Read Ebook: Nooks and Corners of Cornwall by Dawson Scott C A Catharine Amy

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 540 lines and 52995 words, and 11 pages

With regard to certain old churches, St. Olaf's, at Poughill, has two rather crudely restored mural paintings and, set heavily in the south door, what is reputed to be one of the few genuine sanctuary rings still in existence. The church at Marhamchurch also shows the remains of frescoes, while Stratton has a fine stoup, and in the north wall of the chancel an Easter sepulchre, probably the only one in the county. That of Swithin--dear apple saint--at Launcells, has a circular font reputed to date from Saxon times, and the fifteenth century bench-ends, though rudely carved, show a play of symbolic fancy, unusual in Cornwall. On one you see the visit of Mary when she mistook the gardener for Christ, Mary being represented by a spice-box, the gardener by a spade! On another the Harrowing of Hell is represented by the jaws of a dragon, and so with the various subjects. An empty grave and cross triumphant tells the story of the resurrection, while the supper at Emmaus, though faithfully suggested, is given without the introduction of a single human figure. It is all symbolism--riddles which are interesting to guess, but not always easy.

WEEK ST. MARY

Some five miles or so south of Marhamchurch lies Week St. Mary, about a native of which village a sort of Dick Whittington story is told. In a field adjoining the churchyard the remains of extensive buildings can be traced, and these, once a chantry, were said to be due to the pious energy of Dame Thomasin Perceval. As a girl she herded geese on the common of Greenamore, until in the shape of a staid and, alas! already married merchant, the Prince came riding by. He spoke to the girl and found her as pleasant in discourse as to the eye. Without more ado, therefore, he took her away with him--and here, though propriety is preserved, the fairy-tale suddenly drops to unromantic fact--he took her to wait upon his wife! In course of time, however, that good lady died and the middle-aged Prince was free to marry his goose-girl.

After many years she returned as a rich widow to her native parish, and there spent the remnant of her days in a cheerful and rather bustling philanthropy, repairing anything in the way of churches, bridges, and roads that required attention, portioning the virtuous and hard working of her own sex and generally playing Lady Bountiful--or so it is said!

In the churchwardens' Accounts of Stratton under date 1513 we read:

"paid for my lady parcyvale ijs Meneday to iiij preistes & for bred & ale 1s. 1d."

NOOKS AND CORNERS FROM WIDEMOUTH BAY TO ST. TEATH

THE HEADLANDS

The cliffs from Marsland Mouth to Trevose Head are fine, much finer than those on the better known south coast. The seas also are wilder, these shores seeming to suffer from fiercer onslaughts of the Atlantic. On a blustery day it is nothing to see the tortured waves break into a spray that is flung full forty feet into the air, while except in sheltered dips and coves--of which there are none too many in this part--neither tree nor shrub can live. This gives the headlands a barren look, the bold outlines are of grey boulders rather than vegetation, and behind them on the windy downs crouch the grey hamlets and solitary farms. For sheer beauty of crag and precipice, of mighty seas and broken slipped sea-front, there is nothing in the duchy that can compare with this piece of coast. Upon the great cliffs of Widemouth Bay, of which the name is sufficiently descriptive, follow Dizzard Point with its landslip, Castle Point, so called from the circular earthwork on its summit, Pencarrow Head , between which and Cambeak at the mouth of a wooded valley lies the lovely Crackington Cove and which brings us to the High Cliff with its sheer drop of 735 ft. This last is the highest in Cornwall, nearly double the height of the Dodman, that glory of the southern coast, while it is far higher than the Land's End and the Lizard. A little inland is yet higher ground, for Tresparret Down, a barren and desolate heath, is some 850 ft. above sea level!

Somewhat to the north of the High Cliff is St. Genys, the saint of which is said to have been one of three brothers, all of whom were beheaded. This particular brother is believed to have walked about afterwards, his head held under his arm, a proceeding which reminds us that "King Charles walked and talked, half an hour after his head was cut off!"

