Decani Episcopi, in Comitatu Cornubiæ et Diœcesi Exoniensi.
YOU GEORGE DAVIES shall swear, That you will well and truly
execute the Office of DEAN RURAL, within your Deanery, for
the Year ensuing. You shall diligently, in the year, visit
all Churches and Chapels within your Deanery; and also all
Parsonage and Vicarage Houses. You shall make true
Presentments of such Defaults, as you shall find therein; as
also the defect of Books, Ornaments, Utensils, and other
Furniture belonging to each Church. You shall observe the
Manners and Conversation of your Brethren the Clergy; whom
(if obnoxious) You shall admonish; and, if thereupon they
shall not reform, You shall detect, and present them to The
Ordinary; that they may be proceeded against according to
Law. You shall, either by yourself or deputy, faithfully
execute, or cause to be executed, all such processes and
mandates, as shall be sent you from your Ordinary, and make
true Returns of the same.
So help you God.
Sacramentum superscriptum præstabat Clericus prædictus
GEORGIUS DAVIES de Parochia Sancti Perrani
de Uthno in Diaconatu Penwith Rector.
Tertio die mensis Decembris, Anno 1730.
Coram me Ricardo W――[The name is defaced.]
Near the church used to flow a well, which, in addition to supplying
ample quantities of excellent water, gave responses to the most
interesting questions respecting life, deaths, marriages, &c. under
the superintendence of a Pythian hierophant (since peeth, pythe, is
Cornish for a well); but this oracle has ceased within the last twenty
years, after a manner fairly appropriate to the county; the working of
a mine having taken away all the water.
There are several good farm houses in the parish, formerly the
residences of gentlemen; but, excepting the church town, only one
place deserving the name of a village, which is Goldsithney, commonly
pronounced Gulzinney, lying on the road from Redruth to Marazion. In
this village was formerly a chapel dedicated to St. James, as Doctor
Borlase has ascertained from documents in the cathedral at Exeter. No
memory remains of this chapel having ever been used for divine
service; but within the editor’s recollection a small image might be
seen over the door, said by the inhabitants to be St. Perran; but if
the records consulted by Doctor Borlase are correct, more probably of
St. James.
Mr. Lysons mentions the fair which is annually holden here on the
fifth of August, St. James’s day, by the old style; and he also takes
notice of a tale, which the editor has heard a thousand times, of the
fair having been originally kept in the church town of Sithney, near
Helston, by virtue of a glove, which was annually displayed there,
till the men of Perran, by force or cunning, or by proposing to
exchange new gloves for old ones, bore off the talisman, and have by
its authority held the fair at Goldsithney ever since, paying one
shilling every year as a poor compensation to the party bereaved.
It is needless to add that this tale, as it is related, cannot be
true; but the names Sithney and Goldsithney, with the payment to the
churchwardens of the parish, seem to indicate some relation between
the parish and this village. The displaying of a glove at fairs is an
ancient and widely extended custom. Mr. Lysons says it is continued at
Chester. The editor has seen a large ornamented glove displayed on a
lofty pole over the Guild Hall at Exeter, during the fairs. Was the
glove used to receive the tolls, as shillings are still collected in
some courts of justice; or had it any reference to hand payments on
delivery, as is usual in fairs; or has it a more noble origin in
chivalry?
A cove is pointed out in Perran, where the ancestor of the Trevelyans
is said to have been borne on shore by the strength of his horse, from
the destruction of the Lionesse country, west of the Land’s End. The
Trevelyan family are too old, too honourable, and now too much
distinguished by science, for them to covet any addition of honour
through the medium of fabulous history.
It is recorded in the Saxon Chronicle, that in the year 1099, on St.
Martin’s day, there was so very high a tide, and the damage so great
in consequence, that men remembered not the like to have ever happened
before, and the same day was the first of the new moon.
Stow, who wrote his History of England about the year 1580, notices
the great tide of 1099, when he says, The sea brake in over the banks
of the Thames and other ryvers, drowning many towns, and much people,
with innumerable numbers of oxen and sheepe; at which time the lands
in Kent, that sometime belonged to Duke Godwyne, Earle of Kent, were
covered with sandes and drowned, which are to this day called Godwyne
Sandes. On the slender foundation of these alluvial catastrophies,
Florence of Worcester either invented, or with more than monkish
credulity, received the tale of a whole district being ingulphed; not
at some remote geological period, but in what may be considered as the
recent times of authentic history, after the existence of systematic
registers and records; a district, covered as he states, by a city,
and by a hundred and forty churches, with their accompanying villages,
farms, &c. an event that must have shaken the whole of Europe: and, to
increase the wonder, a gentleman accidentally on horseback, is carried
by this animal to the neighbouring shore of Whitsend Bay, or twenty
miles further off, to Perran, through a sea which had swallowed an
entire country, and from which the largest of modern vessels could not
by possibility have escaped. This idle tale, related by one writer
after another, has almost reached our own times. The editor remembers
a female relation of a former vicar of St. Erth, who, instructed by a
dream, prepared decoctions of various herbs, and repairing to the
Land’s End, poured them into the sea, with certain incantations,
expecting to see the Lionesse country rise immediately out of the
water, having all its inhabitants alive, notwithstanding their long
submersion. But
Perchance some form was unobserved,
Perchance in prayer or faith she swerved;
――no country appeared, and, although the love of marvellous events and
of tales exciting the passions, seems not to have diminished in recent
times, yet the editor is unaware of any subsequent attempt having been
made to rescue those unfortunate people from their protracted state of
suspended animation.
Perran Uthnow has to boast of but one modern addition to its
residences. About the year 1775, the late Mr. John Shakspeare of
Pendarves, built a house similar to the one previously erected by Mr.
Stephens at Tregorne, and gave it the name of the family with which he
was connected by his marriage.
About half a mile beyond this house, called Acton Castle, Cudden Point
projects into the sea, entirely covered with rock, and affording, in
many respects, the most pleasing view of any spot in the whole Bay.
From St. Michael’s Mount itself, the feature transcendent above all
others is lost; but from Cudden all the western objects are seen,
without including the long flat land of the Lizard.
Children from all the neighbourhood are in the habit of going to
Cudden Point at the low water of spring tides, with the hope of
finding a silver table, although they know not why. It appears,
however, that a Spanish vessel, having much bullion on board, was
wrecked there in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
The addition of Uthno made to this saint’s name, designates a manor
within the parish; there is also a manor called Lan Uthno, in St.
Erth, distinguished in former times as the parish of Lan Uthno; but
the editor has never been able to form any conjecture respecting the
meaning or the etymology of this word.
The parish feast is celebrated on the nearest Sunday to the fifth of
March, St. Perran’s Day.
This parish measures 924 statute acres.
Annual value of the Real Property, as £. _s._ _d._
returned to Parliament in 1815: 5530 0 0
Poor Rate in 1831 200 0 0
Population, { in 1801, | in 1811, | in 1821, | in 1831,
{ 506 | 626 | 786 | 1033
giving an increase of somewhat more than 100 per cent. in 30 years.
This great increase of Population is owing to Perran having become a
mining parish, and to the cultivation of an extensive piece of waste
ground by individuals, constructing houses on portions of land not
exceeding one or two acres, granted on leases for their lives. A spot
on this formerly open ground, was called Chapel an Crouse, the chapel
and cross; but no record nor trace remains of any such an
establishment. Near the same place a bowling green existed about fifty
years ago, which is said to have been frequented fifty years prior to
that period, by all the gentlemen of the neighbourhood.
Present Rector, the Rev. W. M. Johnson, presented in 1815 by Sir J.
Trevelyan.