled about the Ampthill gold mine,

I must inform them, that it proved only a bod of mica aurea; or, to speak like a punster, turned out nothing but tale.

and the coins of Cassivelaunus.

They made use of different sorts of metals for the purpose of coining;

but chiefly gold,

as being the easiest fused, and most capable of an impression.

Doctor Borlase has preserved a series of these very early coins, from the rudest and most unintelligible impressions, to the period when the Britons made an attempt to form a face on their coins.

All these are unlettered; a proof of their antiquity, and of their having been struck before their intercourse with the Romans.

The first we know of, which is inscribed, is that of Caissvelaunus, cotemporary with Caesar.

The next is of Cunobeline, who had even been at Rome.

As soon as the Britons became acquainted with the Romans, they made an essay to imitate their manner of coining; they put letters on them, elephants, and gryphons; things they were before unacquainted with. They were not suffered to make any progress in the art; for as soon as their conquest was effected, their coin was suppressed. The learned have endeavoured *
(*) The gold sickles do not seem to have had anything to do with coins, and they belonged to the Druids of Gaul, not Britain; and as to Cassivollaunus, his name is not known on any coin. The coins of the Britons, like those of the Gauls, wore imitations of money current among the Greeks of Marseilles, and more especially the gold stater of Philip II. of Macedon.

It is remarkable that the Dumnonii and the people of the tin country had no coins of their own minting.

The work to be consulted on the subject is Evans’s ‘Coins of the Ancient Britons.’ 
to trace these antient monies from the Phoenicians; but the comparison would not hold.

The Gauls alone had some pieces similar: nor is this to be wondered at, since they and the Britons had a common origin, were neighbors, and might as well agree in the few arts they had, as in religion and languages.
I now return to the subjects which occasioned this digression;

and to give some account of the various antique instruments and coins found near Flint;

and accompany the same by the more expressive description, a print.
N° 1. tab. v. is a rich ornament of gold, in form of a button with a shank. It is composed elegantly with twisted wire, and studded with little globular bits of solid gold.

This seems to have belonged to the bracelet or necklace (it is uncertain which), whose fragment is represented at No 2. This is also composed of gold links, with round beads of a rich blue glass placed between every second link. Something similar to this is preserved by count Caylus, which is entire, and appears to have been a necklace'.
No.3. is a cylindric fragment of glass, probably part of some ornament, being of a rich blue color, and perforated as if it was designed to be strung. With it was found a thick piece of sea-green glass,
* Borlase's Antiq. Cornwall, 242. tab. xix.
1 Tom. iii. 312, tab. Lxxxv.
part of a vase.

Glass was among the earlier imports into Britaing, when the wild natives were as much captivated with toys as the Indians of new-discovered countries are at present.

At first they received these, and all their other vitreous commodities, by means of the Phoenicians, whose capital, Tyre, was pre-eminent in that manufacture.

The glain nadroedd, or snake-gems, were at first obtained by way of exchange for the British exports.

They were originally made by the Britons of stone.

I have such a one in my cabinet. I have seen another in possession of the Reverend Hugh Davies, found in Anglesea.

The traders soon learned to imitate what was prized so highly in our island, in a more elegant material; and imported them as a most captivating article of commerce; in the same manner as circumnavigators often mimic, in shewy brass, the utensils and weapons of Indian nations, in order to engage their friendship.
N° 4. is a small brazen head, with the back pstrt affixed to iron.

Perhaps this was one of the Sigillaria, or little images sold at the fairs, and presented usually to children11:

the fairs where these toys were sold went by the same name.

A learned friend also supposes these to
g Strabo, lib. iv. p. 281.
h Non cognoscis me? ego sum Felicio, cui solebas sigillaria afferre. Seneca, Epist. 12.
be miniature likenesses, which friends presented to each other as memorials.
N° 5. is a Stylus, or instrument for writing on the ceratae tabellae, or waxen tablets; which were made of thin leaves of lead, brass, or ivory, and covered with a thin coat of wax. The pen, if I may call it so, was usually of brass; one end pointed, in order to write; the other flat, in order to efface what was wrong, by smoothing or closing the wax. Horace gives every writer most excellent advice, in alluding to this practice:
Saepe Stylurn vertas, iterum quae digna legi sint,
Scripturus.
Oft turn your style, when you intend to write Things worthy to be read.
N° G. is an instrument of very singular use: a narrow species of spoon, destined to collect, at funerals, the tears of the relations of the deceased, in order to deposit them in the little phials which were placed with the ashes in the urn, memorials of their grief. Such are very frequently found: but the custom is far higher than that of classical antiquity,; for the Psalmist, in expressing his sorrows, alludes to it;

Thou tellest my flittings ; put my tears into thy bottle.
N" 7. is an instrument seemingly designed for I lie purpose of dressing the wicks of lamps.
N" 8. may possibly be destined for the same
uses.

(!) One of the most productive gold mines in old times may be supposed to have been Ogofau near DolauCothi in Carmarthenshire,

where extensive traces of the mining are still well known; and gold mining has been carried on lately in the neighbourhood of Dolgelley. J.B.

“ Borlase, Nat. Hist. Cornwall,
Donaghmore High Cross, Co. Down, Northern Ireland
Moone High Cross, Co. Kildare, Southern Ireland
St Robert’s Cave-Chapel And Holy Well, Knaresborough, North Yorkshire
Saxon Cross in St Peter’s Minster Church, Leeds, West Yorkshire
Chysauster Ancient Settlement, Near Gulval, Cornwall
Gop Hill Cairn, Trelawnyd, Flintshire (Sir y Fflint), Wales
Farnhill Moor Cup-Marked Rocks, Near Skipton, North Yorkshire
The Potteries Museum And Art Gallery, Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire
Panorama Stones, St Margaret’s Gardens, Ilkley, West Yorkshire
Haystack Rock, Ilkley Moor, West Yorkshire
St Nicholas’ Round Church, Orphir, Orkney Isles.
The Mineral Well, Near Brinkies Brae, Stromness, Orkney
Castle Haugh, Paythorne Bridge, Newsholme, Lancashire
Winckley Lowes I, Near Hurst Green, Lancashire
The Blarney Stone, Blarney Castle, Co. Cork, Southern Ireland
Dyffryn Ardudwy Burial Chamber, Gwynedd, North Wales
Pinder Hill, Waddington, Near Clitheroe, Lancashire
High Wall Well, Bramley Meade, Whalley, Lancashire
St Peter’s Church, Prestbury, Cheshire
Churchyard Calvary Cross, Great Mitton, Lancashire

It is mentioned in the Welsh tale ,

Culhwch and Olwen ,

which may date from the 11th century.