BOSCASTLE

After the High Cliff the shore gradually assumes a less terrific aspect, until Boscastle, with its tiny firth and its blow-holes, is reached. This little straggling place took its name from Botreaux Castle , which was built here in the twelfth century. The last Lord Botreaux died in 1462, and of the castle only a grassy mount, called Jordans, from a neighbouring stream, remains. This mount is on the hill, that steep and wooded hill which leads down into Boscastle, and on the sides of which the houses are hung like birds' nests on a cliff.

At the end of the valley the hills unite into slaty cliffs which take a sudden fjord-like turn before reaching the sea. This short and tiny estuary cannot, of course, compare with the smallest of those winding inlets which make the strange beauty of the Norwegian coast, inlets whose walls would dwarf the High Cliff and whose majestic desolation would make the barrenest headland in the west seem mild and fertile.

If the tide is in, the islet at the mouth of Boscastle Harbour sends up sudden showers of spray which suggest a geyser, but are in reality due to a blow-hole, and there is another on the mainland.

An ancient form of tenure survives here. The upper part of Forrabury Common is divided into "stitches"--slips of land divided by boundary marks only--and these stitches are held in severalty from Lady Day to Michaelmas, the proprietors for the rest of the year stocking it in common, according to the amount of their holdings. The hilly part of the common being unfit for cultivation is stocked in common all the year round.

Boscastle has two churches, that of Forrabury, which has been too zealously restored, deal having been substituted for the sixteenth-century oak benches and for the old pulpit that was covered with arabesques, and Minster. Near Minster, on Waterpit Downs, is a fine specimen of Celtic interlaced work on a cross shaft. It is now rescued, but for many years it served to bear the pivot of a threshing-machine. The church itself stands on the chancel site of an old minster. A doorway, now blocked, once led to the priory buildings, but of them nothing remains.

OTTERHAM AND WARBSTOW BARROWS

To the south-west of Boscastle is Willapark Head, and beyond it are some caves which until recently were haunted, as was all this north-western coast, by mild-eyed seals. "A man with a gun" and the English instinct to "go out and kill something," an instinct useful in the days of the mammoth and the cave-tiger, but more than a little tiresome in our present state of civilisation, is responsible for their disappearance. There are still the caves to be seen.

ST. NECHTAN'S KIEVE; BOSSINEY

Inland the little towns are of slight interest, with the exception of the old cross at Lambrenny, but the walk along the cliffs--and the Cornish are amiably ignorant that trespassers ought to be prosecuted--presents an ever-changing panorama of lichened rocks and lacy surf and every shade of wonderful blue. In Trevalga Church is some old woodwork that has been carefully placed against the east wall of the church, and presently we are crossing the neck of the Rocky Valley on our way to derelict Bossiney--Bossiney once having mayor and officers and represented in Parliament by Sir Francis Drake, but now only a sleepy lovely nook in a quiet corner of the land! At the head of the Rocky Valley is St. Nechtan's Kieve, a fine but broken waterfall of some 40 ft. A legend is told of two unknown ladies who inhabited a cottage near by and who died without ever having revealed their names, but the legend sprang like so many others from the fertile brain of the Rev. Robert Hawker. He thought the place looked as if it ought to have a legend, and not finding one was both ready and able to supply the deficiency. A cross which was formerly part of the garden gate and was supposed to be of the ninth century has been taken to Tintagel, and is now to be seen in the garden of that comfortable old-fashioned hostelry, the Wharncliffe Arms.

TINTAGEL

The far-famed "Dundagel" consists of a single grey street, lined in irregular fashion with grey cottages and houses. In this land of stone you sigh for the cheerful sight of a red-brick building or a glowing tiled roof; but the stone used is grey, and where the roofs are not of a cold blue slate, they are of a thatch held on by ropes that are heavily weighted. The place is still primitive. Until recently the nearest baker lived at Delabole, and to judge by the prizes on view in his window, he must have been the king of pastry cooks. In Cornwall, however, the housewife still bakes her own bread and is in other ways more self-sufficing, and let us add more thrifty, than elsewhere.

