Mr. Tonkin has not stated with his general accuracy the value assigned
to the vicarage of St. Neot in the Taxation of Pope Nicholas. The
entry in the parliamentary publication stands thus:
Ecclesia Sancti Rufati (Neoti) £10 0 0
Vicar’ ejusdem 6 13 4
The following entry occurs in the valuation of property belonging to
the priory of Montacute, at its surrender to the king, preserved in
the First Fruits Office.
Sanctus Neotus.――Valet in exit’ x^{mar’} [~p]dial’ ꝑsonal’ cum
al’ casual’ i[~b]^m cõib; annis £14. ult^a
13_s._ 4_d._ in feod’ Jo[~h]s Calwey, ball’
i[~b]^m, ꝑ annu’ clare £13. 6_s._ 8_d._
Mr. Lysons gives a very detailed account of the different manors in
this parish, and of the descents and alienations of each, but wholly
uninteresting to any others than the proprietors.
The principal manor and advowson of the church, which had been both
divided, are most fortunately again united in the Rev. Richard Gerveys
Grylls, since we are indebted to the taste and to the liberality of
this gentleman, for more than restoring the beautiful decorations of
the church to their original splendour.
The church is situated in a pleasing and retired vale, watered by a
branch of the Fowey river, and abounding with trees; while the country
surrounding it, on almost every side, is even now little cultivated,
and must in former times have been a desert. No situation could be
more adapted for the retreat of an anchorite; and monkish legends
inform us that St. Guevor, or Guervier, or Guerer, fixed his abode at
this place; and in after times, the sound of his name being found to
somewhat resemble the French verb Guerir, to heal, tales were invented
of his performing miraculous cures; and in particular of his having
enabled King Alfred to sit on a horse at the precise moment when his
presence in the field became indispensably necessary to oppose the
pagan Danes.
If St. Guerir ever resided here at all, he must have very opportunely
made way for St. Neot, since it is well ascertained that he also
occupied this retreat in the reign of his brother or relation the
Great Alfred.
St. Neot, having withdrawn from the Abbey of Glastonbury, founded by
St. Joseph of Arimathea, retired into this solitude; where he adopted
the singular penance of plunging himself daily into a well of cold
water, and there remaining immersed to his neck till he had repeated
the whole Book of Psalms. The miraculous powers however bestowed on
him by the Almighty, in recompense for conduct so conducive to the
happiness and well-being of his creatures, forbad St. Neot to remain
secreted. Multitudes flocked to him from all parts; he founded a
monastery, and repaired to Rome for a confirmation and for blessing at
the hands of the Pope: these were readily obtained. He returned to his
monastery, where frequent visits were made to him by King Alfred, on
which occasions he admonished, instructed, and informed the great
founder of English liberty; and finally quitted this mortal life on
the 31st of July, about the year 883, in the odour of sanctity so
unequivocal, that travellers all over Cornwall were solaced by its
fragrance. Nor did the exertions of our Saint terminate with his
existence on earth; he frequently appeared to King Alfred, and
sometimes led his armies in the field. But if the tales of these times
are deserving of any confidence, the nation is really and truly
indebted to St. Neot for one of the greatest blessings ever bestowed
on it. To his advice, and even to his personal assistance as a
teacher, we owe the foundation by Alfred of the University at Oxford.
The relics of St. Neot remained at his monastery in Cornwall till
about the year 974, when Earl Alric, and his wife Ethelfleda, having
founded a religious house at Eynesbury, in Huntingdonshire, and being
at a loss for some patron saint, adopted the expedient of stealing the
body of St. Neot; which was accordingly done, and the town retains his
name, thus feloniously obtained, up to the present time. The monastery
in Cornwall continued feebly to exist after this disaster through the
Saxon times; but having lost its palladium, it felt the roiner’s hand;
and almost immediately after the Norman Conquest, it was finally
suppressed; yet the memory of the local saint is still cherished by
the inhabitants of the parish and of the neighbourhood, endeared
perhaps by the tradition of his diminutive stature, reduced in their
imaginations to fifteen inches of height; and to these feelings we in
all probability owe the preservation of the painted glass, the great
decoration of this church, and one of the principal works of art to be
seen in Cornwall.
The church itself is of the best description, having a nave and two
aisles of equal length, with a square tower at the western end, and
with the rare addition of an embattled parapet towards the south, but
probably not older than the fifteenth century, with the exception of
some parts of the walls near the chancel, which seem to have been a
part of the former church. Soon after the new building had been
completed, individuals in some cases, and associations in others, as
the unmarried men of the parish, the unmarried women, and the wives,
contributed a window, either in honour of the local saint, or of their
particular patrons; and the peculiar attachment felt for the little
saint seems to have preserved these fragile materials at the two
important periods of our modern history, the time when the great
change of religion took place, and at that of the Civil Wars. It may
however be recollected that no violent change occurred here, the
monastic institution having been dissolved by the Earl of Morton, half
brother of the Conqueror; and no place could be more retired from the
observation of strangers, or from the passage of fanatical armies.
From the time of the Reformation, however, all care about maintaining
these decorations ceased, and the whole in a few years more would have
fallen into utter decay, if Mr. Grylls had not nobly stepped forwards,
not to support or repair, but to renew these gems; which he has most
effectually done, at an expense not short of two or three thousand
pounds. The church has now sixteen windows entirely filled with
painted glass of the most beautiful colours and designs; about half of
the whole consisting of the old glass most carefully preserved, and
the new added in a style completely harmonizing with the former: all
executed in London by Mr. J. P. Hedgeland, an eminent artist, to whose
work, with sixteen coloured plates, the reader is referred for a full
description of each window, and of the various subjects it contains:
“A Description of the Splendid Decorations recently made to St. Neot’s
Church, in Cornwall, by J. P. Hedgeland, price £2. 2_s._ To which are
added some Collections and Translations respecting St. Neot, &c. by
Davies Gilbert, M.A. F.R.S. F.A.S.” Printed for the Author in London,
1830, and sold by Messrs. Nichols.
This parish contains a natural curiosity which must not be omitted.
On an elevated part of the uncultivated lands which extend for many
miles to the north and east of St. Neot Church Town, there happens to
be a depression without any channel leading from it; the hollow is, of
course, filled with water, and resting on the granite soil of these
moors, the margin all round is covered by a white siliceous sand, one
of the constituent parts of this compound rock.
Most marvellous stories used to be current respecting this little
lake; no lead could sound the depth of the water, which rose and fell
with the tide, &c.:――but the depth nowhere exceeds two or three
fathoms, and any consent with the tide is obviously impossible. A tale
of a very different nature, connected with this lake, was as
universally repeated, and more than half believed, sixty years ago.
Tregagle is the name of a family not long extinct. Mr. Lysons says
Tregagle, of Trevorder, in St. Breock; arms, Argent, three bucks
passant Or. One of this family having, for some reason, become
unpopular, the traditions respecting a mythological personage have
been applied to him. The object of these tales of unknown antiquity
was, like Orestes, continually pursued by an avenging being, from whom
he could find refuge only from time to time, by flying to the cell or
chapel on Roach Rock; till at last his fate was changed into the
performance of a task, to exhaust the water from Dozmere, with an
implement less adapted, if possible, for its appropriate work, than
were the colanders given to the daughters of Danaus:
Hocc’, ut opinor, id est, ævo florente puellas,
Quod memorant, laticem pertusum congerere in vas,
Quod tamen expleri nulla ratione potestur.
Tregagle is provided simply with a limpet shell, having a hole bored
through it; and with this he is said to labour without intermission;
in dry seasons, flattering himself that he has made some progress
towards the end of his work; but when rain commences, and the “omnis
effusus labor” becomes apparent, he is believed to roar so loudly, in
utter despair, as to be heard from Dartmoor Forest to the Land’s End.
The name of this small lake, about a mile in circumference, has
excited much curiosity, remaining still unsatisfied. I approach
etymology with diffidence, proposing nothing but as a conjecture. On
the second syllable of Doz-mere indeed there has not been a doubt, it
is understood on all hands to mean a lake; now Doz is said in our
glossaries to agree with the English verb to come, but that joined
with water it means the tide; may not Doz-mere then represent the
currently received opinion of these waters ebbing and flowing, and
mean literally the tide lake? The English termination, utterly
destructive of its dignity or importance, is at all events unnecessary
to the sense.
St. Neot measures 12,789 statute acres.
Annual value of the Real Property, as £. _s._ _d._
returned to Parliament in 1815: 4635 0 0
Poor Rate in 1831 701 18 0
Population, { in 1801, | in 1811, | in 1821, | in 1831,
{ 906 | 1041 | 1255 | 1424
giving an increase of 57 per cent. in 30 years.
Present Vicar, the Rev. Richard Gerveys Grylls, instituted in 1793.