The story describes the court as being, at
Celliwig

(callington )  reads  Kelliwig

in Cernyw (the Welsh name for Cornwall),
otherwise known as the kingdom of Dumnonia, including modern Devon.
The hall is guarded by Glewlwyd Gafaelfawr,
Arthur's porter, and Culhwch has difficulty gaining entrance due to the special laws that restrict entry once a feast has begun.
Though there is no description of the place the implications of the story are of great wealth and splendour.
The story describes Arthur's warriors at the court in depth and says that:
"From here, one of his Warband, Drem, could see a gnat as far away as Scotland;
while another, Medyr, could shoot an arrow through the legs of a wren in Ireland!"
Some of the Trioedd Ynys Prydein (or Welsh Triads) mention Arthur and
"Three Tribal Thrones of the Island of Britain"
and locate one of his courts at Celliwig:
"Arthur as Chief Prince in Celliwig in Cernyw, and Bishop Bytwini as Chief Bishop, and Caradog Freichfras as Chief Elder."
Caradoc was his chief elder at this court and that
Bishop Bytwini or Bedwin was chief bishop.
This is one of the early triads found in Peniarth MS 54 reflecting information recorded before Geoffrey of Monmouth.
The same triad goes on to say Arthur's other courts were at Mynyw and Pen Rhionydd.
The triads also state that at Celliwig Mordred struck Gwenhwyfar a blow.
This may have led to the Battle of Camlann.
The early Welsh poem Pa gŵr yw'r porthor? may also mention the court.
Celliwig was also known to the Cornish as well,
as it appears as Kyllywyc in the Cornish-language play Beunans Ke,
written perhaps around 1500.
In the Iolo Manuscripts (1843), a corpus of pseudo-medieval Welsh texts by the renowned literary forger and inventor of tradition Iolo Morganwg (1747–1826),
Celliwig is referred as the former site of the "throne of Cornwall"
but the text adds that it is now at Caervynyddawg (Caerfynyddog), a site which is otherwise unattested.[2]
Location
A 1302 Cornish legal record mentions a 'Thomas de Kellewik'
from west Cornwall, though his exact place of origin is unknown.[3]
Celliwig was identified by some Cornish antiquaries from 1816 onwards with Callington (occasionally locally attested as 'Callywith') where the ancient monuments of Castlewich Henge and Cadson Bury ringfort are in close proximity. Their influence gave Callington its modern name in Common Cornish; Kelly Bray (Cornish:Kellibregh 'dappled grove') is located just to the north. Another suggestion at the time was Kelliwith.[citation needed] Other suggested locations include Gweek Wood[citation needed], and on the coast at Tintagel Barras Nose[citation needed] or Willapark. Rachel Bromwich, the latest editor of the Welsh Triads, matched it to Kelly Rounds, a hill fort in the Cornish parish of Egloshayle.[4] This had already been suggested by Charles Henderson in the Cornish Church Guide (1925) (p. 87). Intriguingly, the Ravenna Cosmography identifies a major regional Roman-era settlement as Nemetostatio in central Dumnonia ( identified with North Tawton, Devon) which would translate from Latin as 'The Outpost of the Sacred Grove(s)'.

Not far away from the modern Cornish border is the village of Kelly in Devon which takes it name from an ancient local family, attested as far back as the 11th century.
However there are also a number of places called Cernyw or containing that name in Wales, e.g. the place name Coedkernew (Coed Cernyw) in Newport.

So it has been suggested that this court might be the hillfort of Llanmelin, near Caerwent. As Caradog is connected to the Kingdom of Gwent this might support this idea. There is also a farm called Gelliweg on the Llŷn peninsula in Gwynedd which one pair of Arthurian researchers and writers, Steven Blake and Scott Lloyd, argue may be
the location.
Celliwic as a fictional place
aceThose who argue that Arthur is a mythic figure also suggest this court is entirely fictional. Given the name means "forest grove... it may have originally been envisaged as somewhere Otherworldly (sacred groves being common in Celtic myth) and only later might a specific location have been ascribed to it."

                                KIT HILL ,

The hill is usually accepted as the place mentioned in an entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 835 (corrected by scholars to 838) which says that Egbert king of the West Saxons defeated an army of Vikings and Cornish at the Battle of Hingston Down (Hengestdūn = "Stallion Hill"). 

Geolog
The Hingston Down Consols mine on the hill is the type locality for the mineral Arthurite , which was discovered here. 

There is also a quarry on the hill, which forms the Hingston Down Quarry & Consols Site of Special Scientific Interest, noted for its mineralisation.

‘Oh, noble, honoured queen!

Nothing can console me! I've just seen a messenger arrive, and believe me,
the king has never been so dismayed by any message he’s received,
and has never grieved so bitterly.
All his men are grieving equally, and truly, 1 think the messenger has brought some news that’s upset all the court.
The king has fainted! Whatever’s happened,  he mounted and rode from the city, with fully thirty thousand knights and fifteen thousand ladies and girls and maids. No man has ever seen such an army raised as rode that day from Orquenie. There were many splendid waggons to carry the king's equipment, his provisions and his pavilions: his baggage-train was of an astounding length. The line stretched out across the plains, and those at the rear had to camp a league from the place where the foremost lodged, in a meadow beside a river.
They set out again early the next day; and the boy led them and guided them joyfully and with great delight, through forests and across fair open land, with plenty of feasting all the way, straight to the castle where Sir Gawain now was lord.

The king reached there on the seventh day, and the boy came up to him and said:
'There is the castle, dear sir, that your good nephew has won.’
The kininterwoven branches; and they made shelters for then horses, and for other purposes, too, by taking boughs from the forest and stripping off their leaves. Then the cooks were provided for with the smaller twigs and branches. Yvain, King Urien’s son, and Gifflet, the son of Do, arrived with the queen, whom they were escorting. And I tell you, in their company, which was well endowed with ladies, came three thousand knights, and none of them lacked a fine warhorse; and behind them came
1(H)g stepped down; and then you would have seen them all dis mount and pitch their tents and pavilions. And the Welshmen among them, most skilled in the craft, built a great number of lodges in the Welsh manner, of I he great convoy of waggons - you never saw one so great. The queen dismounted at her tent, already pitched for her.
Queen Ygerne was in the upper chambers of the hall, and saw the great host stretching all along the meadow. She was terrified at the sight, and her heart was faint and trembling. She took her daughter by the hand and said;
Norcadet my daughter, we’ve lived a long while, and now our time has i iiiiic, for we’re besieged! I've never seen so many men amassed, so many shilling helmets and shimmering shields. Look at all the swords and lances! Are they ladies or fairies down there on the riverbank?’
(iod help me, I don’t know, dear lady. But I’ve never seen girls or ladies hi maids in such a throng, or leading an army or going off to war, and it Imubles me most terribly.’
Iust then Sir Gawain and his sister Clarissant came from a chamber, and us soon as she saw him Ygerne rushed to him and said:
My good, dear friend, look at the mighty army besieging us down there, all along the meadows. And look, dear friend, on that side there are only gills and ladies. Sir, you asked a favour of me for love's sake: that I la mldn’t ask you your name for seven days, or enquire about your lineage.
I iiTrained completely, and didn't say a word. But now, you know, the seventh day has passed, and I’d like to know your name.'
I shall indeed tell you, lady, for I’ve never hidden my name from anyone. I am called Gawain.’
She embraced him on the instant, and kissed his eyes and lips and face. And her daughter was beside herself, her heart leaping and soaring for joy, sueli |oy as had kept her wide awake on the day when he was born, and she kissed his face and breast.
'My good, dear friend,’ said Queen Ygerne, ‘by the faith I owe almighty i mil, I am the mother of King Arthur, and this is my daughter: she is your mother.’
Hut when Gawain’s sister Clarissant, who was also there, heard this, she lushed to her chamber and began to grieve desperately, because her htolhcr knew all about her love for Guiromelant, who had challenged him lo buttle.

The RIC has recently purchased a hoard of Iron Age and Roman coins found in St Levan parish with help from the Art Fund,

the V&A Purchase Grant Fund and the Headley Trust,

but still requires support to match these funds.

The hoard is a unique mix of Iron Age gold coins,

like the quarter stater shown here minted by the Regini tribe in the Surrey and Sussex area, and Roman Republican silver coins, some 
There are few other hoards buried after the Roman Conquest in AD 43 with Iron Age and Roman coins that have been found together in the country as a whole, and even individual Iron Age coins are rare in Cornwall. The Iron Age coins minted by tribes not normally represented this far west, such as the Belgae and the Atrebates, probably travelled westwards with the Roman coins as a result of Roman military activity in the 1st century AD. This suggests that although the Roman invasion of these areas did lead to a speedy replacement of the existing Iron Age coinages with the new Roman coinage, there was a limited amount of intermingling of these coinages in the earliest years of the Roman occupation of southern Britain. This incredibly important find shows the transition from an ind

LYNHER was built by the skilled boatbuilder James Goss in 1896 in Calstock and used throughout the industrial heyday of the Plymouth Rivers.