ARTHUR

"Who Arthur was," says Milton, "and whether any such person reigned in Britain hath been doubted heretofore and may again with good reason." We must remember that the traditions concerning him were not reduced to writing until centuries after his death, while Gildas, who was born according to his own account in what would be Arthur's lifetime, does not mention him.

The legends, however, assert that he was born at Tintagel Castle about 499 A.D., that he had three wives, but no children, and that his second wife, Yenifer , was buried with him at Glastonbury. Against the probability of this is the fact that Tintagel is not mentioned in Domesday and that its ruins are of the thirteenth century with later additions. It is quite likely, however, that the place, which is strongly situated on a jutting headland--the so-called Island--was fortified from time immemorial. It may originally have been one of those pathetic cliff castles, may have been improved on and made habitable by the conquering race of that epoch, and may eventually have fallen into decay.

THE CASTLE

When Cornwall, till then an earldom, was made a duchy and bestowed on the Black Prince, a boy seven years old, all the castles were again fallen into decay. At Tintagel the timber had even been removed from the great hall "because the walls were ruinous." The main part of the building appears to have been on the Island, but it was connected with outworks on the shore by a drawbridge. Sir Richard Grenville, who made an official survey in 1583, tells us that this drawbridge, which had been in existence within living memory, was gone, its supports having been washed away by the waves. The sea having continued its work of destruction, the space is now too wide for any drawbridge to span, and in spite of a handrail the little climb to the "Island" ruins is a dizzy one. Nor is there much to see. Some of the masonry is recent, while the tiny chapel and altar are of about the same date as the later parts of the castle, but the view is fine. It makes up for the disappointment in Tintagel as a castle, for the disappointment of finding that here is no certain tradition of Arthur, that the very people feel about him much as Milton did. He may have been born here, this may have been his very castle of Dindraithon, but if so they know nothing of it. Arthur is a thing of books, of art, not life, of the Morte, the Idylls, and--best of all perhaps--of Clemence Housman's wonderful story "Sir Aglovaine de Galis," but he has no place in present-day folklore.

On the top of the mainland outworks is a doorway which in an eerie manner opens upon space, and a sheer drop of many hundreds of feet. It shows how much the sea is encroaching. Once upon a time this probably led to the look-out tower. Now the very foundations of that tower are gone and presently the masonry will go too, and the waters will roar unhindered between the mainland and the island.

THE BEACH AND BARRAS HEAD

Far below is a tiny dark beach, the colour of which is explained when having climbed down a wooden stairway clamped to the rock--the only means of approach--it is found to consist entirely of rounded pieces of slate. They are of all weights and sizes, but there is no sand, no shells, nothing but slate. Opposite the Castle rock is Barras Head, and there at last the big modern hotel can be ignored and the wanderer lie out on the short, dry turf with the long line of hazy coast to either hand and, before him, the islands white with sea-birds and pink with thrift and the boundless stretch of sunlit waters.

It is here that Swinburne, venturing on a swim, was nearly drowned. The same story is told of him on the French coast, only there it was Guy de Maupassant who brought him back in safety. The great French writer is reported to have said that the little English poet, with his bladder-like head and attenuated body, struck him as hardly sane. Yet it was Maupassant who died mad, not Swinburne.

AN INSCRIBED STONE

The cruciform church on the cliff is largely Norman, but portions of it belong to almost every succeeding age and period. Some have even held that it contains Saxon work, but the authorities are not agreed.

