On West Looe Down the late John Lemon, esq. (M.P. for Truro, and who
died April 5, 1814), about the year 1787 erected a small but extremely
neat house in the cottage style, and inclosed some ground round it by
virtue of a grant from the Corporation. He gave it the name of
Polvellan, and laid it out with great taste. Pol, in Cornish, signifies
a Pool, and Vellan a Mill; and below the house are a mill and pool,
inclosed by a stone wall of about half a mile sweep, in a circular
direction. I cannot describe the contrivance and use of this pool
better than in the words of Mr. Carew, in his “Survey of
Cornwall.”――“Amongst other commodities afforded by the sea, the
inhabitants make use of divers his creekes for grist mills, by
thwarting a banke from side to side, in which a flood-gate is placed,
with two leaves; these the flowing tide openeth, and, after full sea,
the weight of the ebb closeth fast, which no other force can doe; and
so the imprisoned water payeth the ransome of driving an under shoote
wheel for his enlargement.” I apprehend the mill and pool-wall were
built by one of the Arundells of Tremodart, in Duloe parish. The wall
is about six or eight feet high, and almost broad enough for a coach
to pass over it, and must have cost a great deal of money. It appears
by a deed which I have seen, that the Mayor and Burgesses of West
Looe, on the 30th of May, in the twelfth year of the reign of James
the First (1614), granted all that parcel, quantity of ground, oze, or
water, now surrounded by the said mill-pool-wall, to Thomas Arundell,
of Tremodart, in the parish of Duloe, esq. for 500 years, from thence
next ensuing; that afterwards the said Thomas Arundell built a
mill-house, and four grist-mills, and other houses, and also the
mill-pool-wall. On November 3, 1648, the said Thomas Arundell made his
will; and I believe the mills and mill-pool-wall were built by him
before he made his will. Afterwards this term in these premises were
assigned over by the Arundells (father and son) and one Drew (perhaps
a mortgagee) to Sir Jonathan Trelawny, for the remainder of the said
term. I am apprehensive, however, that there was a mill at this place
previous to the aforesaid grant.