She formed an important commercial and social link between the communities of the Rivers Lynher and Tamar and the growing town of Plymouth, even being used at one point to deliver post and produce, and she retains strong associations to this area today.

She is the most pertinent example of an industrial method of river transport applied to its geographic location and her trade routes, founded on the transport of stone, fertiliser and farm produce mirror the industrial growth of Plymouth with its Naval Dockyard and the merchant shipping industry of the South West.

During the first half of the Twentieth Century until she finished work in 1962, the barge was owned by Notter Bridge Quarries and Poldrissick Quarry, both on the River Lynher.

She also played a role in the Second World War, being requisitioned by HM Government for use as a barrage balloon platform and anchored in Plymouth Sound for the duration. LYNHER is now one of only two surviving Tamar barges (the other being SHAMROCK) from the hundreds which were once the workhorses of this region.

She has been recorded on the National Register of Historic Vessels since 1998 and has the status of being listed on the National Historic Fleet.

The Tamar barge LYNHER was built in 1896 by James Goss at Calstock.

Such barges carried coal, wood, limestone, sand and dung from Plymouth to Tamar Gardens. At one time she was owned by Mr Brand of Tudeford Post Office and Stores.

He employed her bringing up supplies to his shop from Devonport.
For years after this she was engaged in stone carrying from Poldrissick quarries. The quarry owners, the Steed Brothers, had invested in other similar barges BLUE ELVAN, ELIZABETH JANE and TRIUMPH. Her last owner was Captain Sam Daymond of Saltash who re-registered her in 1924 when she was fitted with an engine.

It is believed that she was last at work in 1954, though possibly reduced to a dumb lighter. The vessel was abandoned in the mud at Poldrissick quarry on the River Lynher in 1952 and recovered for restoration in 1989.
Currently under the ownership of the Lynher River Barge Community Interest Company (CIC), any surplus from the commercial operation of the vessel is re-invested into the provision of 
The new engine, a diesel Beta Marine 75hp, will allow the barge to manoeuvre safely along the Plymouth waterways and offer increased river voyages to the public and local communities. From April 2019 a number of new voyages will be available thanks to the new engine and they will include cruises on the Rivers Tamar & Lynher to explore the heritage and wildlife within the outstanding scenery of the Tamar Valley.

The barge will often sail to Calstock, starting from Plymouth and cruising most of the navigable river.

Duke of Cornwall is a title in the Peerage of England
traditionally held by the eldest son of the reigning British monarch, previously the English monarch.
The Duchy of Cornwall was the first duchy created in England and was established by royal charter in 1337. The present duke is the Prince of Wales, the eldest son of Queen Elizabeth II. His wife, Camilla, is the current Duchess.
Some folkloric histories of the British Isles, such as Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain (1136), claim that the first leader of Cornwall was Corineus, a Trojan warrior and ally of Brutus of Troy, the original settler of the British Isles. From this earliest period through the Arthurian period, the legendary Dukes of Cornwall are semi-autonomous if not independent from the High-King or ruler of Britain, while also serving as his closest ally and, at times, as his protector.[citation needed] According to legend, Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall under King Uther Pendragon, rebelled against the latter's rule when the king became obsessed with Gorlois' wife Igraine. Uther killed Gorlois and took Igraine: the result of their union was the future King Arthur.
The historical record suggests that, following the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Cornwall formed part of the separate Kingdom of Dumnonia, which included Devon, although there is evidence that it may have had its own rulers at times.

The southwest of Britain was gradually incorporated into the emerging Kingdom of England, and after the Norman Conquest in 1066 the new rulers of England appointed their own men as Earl of Cornwall, the first of whom was in fact a Breton of 'Cornwall' in Brittany. Edward, the Black Prince , the eldest son of Edward III, was made the first Duke of Cornwall in 1337. After Edward predeceased the King, the duchy was recreated for his son, the future Richard II.

Under a charter of 1421, the duchy passes to the sovereign's eldest son. Cornwall was the first dukedom conferred within the Kingdom of England.
Geography Capital Isca Dumnoniorum (Exeter) Location Devon and Cornwall, and parts of Somerset and Dorset Rulers Kings of Dumnonia

The summer solstice on dartmoor no stars little light pollution tourists asleep..............................................
The Antiqua maneria (ancient manors),

or assessionable manors, were the original 17 manors belonging to the Earldom of Cornwall.
After March 1337 these manors passed to the new Duchy of Cornwall which was created by King Edward III to give financial support to his son Edward, the Black Prince (1330 - 1376). These manors were known as assessionable manors as the manors were to lease under assession leases periodically.
The table below shows the 17 Antiqua maneria including the number and status of Customary tenants in the early fourteenth century: the manors vary greatly in size and importance. The parishes stated are the modern parishes rather than those in existence in the 14th century.

Table of customary tenants in the early fourteenth century

Conventionarii = Conventionary tenants;

Villani = Villeins;

Nativi = Villeins;

Liberi Conventionarii = Free tenants;

Nativi Conventionarii = Conventionary tenants;

Nativi de Stipite = Villeins by descent

Manor
1300
1327-32
1333-1340

Conventionarii
Villani
Conventionarii
Nativi
Liberi Conventionarii
Nativi Conventionarii
Nativi de Stipite
Calstock of Harewood House

In Saxon times Calstock was in the Kingdom of Cornwall, which resisted the spread of Wessex from the east.

In 838 CE Wessex had spread as far as the River Tamar, and a battle for independence was fought near Calstock.

Following the Norman Conquest, Calstock manor was recorded in the Domesday Book.

The Saxon manor (held by Asgar) was taken over, and in the 14th century became part of the Duchy of Cornwall: one of the 17 Antiqua maneria.

Arms of the Williams family of Scorrier, Vair, three crescents or
At the time of Domesday Book (1086) the manor was held by Reginald from Robert, Count of Mortain.

There were two and a half hides of land and land for 12 ploughs. Reginald held one virgate of land with 2 ploughs and 12 serfs. 30 villains and 30 smallholders had the rest of the land with 6 ploughs.

There were 100 acres of woodland, 3 square leagues of pasture and 3 pigs.

The value of the manor was £3 sterling though it had formerly been worth £6. 

Arms of the Trelawny family, Argent, sable chevron
The manor was sold by the Duchy to John Williams of Scorrier House circa 1807.[2] 1807 saw Sir William Lewis Salusbury-Trelawny, 8th Baronet, of the Salusbury-Trelawny baronets, purchase the estate.

St Andrew's Parish
Granite cross
A granite cross at the eastern end of the churchyard marks the grave of Sir William Lewis Salusbury-Trelawny, 8th Baronet, of Harewood House, Calstock, part of Salusbury-Trelawny baronets, who was for sometime the Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall and M.P. for East Cornwall.

He died at Harewood in 1856, aged seventy five years. Folklore says that Sir William didn't want his body ever to leave his estate and so he was carried in through the back gate to his current resting spot, closest to his estate. Inside the church, just north of the pulpit, are two plaques:
At the top of one is inscribed "Laus Deo" ("Praise God"). Below that is inscribed the names of the four children of Sir William, the oldest living to just 28.
At the top of the other is an image of the cross, inscribed "Beneath The Cross"; below, Sir William and his wife are depicted. Below them is their fifth child, whom also died in middle age.
Modern day
Harewood House has since been changed. There are now two detached properties, only joined by a rather out-of-place looking large stone doorway. The house is now only two storeys tall as the roof height has been altered.