A DANGEROUS OCCUPATION

On the way to Trebarwith along the cliffs--and Trebarwith is a narrow rocky opening up which the tide rushes with tremendous force--are quarries. It is strange to see men, with the carelessness of long habit, walk to the very edge of the cliff, lie down and, with their legs hanging over, feel with their feet for the rough ladder that leads down the rock-face to the quarry opening; or to see them stand on a plank that juts out over the sea, and is maintained in its position by a chunk of rock, casually adjusted. If the plank should give, or the rock roll aside! But a man stands there from morning till night loading and unloading slates.

THE BATTLE OF GAFULFORD

Inland from Tintagel is Camelford, with its local tradition of a battle. At Slaughter Bridge, near Worthyvale, one and a half miles from Camelford, fragments of armour, ornaments of bridles, weapons, have been found, and in 823 a battle was certainly fought at some place then called Gafulford between the Saxons of Devon and the Celts of Cornwall, a battle in which the Cornish were defeated. May not this unknown Gafulford be Camelford? Writers have suggested that this may have been the scene of Arthur's last battle; but the weight of tradition is against this theory, a more likely place having been pointed out in Scotland.

ARTHUR'S HALL

LANTEGLOS

As is so often the case in Cornwall, the Camelford church is at some distance from the place to which it ministers, being, indeed, a mile and a half away at Lanteglos. In the churchyard is a celebrated stone with an inscription in eleventh-century Saxon capitals: "AELSELTH & GENERETH WROHTE THYSNE SYBSTEL FOR AELWYNEYS SAUL & FOR HEYSEL." About a quarter of a mile from the church is the well-known entrenchment called Castle Goff, with a single rampart and ditch.

THE FORTY BREWERS OF HELSTON

Below Lanteglos is the manor of Helston, and Domesday records "that there were forty brewers on the royal manor of Henliston." This is the only mention in the great survey of brewers as an item of population, and forty seems a good many for one place. Did they brew all the beer in the county; and was it Henliston ale that so appalled Andrew Borde when he thought to visit Cornwall, that he turned back saying: "it looked as if pigges had wrasteled in it"?

THE RIVER

Camelford is not far from either of the sources of the Camel, and the upper moorland reaches of the twin streams abound in charming spots where the water frets among boulders and swirls in sunshine and shadow among ferns and wild flowering shrubs. The sisters do not join forces till they reach Kea Bridge, over ten miles from their source, but as soon as depth allows of their existence sweet small trout are plentiful.

THE DELABOLE SLATE

Between Camelford and Tintagel are the now silent quarries of North Delabole . The road winds between great walls and under archways of slate which look as if a touch would send the whole erection sliding and rushing down upon the wayfarer. But the slates were set up by cunning fingers and have withstood the gales of this coast for a score of years. Very different is their mournful creeper-grown desolation from the arid activity of Delabole. The approach to the high grey windy street is marked by deep ferny lanes. Here are thirty acres of quarry and rubble heap, a hideous excavation. In 1602 the quarry, already old, was 900 ft. long, in 1882 it had grown to 1300 ft., and it is growing still. The best slate is called bottom stone and lies at a depth of from 25 to 40 fathoms, for the quarry is now over 400 ft. deep. Beautiful crystals the so-called Cornish diamonds, are found in these workings, truly the only beautiful things in a most dreary place.

ST. TEATH

When the church at little sleepy St. Teath was restored in 1877, two massive Norman responds at the east end of the north aisle were discovered. There is also some good roof timber and a little ancient glass. The pulpit bears the arms of the Carminows and their motto: "Cala Rag Whetlow"--a straw for a tell-tale. It was John of Gaunt, "time-honoured Lancaster," that Prince who, though never a king, was the ancestor of so many, who upon true evidence found Carminow of Cornwall "to be descended of a lineage armed 'Azure a bend Or' since the time of King Arthur;" and indeed the Carminows were certainly here at the Conquest. They are now extinct, the last of the family, a devoted Royalist, dying in 1646.

In the graveyard, on a slab fastened to the church, is the following epitaph:

NOOKS AND CORNERS FROM PORT ISAAC TO THE VALE OF LANHERNE

PORT ISAAC

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet