There does not seem to be any thing connected with the remaining
property of this parish that is important or curious. The chief
landholders are the Rashleigh family, and Mrs. Agar, representative of
the Robertses.
Mr. Coleman Rashleigh, son of Mr. John Rashleigh of Penquite, a
younger brother from Menabilly, has purchased Prideaux, built there an
excellent modern house, and restored the place, although in a
different style, to its ancient splendour. This gentleman has
distinguished himself as one of the most active, most able, and most
energetic among those who have supported in Cornwall the theories
leading to recent organic change in the system of our representation,
and he has been created a Baronet by the Reform administration.
The church is situated on very lofty ground, amidst granite rocks, so
universally scattered over the surface, that many houses are built in
such a manner as to make one or more of these rocks available in the
walls. Yet the soil is good; and Mr. Grylls, the present vicar, has
proved that taste and perseverance may create an elegant assemblage of
whatever is useful or ornamental in a situation apparently the most
unpromising. The tower as well as the church far exceed the average in
size and beauty. The tower has a singular addition of a small room at
the top; and in this room various records relating to the Stannaries
and to the Duchy of Cornwall are said to have been preserved, while
the armies on both sides, in the civil war, were ravaging the country,
and destroying the towns.
Mr. Tonkin has remarked on the romantic and beautiful vale which
descends from Luxilian Church by Prideaux to St. Blazey Bridge, and in
explaining the phenomena of lofty and precipitous inland cliffs, he
has anticipated the most recent theories of modern geology. See
Principles of Geology, by Charles Lyell.
This parish measures 5,041 statute acres.
Annual value of the Real Property, as £. _s._ _d._
returned to Parliament in 1815 3,768 0 0
Poor Rate in 1831 554 16 0
Population, { in 1801, | in 1811, | in 1821, | in 1831,
{ 875 | 1047 | 1276 | 1288
giving an increase of 47 per cent. in thirty years.