Climsland

Stoke Climsland is a village in the valley of the River Tamar, Cornwall, England, United Kingdom within the civil parish of Stokeclimsland. The population of the parish including Luckett at the 2011 census was 1,703.[1] An electoral ward in the same name also exists. At the same census the population was 3,703.[2]

Contents

The manor of Climsland was one of the seventeen Antiqua maneria of the Duchy of Cornwall. The manor was recorded in the Domesday Book (1086) as Climson; there were 5 hides of land and land for 24 ploughs. One hide was held by the lord (with 3 ploughs and 9 serfs) and 30 villeins and 30 smallholders had 17 ploughs and 4 hides of land. There were also 3 acres of meadow, 16 square leagues of pasture and 3 square leagues of woodland. The income from the manor was £6 sterling.[3]
In the 12th century, Climsland became part of a 250 hectares (620 acres) Royal Deer Park called Kerrybullock, until it was disparked by Henry VIII in the 16th

Helston in Kirrier

Helston in Trigg (Helstone in Lanteglos); and Penmayne
 
Liskeard

              Liskeard

Cornish: Lyskerrys

The place name element Lis,

along with ancient privileges accorded the town, indicates that the settlement was once a high status 'court'.

 King Dungarth whose cross is a few miles north near St Cleer is thought to be a descendant of the early 8th century king Gerren of Dumnonia and is said to have held his court in Liskeard  or Lis-Cerruyt

Civil parish Liskeard

Unitary authority Cornwall

Ceremonial county Cornwall

Region South West

Country England

Sovereign state United Kingdom

 

The town is at the head of the Looe valley in the ancient hundred of West Wivelshire 

The place name element Lis, along with ancient privileges accorded the town, indicates that the settlement was once a high status 'court'. A Norman castle was built here after the Conquest, which eventually fell into disuse in the later Middle Ages. By 1538 when visited by John Leland only a few insignificant remains were to be seen.[8] Sir Richard Carew writing in 1602 concurred;

“ Of later times, the Castle serued the Earle of Cornwall for one of his houses; but now, that later is worm-eaten out of date and vse. Coynages, Fayres, and markets, (as vitall spirits in a decayed bodie) keepe the inner partes of the towne aliue, while the ruyned skirtes accuse the iniurie of time, and the neglect of industrie.[9] ”

   

Liskeard was one of the 17 Antiqua maneria of the Duchy of Cornwall. The market charter was granted by Richard, Earl of Cornwall (brother of Henry III) in 1240.

Liskeard and District in the 1920sBodmin Moor lies to the northwest of the town.The A38 trunk road used to pass through the town centre but a dual carriageway bypass now carries traffic south of the town leaving the town centre accessible but with low traffic levels. Liskeard is one of the gateway towns for Bodmin Moor.

and the Old Road site closed and redeveloped for housing. Further multimillion-pound science and technology facilities were added in 2002, and the original 1960s and 1970s buildings were completely modernised by 2011.

Liskeard has a sizeable Masonic presence with no fewer than eight Masonic bodies meeting at the Masonic Hall on The Parade,

St Martin's Lodge No. 510 Date of Warrant, 5 March 1845

St Martin's Royal Arch Chapter No. 510 Consecrated on 1 August 1865

St Martin's Lodge of Mark Master Masons No. 379 Consecrated on 26 January 1888

St Martin's Lodge of Royal Ark Mariners No. 379 Consecrated 1 June 1933

Duchy Chapter of the Ancient & Accepted Rite of the Rose Croix of Heredom No. 289 Warranted on 10 December 1931

Duchy Conclave of the Order of the Secret Monitor No. 260 Consecrated on 8 April 1975

St Martin's Chapel No.27 of the Commemorative Order of St Thomas of Acon, Consecrated in 1998

St Germans Court No. 97 of the Masonic Order of Athelstan,

East Wivelshire and West Wivelshire (usually known merely as East and West) are two of the ancient Hundreds of Cornwall.

East and West (Wivelshire) must have originally had a Cornish name but it is not recorded. The name of nearby Lostwithiel has the second element gwydhyow^[1] meaning 'trees'; wivel may also be from the Anglo-Saxon personal name Wifel.^[2] There are also Anglican deaneries by the same names, but the modern boundaries do not correspond exactly. The area must have formed one hundred originally but had already been divided into two before the Norman Conquest: they are grouped in Domesday under the head manors of Rillaton (East) and Fawton (West). The Cornish names are Ryslegh (East) and Fawy (West).^[3][4] However the suggestion that 'the area must have formed one hundred originally' is disputed by the noted Cornish historian, the Rev. W. M. M. Picken, who believes the names to be derived from the Saxon twi-feald-scir, meaning 'two-fold shire.' The 'invariable prefixing of the words East or West ... explains what has happened to the initial letter t' (A Medieval Cornish Miscellany, by W. M. M. Picken, edited by O. J. Padel, Chichester, 2000.)

East Wivelshire[edit]

East Wivelshire

Antony St Jacob, Botus Fleming, Callington, Calstock, Egloskerry, Landulph, Landrake [with St Erney], Laneast, Launceston St Mary Magdalene, Lawhitton, Lewannick, Lezant, Linkinhorne, Maker, St Mellion, Menheniot, North Hill, Pillaton, Quethiock, Rame, Sheviock, South Hill, South Petherwin, St Germans, St John, St Stephens-with-Newport, Stoke Climsland, St Dominick, St Ive, St Stephen-by-Saltash, St Thomas Apostle-by-Launceston, Tremaine, Tresmeer, TrewenWest Wivelshire[edit]

West Wivelshire

Boconnoc, Braddock [Broadoak], Cardinham, St Cleer, Duloe, St Keyne, Lanreath, Lansallos, Lanteglos by Fowey, Liskeard, St Martin-by-Looe, Morval, St Neot, Pelynt, St Pinnock, Talland, St Veep, Warleggan, St Winnow

The River Looe (Cornish: Logh, meaning deep water inlet is a river in south-east Cornwall, which flows into the English Channel at Looe.^[2] It has two main branches, the East Looe River and the West Looe River. The eastern branch has its source near St Cleer only 0.31 miles (0.5 km) away from the Golitha Falls on the River Fowey, and flows south, passing close to the western outskirts of Liskeard.

The western branch has its source near Dobwalls.

South of Liskeard, the Looe Valley Line railway follows the course of the East Looe River to Looe. The railway is so close to the river that flooding is a common occurrence.^[3]

The lowest stretch of the rivers combine to form the tidal harbour and estuary of Looe. The combined length of the two rivers (including the tidal confluence) is 30.48 miles (49.05 km).^[4][5][6]

The river is tidal to Watergate on the West Looe and Sandplace on the East Looe.

After Sandplace, the river was connected to the Liskeard and Looe Union Canal so that minerals and stone could be transported from the workings and quarries above Liskeard to the harbour at Looe.

 The tidal estuarine section is an example of a Ria (a drowned river valley) and at low tide, the rivers almost dry up to a very small natural level.

 
Moresk in St Clement parish

Penkneth in Lanlivery parish
 
Penlyne in Lostwithiel parish
22 
Penmayne in St Minver parish
see
Helston in Trigg
–
Restormel in Lostwithiel parish
 
Rillaton in Linkinhorne parish

Talskiddy in St Columb Major parish

Tewington in Treverbyn parish

Tintagel 
Trematon in St Stephens by Saltash parish

Tybesta, in Creed parish
 
Tywarnhaile in St Agnes parish

THE DUCHY OF CORNWALL
Recent events have brought the Duchy of Cornwall, or rather its revenues, very much to the fore.1

There has been much coming and going of its officers ; never have they occupied so prominent a position in the public eye.

Indeed, the public may well have wondered at this sudden importance the Duchy has attained ;

it has served to call to mind the existence of a peculiarly interesting institution, with a constitutional status and characteristics all its own, of which few people are aware and with which only a few lawyers are competent to deal.
It is first necessary to clear out of the way the popular confusion between the Duchy and the county of Cornwall.

They are, of course, two entirely separate entities, utterly differing in character.

The one is an ordinary — or to a Cornishman, a not so very ordinary — English shire, as it might be Devonshire or Dorset ;

whereas the Duchy is an institution,

a great landed estate vested in the eldest son of the Sovereign (or, in the absence of a son, lying dormant in the Crown),

an estate which has been based from time immemorial upon extensive lands in Cornwall,

and which has existed as a duchy, save for the interregnum of the Commonwealth period, since 1337.

So that we are just on the threshold of celebrating its sexcentenary.
The habit of referring to the “ Duchy ” when people mean the county of Cornwall is no doubt due more than anything to one of Q,.’s early books, The Delectable Duchy, the title of which caught on and has become popularised over the last forty years — in itself a tribute to that charming volume of stories.
_{I remember, when my name was entered in the register 1 Written after the Abdication of Edward VIII, in 1937.}
as a Fellow of my college at Oxford, I was entered as having been born in the “ Duchy ” of Cornwall.

It was intended as a compliment, and, for sentimental reasons, taken as such, without protest.

But it was inaccurate. The popular habit of referring to Cornwall as the “ Duchy ” — in the sixteenth century they called it a “ shire ” like any other English shire — is a modern error ; it may be compared to what grammarians call the “ transferred epithet ”.
For all that, the Duchy, in the exact sense — the appanage of the Duke when there is one, and when there is not, lying dormant in the Crown —

is no less interesting and curious historically than it is on legal and constitutional grounds.

For one thing, it goes back direct as an institution to the reign of Edward III,

who created it for the support of his eldest son, the Black Prince ;

and indirectly to the Norman earldom of Cornwall, and perhaps further than that to the conquests of the House of Wessex upon Cornish soil.

For it is worth noting that two of the Duchy castles, Launceston and Trematon , were at places with names ending in “ ton ”, indicating Saxon settlement ;

and their positions guarded entries into or exits from Cornwall across the Tamar — the one in the north, the other in the south.
Saxon settlement does not seem to have gone a great way further into Cornwall ; but it was a conquered country when the Saxons themselves were conquered by William of Normandy. He made his half-brother, Robert of Mortain, Earl of Cornwall, who immediately began the building of the castles at Launceston and Trematon, the strategic keys of the county. Something of the status of conquest remained on under the earldom and into the Duchy. For it is significant that the lands of both earldom and Duchy have always been concentrated in the eastern half of the county ; while villeinage went on on the Duchy manors in Cornwall longer than
anywhere else in the country. I have myself come across in the Record Office numbers of manumissions of bondmen upon these manors right throughout the sixteenth century, in the reigns of Henry VII, Mary, and Elizabeth ; and it was not until the reign of James I that all were finally freed. The surname “ Bond ”, not uncommon in Cornwall, goes back to, the time when they were unfree in status, villeins tied to the land, at the will of their lord — in this case the Duchy. These manumissions were made in greatest number upon the manor of Stokeclimsland, the largest of the Duchy manors, still the chief agricultural centre of the Duchy in Cornwall, in which Edward VIII as Duke always displayed a close personal interest.
Of the Norman Earls of Cornwall, the most famous and the most magnificent was Richard, King of the Romans, brother of Henry III, and the most important person in the kingdom, after the King. He was a crusader and went to Palestine in 1240. He returned to England to become a prominent figure in internal politics — his brother was having great difficulty with the popular opposition led by Simon de Montfort — and later became a personage of European importance. For he used his great wealth as Earl of Cornwall and Count of Poitou to assure himself of his election as Holy Roman Emperor. He was elected by the majority of the electors ; but, in spite of his coronation at Aix-la-Chapelle, he never could secure the obedience to his rule of more than the immediate Rhineland. Defeated by the intricacies and intrigues of German politics, when his money ran out he returned to this country and the resources of his earldom.
In the last years of his life he turned his attention to Cornwall, greatly strengthening his position there by gaining possession of Tintagel and Trematon Castles, and persuading the last of the Cardinhams to hand over Restormel Castle and the town of Lostwithiel. From this time Lostwithiel became the chief administrative centre of the earldom in Cornwall, as it subsequently remained for centuries for the Duchy. Richard’s son, Edmund Earl of Cornwall, 1272-99, built between the church and the river there a fine range of buildings to house the administrative offices, which became known as the “ Duchy Palace Here was the Shire Hall, in which the county court met, the exchequer of the earldom, later of the Duchy, the Coinage Hall (for Lostwithiel was one of the stannary towns for the coinage of tin), and the gaol for the Cornish stannaries, which continued in use as late as the eighteenth century for prisoners brought before the stannary courts. Thus on a small scale, Mr. Charles Henderson says, the Duchy Palace “ represented the great Palace of Westminster now incorporated in the Houses of Parliament. Westminster had its great hall, its exchequer, its prison and government offices.” The Shire Hall was a very fine thirteenth-century building which existed up to the eighteenth century, but, with that disrespect or ignorant vandalism which the Cornish people often display towards beautiful things or historical monuments of the past, was subsequently destroyed. Only a small fragment remains of the buildings which once adorned the little quayside at Lostwithiel ; you may still see something of a hall, and the remains of walls and archways built into adjacent houses indicate to the regretful visitor what once stood there.
Restormel Castle, some way out of the town, high up on a hill above the lovely valley of the Fowey, the river rippling down between the oaks and glades of fern, has been more fortunate. After an uneventful history — though it woke to life once again in the Civil War, when it was besieged and taken in turn by Parliament and the King — it has now fallen into the careful hands of the Office of Works. Stripped of devouring ivy and with walls made firm and secure, the round shell of the keep stands well up on its hill, where one may see it among the
trees on the right hand as the train nears Lostwithiel.
The earldom as organised by Richard and Edmund was substantially what constituted the Duchy later. There was an intervening period after Edmund’s death in 1299, when Piers Gaveston, Edward II’s favourite, became earl, and after he came to his end John of Eltham, the King’s second son. Upon his death Edward III decided to use the vacant earldom as a means of support for his eldest son, who had not yet been created Prince of Wales. He did so in a form to last ; for as he constituted it, it has come down to us unbroken. The original charter by which it was created, March 17th, 11 Edward III, differentiates the dukedom from the principality of Wales ; for whereas the title of Prince of Wales is conferred by special investiture by the King, the dukedom of Cornwall is vested indissolubly in the person of the eldest son of the reigning Sovereign. The Duchy Auditor who wrote an account of the Duchy for Henry, Prince of Wales, James I’s elder son, in 1609 says : “ The King’s first begotten and eldest sons are as touching livery to be made unto them of the Duchy, accounted of full and perfect age, that is to say, of twenty-one years on the very day of their birth, so as even then in right, they ought to have livery thereof”. The Duchy is therefore a shifting possession from the Crown to the Duke and back to the Crown, for when the Duke dies or ascends the throne the Duchy reverts to the Sovereign. As Connock writes : “ those honours and revenues are drowned again in the Crown ”. During the dormancy of the dukedom the King functions “as he was Duke ”, according to the formula.
There is this further legal peculiarity of the Duchy, that, since it was constituted by royal charter expressly forbidding the alienation of its lands, the Duke is unable to sever lands from it except with the consent of Parliament. And when lands were so severed, as in the case of
Henry VIII’s annexation of the honour of Wallingford to the Crown — which previously was part of the Duchy — a number of monastic and other manors were granted instead, both within Cornwall and without, which were of equal or superior value. They were more conveniently administered as part of the Duchy since they lay in the west.
This process increased the number of manors of which the Duchy was comprised to some seventy-eight by the time of the Civil War, instead of the thirty-five with which it had been originally endowed at the time of its creation. They fell into several classes. There were, first, the seventeen “ Antiqua Maneria ” in Cornwall, which had formed part of the earldom ; secondly, there were the “ Forinseca Maneria ” outside the county, which were included by Edward III in his grant ; and, thirdly, the “ Annexata Maneria ”, both inside Cornwall and without, which had been incorporated subsequently by Act of Parliament. The original nucleus in Cornwall were the manors of Stokeclimsland, Rillaton, Helston-in-Trigg, Liskeard, Tybesta, Tywarnhaile, Talskedy, Penmayne, Calstock, Trematon, Restormel, Penkneth, Penlyne, Tewington, Helston-in-Kerrier, Tintagel, and Moresk. Upon these there existed a special conventionary form of tenure, from seven-year to seven-year, right up to the middle of the last century. The lands of the Duchy outside Cornwall were no less extensive than they were within, including an equal number of manors in various counties, and, as it still does, the honour of Bradninch, in Devonshire, all that high country between the rivers Exe and Culm, between Tiverton and Cullompton, and in London the manor of Kennington, upon which the Black Prince resided, now the most remunerative of all the Duchy’s sources of income.
This being its peculiar constitution, the history of the dukedom has been one of dormancy in the Crown as much
as of separate and independent existence under the Duke. The Black Prince, whose father, Edward III, lived such an unconscionably long time, enjoyed the Duchy for close on forty years ; but with his son, Richard II, who had no children, the Duchy lay dormant in the Crown. Under Henry IV, the later Henry V — Shakespeare’s Prince Hal — was Duke ; then for the forty years from 1413 to 1453 the Duchy was again in the possession of the Crown, and there were lapses again in the fifteenth century.
With the death of Prince Arthur, Henry VII’s elder son, in 1502, a new problem arose : did the King’s surviving son and heir succeed to the Duchy under the charter ? Sir John Doddridge, whose little book on the Principality of Wales and the Duchy of Cornwall was published in 1630, says that the intention of the charter was “ first that none should be Dukes of Cornwall, but such as were eldest sons and heirs apparent to the Crown ; and that when there was any fail of such person, then the said dignity should remain in suspense, until such son and heir apparent were extant ”. But the lawyers interpreted the phrase the King’s “ eldest son ” in the original charter to mean his eldest surviving son ; so that Henry, subsequently Henry VIII, was enabled to succeed to his brother’s Duchy, as he did later to his wife. The precedent was followed in 1612, upon the death of Prince Henry, when his younger brother Charles succeeded.
But there were long periods in the sixteenth century when the Crown was in possession of the Duchy : under Henry VIII from 1509 till 1537, when his son Edward was born, and throughout the whole reigns of Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth — i.e. from 1547 to 1603. In the seventeenth century there were similar periods : under Charles I, from 1625 to 1645, when he handed over the government of the Duchy to his son ; under the Commonwealth, when the Duchy even ceased for a time to exist and its manors were sold. It was restored under Charles II, but there was
no son to inherit the dukedom from 1649 right up to the death of Queen Anne in 1714, except for the brief and fugitive appearance of James IPs infant son upon the public scene in 1688. The Hanoverians, being a more prolific stock, did their duty by the Duchy more regularly. The later George II was Duke from 1714 to 1727, then Frederick Prince of Wales from 1727 to 1751. There followed upon his death an interregnum until the later George IV was born in 1762. Again the Crown was in possession from 1820 to 1841, when the Prince who became Edward VII was born. From then right up to the accession of Edward VIII there has been a Duke of Cornwall, the longest continuous stretch in its history. With Edward VIII’s accession the Duchy fell once more to the Crown, where it remains again until the birth of a son to the King. The remarkable feature of the dukedom historically, it will be observed, is its discontinuity, as compared with the virtually unbroken continuity of the Duchy.
Of the long line of its Dukes, few have been in a position to make acquaintance with, or take personal interest: in, their Duchy. The first Duke, the Black Prince himself, owing to his length of tenure, was in a position to do so.. Mr. Henderson says :
When the Black Prince came to man’s estate and was renowned as a warrior all over Christendom, he paid more than one visit to his duchy. Restormel was his chief halting-place. ... In May 1354, the Duchy Council wrote to John de Kendal, the receiver of Cornwall, ordering him to repair the castles in Cornwall, and especially the ‘ conduit ’ in the castle of Restormel, as quickly as possible. In August following, the Prince himself came down to Cornwall, with a gallant company of Knights whose names are immortalised in the-pages of Froissart.
Here the Prince remained from August 20th to about:: September 4th.
This was eight years after the Prince’s first youthful campaign, which had culminated at Crecy, where he led the van and won his immortal name, to the English people, of the Black Prince. He was still only twenty-four on this first visit to the west. It was just before he was appointed lieutenant of Gascony, whence he made his famous marauding campaigns over the whole south of France, burning and ravaging as he went, and ending up with the famous victory at Poitiers, where he took the King of France prisoner.
Nine years after his first visit to the Duchy he paid another, at Eastertide 1363, to Restormel. He had been created Prince of Aquitaine and Gascony the year before, and was about to go abroad to take up his charge, which consumed all the remaining good years of his life in ceaseless war — altogether less fortunate than in his earlier years — in the south of France and upon the borders of Spain. He came home, wasted with disease, in 1371, but came no more to his Duchy. The Duchy went on as an administrative unit ; it had been strongly organised and its officers did not fail. During all these years they kept their books duly, and there remains to us as the fruit of their efforts that register dealing with the Prince’s affairs in Cornwall known as the White Book of Cornwall, which reposes at the Public Record Office and has been published by His Majesty’s Stationery Office as part of the Black Prince's Register.
From it we learn how the Prince’s affairs in Cornwall were managed — how his revenues arose, the rents, fines, and profits of all kinds from his lands, the moneys arising from his stannary rights, the coinage of tin, the profits of his courts and all the innumerable small change of feudal tenure, the issues from wreck upon his manors on the coast. Then there were all the outgoings — payments to the Duchy’s full complement of officers from the steward, sheriff, and receiver of the Duchy, the havenor who dealt
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with customs at the ports, the “ Prince’s batchelor and keeper of his game ”, down to his keepers and bailiffs and chaplains. All the multifarious purposes, charitable and devotional or purely customary, of a great feudal landlord we find provided for : a chaplain to sing masses for the souls of the Prince’s ancestors in the chapel of the castle at Trematon, another to sing for the souls of former Earls of Cornwall in the hermitage dedicated to the Holy Trinity in the park of Restormel ; it stood by the river-bank below the castle on the site of “ Trinity ” within earshot of the pleasant noise of the river rushing by outside. Then there were oaks to be given from the Duchy parks for pious purposes, to the Dominican Friars of Truro to build their church,/ to the Prior of Tywardreath, |or to the parishioners of Stokeclimsland as a gift from the Prince to repair their church ; a grant of a tun of wine to a chaplain, or to a canon of Exeter going to keep his residence there the gift of “ twelve does from this season of grease to be taken from the Prince’s parks ”.
The deer-parks were a very important part in the economy of the Duchy. When it was constituted there were seven : Kerrybullock (now Stokeclimsland), with 150 deer ; Liskeard Old Park, with 200 ; Lanteglos and Helsbury, with 180 ; Trematon, with 42 ; Restormel, with 300 ; and Launceston, with 15. After the Black Prince, the Dukes never visited their Duchy ; its castles tended to fall into disrepair and there was less point in maintaining the deer-parks efficiently. With the movement for enclosure that grew strong in the sixteenth century, Henry VIII decided to dispark the Duchy parks and turn them more profitably into pasture. It is the site of Kerrybullock Park, in the parish of Stokeclimsland, that the large Duchy farm now occupies.
The Duchy continued to be administered upon the lines laid down under the Black Prince ; it remained substantially the same through the generations.
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Politicians and royal favourites came and went at remote Westminster ; dynasties changed ; there was civil war and battles raged upon English soil. Still the administration of the Duchy went on, the most permanent feature in the landscape of society in Cornwall, the diurnal routine of its tenants living close to the soil, undisturbed, unchanging, or changing slowly only with the slow tides of the ages. One derives the impression of an institution tenacious and conservative, one that neither relaxed its rights nor vexed its tenantry with new and unexpected impositions; the fines it took upon leases remained stable over long periods. At bottom, it was the age-long reverence for custom and tradition, the bed - rock of human history, that prevailed and ruled in and through the Duchy.
The drastic social changes of the Reformation, however, were not without their effect, and the Duchy emerged with a greater concentration of its lands in the west. Henry VIII detached the honours of Wallingford and St. Valery, but in exchange granted all the Cornish estates of the Earls of Devonshire, which fell to the Crown by the attainder of the Marquis of Exeter, some fifteen manors in all, and fifteen more Cornish manors belonging to the dissolved priories of Launceston and Tywardreath. j This meant a considerable extension of Duchy lands into mid-Cornwall, though the main concentration still remained in the east of the county. In the far west, the farm of the Scilly Isles now became for the first time Duchy property. In the last years of Elizabeth, with the constant drain upon the finances of the long war with Spain, and the continuous campaigns in the Netherlands and Ireland, she found it necessary to sell eighteen of these newly-annexed manors. But it was held on James I’s accession that the sale was illegal under the charter of the Duchy and the King recovered them.
Of the political influence of the Duchy in Cornwall in
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these years, when its economic hold was so much strengthened, it is difficult to say much with certainty. It is the popular view that the great increase which the Tudors made in the parliamentary representation of Cornwall was intended to assure and strengthen Royal influence upon Parliament by the return of so many members — forty-four in all — from a county where the Duchy had such an extensive influence. But if that was the intention, it was not wholly fulfilled — at any rate, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. For in Elizabeth’s reign the Puritan leaders Peter and Paul Wentworth, the initiators of parliamentary opposition, sat for Cornish boroughs ; while in the reign of Charles I, at election after election, the Duchy failed to get its candidates returned against the local influence of Sir John Eliot, William Coryton, and such Puritan and Parliamentarian families as the Rouses of Halton.
With the outbreak of the Civil War the Duchy reached, perhaps, the apex of its importance ; for upon its stable and ordered administrative system, and upon its revenues, Charles I had to fall back for the sinews of his cause in the west. This most interesting phase of the Duchy’s existence has been studied most illuminatingly and in detail by Miss Mary Coate in her Cornwall in the Civil War. In 1645, at the decisive downward turn of his fortunes, Charles I took the decision to grant livery of the Duchy to the young Prince of Wales, then fifteen, and to send him into the west with a Council attendant upon him, to govern the west in his name. Hyde was the chief member of the Prince’s Council, and for a year he laboured hard to screw up the resources of the Duchy and to stay the rot in the Royalist forces. He was successful only in the first ; but that at such a time of disintegration and defeat was a remarkable achievement. The production of tin was enormously increased and shipped across to France and Holland to buy munitions. But nothing could stave off
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the military defeat ; the Cavaliers were at daggers drawn among themselves, the Prince’s Council was riddled with animosities and dissensions, and in March 1646 the Prince embarked at Falmouth for Scilly and later for France.
In these years Cornwall was being drained by both sides ; and no doubt it was the enormous sacrifices the county had made, both of man-power for the King — the Cornish army raised by Sir Bevil Grenville, which achieved such magnificent feats in the campaign of 1643, was bled white — and of its resources by both King and Parliament, that made Cornwall accept the Parliamentarian victory on the whole quietly and submissively. After so long a struggle, and such sacrifices made in vain, the ordinary Cornishman must have felt “ A plague on both your houses ”, and turned with satisfaction to beating the sword into a reaping-hook. It had been a great disadvantage, productive of much misery and impoverishment, for Cornwall to have been forced into such invidious prominence in the war by its association with the Duchy. However, the latter paid for the part it had played in the struggle. It was sold up by the victorious Parliament, its organisation dissolved. When Charles II came back to his throne all had to be reconstituted.
The old foundations, the old routine, however, were there ; it only remained to follow out their lines. The Duchy was revived, officers appointed ; at the head of them all was John Grenville, Earl of Bath, Sir Bevil’s son, who as a lad of sixteen, when his father was killed at Lansdown, was lifted on to his horse to take his place and encourage the dispirited Cornish foot. The close personal friend of the King — he shared his room in the palace at Whitehall, and later was, with the Earl of Feversham, the only Protestant present when the dying Charles was received into the Roman Church — now in 1661 he was made High Steward of the Duchy, Lord Warden of the Stannaries, Rider and Master of Dartmoor Forest, offices
which went with the Duchy, and later Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall. The age-long customs of the Duchy, temporarily stilled, woke again to their slow, satisfying routine ; the manor courts were held in the King’s name, the Lord Warden came down in person to preside at the Parliament of the Stannaries ; the tin trade flourished ; there was money , once more for Charles to support his mistresses at Whitehall.
With the Duchy settling again into its old accustomed routine, there remains only to notice the stannaries, from which the Duchy had early drawn some part of its revenues. With the greatly increasing return from the mines of Cornwall, this source of revenue was expanding and becoming ever more important. After the Restoration the history of the Duchy is without constitutional excitements, and the economic factor of the stannaries becomes more prominent. Theirs is a history distinct from, though subordinate to, the Duchy ; it has been treated in full by Dr. G. R. Lewis in his book The Stannaries. Nevertheless, the popular view of what the stannaries were is even less clear than as to the Duchy : a recent article on the latter, almost the only one to appear, referred to the stannaries as “ tin mines ”, which they were not. They were areas of jurisdiction covering not only the tin mines, but the whole of the tin industry and all affairs arising out of it. They formed a peculiar jurisdiction springing from the Royal prerogative in the working of metals. As such they were not subject to common law; after many disputes on the point, the leading case of Trewynnard in the reign of Elizabeth decided that there was no appeal from the stannary courts to the ordinary courts of law. They had their own system of courts with an ultimate appeal to the Council of the Prince as Duke of Cornwall. It is worth noting that the last survival of the ancient stannary courts remained until as late as 1896, when the court of the Vice-Warden of the Stannaries was abolished.
When the Duchy was created in 1337 the stannaries of Cornwall and Devon were incorporated into it ; from that time the Duke took the place of the King in receiving their revenues and regulating their affairs. His Council formed the fountain-head of all stannary administration. He appointed the Lord Warden to act as his representative in governing the stannaries, naming their officers, summoning the tinners’ parliaments, assenting to their legislation, promulgating new laws and enactments for their regulation. As a peculiar jurisdiction with its own rights, the stannaries mustered their own men for service in times of danger. In the alarming years before and after the Spanish Armada we find frequent complaints from the deputy-lieutenants of Cornwall against the stannaries on the ground of the overlapping of jurisdictions and their consequent inability to make complete returns of men for the musters. But Sir Walter Raleigh’s position as Lord Warden was sufficient to maintain the independence of the stannaries from the ordinary local administration, and co-ordination of the two was usually provided for by the appointment of the Lord Warden as lord lieutenant of the county.
With the great development of the mining industry in Cornwall in the eighteenth century the revenues from the stannary must have become an increasing part of the revenues of the Duchy. Complicated as it would be to work out in detail, it is not difficult to sum up what the economic effect of the Duchy has been upon Cornwall through the centuries. It must have meant, on balance, a constant and very serious drain of wealth from a county which was, except for its minerals, poor in resources. Charles Henderson, our chief authority on Cornish history, held this to be the reason why so few large estates were formed in Cornwall, and why, charming as a number of the Cornish country houses are, there are not many historic houses to compare with those of other counties.
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That pleasant antiquary, Richard Carew of Antony, who wrote his Survey of Cornwall towards the end of Elizabeth’s reign, and in such delightful Elizabethan English, comments a little sadly upon there being no Cornish peerage in his time, no one in Cornwall, of however ancient a family, whom the Queen might call cousin.
Under the Hanoverian dynasty the Duchy went on according to its old-established order; though I do not know that any of the first four Georges paid any personal visits to their Duchy. All our recent sovereigns from Victoria onwards have done so. Edward VII as Prince of Wales visited his Cornish estates on several occasions. The revenues which accumulated during his minority enabled him to buy Sandringham, as they enabled Edward VIII when Duke to buy Fort Belvedere.
Perhaps it was in consequence of this, or as an indication of the distinction he wished to maintain between his capacity as Duke of Cornwall and his public role as Prince and King, or simply out of sentiment for the Duchy, that i the Duchy of Cornwall flag was always flown at Fort Belvedere and never any othery At any rate, Cornishmen may hope so, with images of the Duchy in their mind — the centuries-old buildings going back to Edmund Earl of Cornwall, by the quayside at Lostwithiel, lapped by the tidal waters of the river Fowey ; the house at Trematon within the old walls of the castle, where Sir Richard Grenville, grandfather of the hero, took refuge in the time of the great “ Commotion ” of 1549, the castle to which Drake took the treasure which he brought home from his voyage round the world, the grey walls now looking quietly down through the twinkling leaves to the broad waters of the Hamoaze and across to Devonport ; or Launceston Castle, with the ruined shell of its keep ; or Tintagel, grim, barbaric upon its desolate headland, the inspiration of so much poetry and legend. Whether one thinks of these, or the delightful acres of pasture and wood-
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land, the small enclosed fields within their granite hedges, the long, slow, laborious lives of the generations, the farmers and their strong sons serving the Duchy, tilling the soil, it is all the same. / Not a Cornishman but must have felt some catch at the heart when the flag with the fifteen gold bezants was broken for the last time at Fort Belvedere, not only for the gesture in itself, but for all the history that lies behind it. I
RIALTON: A CORNISH MONASTIC MANOR
Behind the hideous, unhappy mess that the speculative builder has made of modern Newquay there is a delicious valley, in the old-fashioned Cornish manner, that runs down to the sea at St. Columb Porth. A narrow winding road, with innumerable twists and bends, a little stream that goes singing down through the meadows bright with golden flag and meadow-sweet, the low hills upheaved on either hand, a good deal of rough brake beside the ploughland, and along the road as you go the characteristic groups of tiny Cornish elms, the hedges in early summer coloured with purple vetch and crowsfoot, the first foxgloves and pink campion. And over all there is the rumour, the magic presence, of the sea, invisible yet always there.1
At one of the bends in the road is Rialton. You wouldn’t think anything of it at first view : just a Cornish stone cottage, rather larger than usual. The house turns its back on the road, at the end of a real cottage garden, full of primulas in spring, of phloxes and sweet-william in summer. It is not until you go up the cobbled path and round to the old front of the house that you see what an interesting place it is, very Cornish and at the same time a rare survival for Cornwall. For what you are face to face with is a fragment, the main front of a late fifteenth-century or early Tudor house, a monastic manor.
The place indeed has a long and interesting history. From early Celtic times it was the chief possession of Bodmin Priory, the jewel among the lands of those canons, fat or lean. It was the capital of their hundred of Pydar-
1 Since writing this, in 1941, I am told that road-widening operations, by the County Council, have done their best to spoil the valley.
111

 Cnut

                                                                            and not very usual cognomen Sabinus.

 The stones have somewhat of the appearance of funeral monuments, but are entirely lacking in Christian emblems.

Such as they are, they point to some kind of Roman cultural influence in the district of Tavistock.

The abbey was founded in 961 by Ordgar, an English noble who was probably Ealdorman (not Earl) of Devon and Cornwall under King Eadgar the Peaceful. He is best known as the father of Eadgar's second wife, /Elfthryth—“Elfrida” of evil memory, mother of the "redeless ” king /Ethelred II. and the murderess of her step-son, Edward II., the Martyr. The monastery was not dedicated until 981, by Ordgar’s son Ordwulf, and only sixteen years later it was sacked by the Danes. It was, however, reestablished, quite possibly by the Danish King Cnut, who is known to have taken pleasure in restoring foundations ruined by his piratical father and his associates. The abbot in Cnut’s reign was Lyfing, a notable figure in the history of the times. He accompanied Cnut on his famous “pilgrimage” to Rome in 1026, and six years later was appointed Bishop of Crediton.

Shortly afterwards the Cornish see of St. Germans was united to Crediton, so that Lyfing exercised ecclesiastical authority over the whole of die two western counties. He took a foremost share in the elevation to the throne of Edward the Confessor.

Another notable abbot was Ealdred, who afterwards became Archbishop of York and crowned William the Norman in Westminster Abbey. No special ill-fortune                                  seems to have befallen Tavistock Abbey for five hundred years after its restoration.

ST. GERMANS     .Augustinian

was the seat of a bishop in early times. The bishops of the Celtic churches were not like those of the English; their sphere influence was not defined in the same way. In Ireland a bishop often lived in a monastic settlement and was inferior in

in rank to the Abbot. In Cornwall the Bishop of St. Germans was probably the head of a monastery. Whether his jurisdiction extended over the whole of modern Cornwall, or whether there were not other bishops—at Bodmin, for instance—in the quite early days, is not clear. The first bishop who is named is one Conan, in AthelStan’s time (in 936), but he will not have been actually the first. The laSt was Burhwold.

In 1050 the old See of St. Germans was united with Exeter by Edward the Confessor, and Bishop Leofric, who had formerly had Crediton for his See, moved thither. He is said to have placed canons in St. Germans. But it was Bartholomew, Bishop of Exeter in Henry II’s time, who made it a Priory of AuguStinian Canons. So it continued till the Suppression, when its annual value was somewhat under £250.

The church has a certain cathedral flavour about it, in that it has two western towers; one is Norman, with an oCtagonal top of the thirteenth century. The other, the southern, has Norman base and Perpendicular upper Storey. Between them is a fine late Norman door. The nave has two Norman piers on the south side, and a Norman font is in the south tower.

The original north aisle was pulled down in 1803 and replaced by the pew of the Eliots—the house of Port Eliot is immediately beside the church.

The description in the Beauties of "England and Wales (Britton and Bray-ley; this volume was issued in 1801) is rather unwontedly minute and careful. I will quote a good part of it, and the visitor may be interested in comparing it with what he sees now.

After describing the western arch it says : “ Over the arch is a pediment with a cross at the top resembling an heraldic cross patee within a circle; on each side is a small pointed window, and above these are three small narrow round-headed windows. [Above these is the main western gable.]

“ The north aisle is divided from the nave by five short thick round columns, each connected with a half-pillar opposite to it in the north wall, by a low surbased arch. All the capitals of the columns are square, and curiously ornamented with Saxon (i.e. Norman) sculpture. The third from the weSt end is embellished with grotesque figures having bodies resembling dogs, opposed to each other, with their fore parts meeting at the angle of the capital in one head ; the upper part human, but the lower like a scollop-shell. Above these range six plain arches, some of them apparently of the same age and Style with those in the nave of St. Alban’s Abbey Church,