FOWEY--THE FOWEY RIVER--ST. VEEP--GOLANT--LERRIN--ST.
WINNOW--LOSTWITHIEL
The old town of Fowey, "Foy," as it is called, and was in old times
often spelled, has a stirring history, resembling that of Dartmouth,
even as its appearance and situation are reminiscent of that Devonshire
port. Leland tells us that "The glorie of Fowey rose by the warres in
King Edward I. and III. and Henry V.'s day, partly by feats of warre,
partly by pyracie, and so waxing rich, fell all to marchaundize." The
"Fowey Gallants," for such was the title by which the seamen of the
port were known, or by which perhaps they styled themselves, were not
good men to cross, and they had a high and haughty temper that brought
them into conflict even with men of Rye and Winchelsea. It seems that
ships were expected to salute on passing those Cinque Ports, but the
men of Fowey refused, and being called to account for it, beat the
Sussex men, and further added to their offences by adding the arms of
Rye and Winchelsea to their own; an indignity felt acutely in those
times, when one might perhaps pick a man's pocket with less offence
than to assume his armorial bearings. The men of Fowey were well known
and dreaded by merchant vessels in the Channel; for, no matter the
nationality, they practised piracy on all and sundry. They landed,
time and again, on the French coast when we were at peace with France,
and plundered, and burnt, and killed. The French stood this for some
time, but were on several occasions obliged to fit out expeditions in
revenge; and no one who reads of the ways of those shocking bounders
can feel in the least sorry when he reads how the foreigners landed one
night, in the reign of Henry the Sixth, and fired Fowey, and killed
several of the townsmen. The lesson could not, however, be sufficiently
enforced, for the tough Fowegians rallied and drove the French again
aboard.
At length, after centuries of turbulence, the privileges of Fowey were
taken away, about 1553, and given to Dartmouth, which itself was a
nest of pirates and buccaneers. But a good deal of fight seems to have
been left in Fowey, and its sailors in the time of Charles the Second
rendered good service against the Dutch.
The houses of Fowey press closely against one another, and line
the water very narrowly, and its "streets" are rather lanes. The
greatest glory of the town is the fine church of St. Finbar, whose
tall pinnacled tower, built of Pentewan granite, yellow with age, is
elaborately panelled. Behind it rise the battlemented and still more
elaborately panelled towers of Place (not Place "House" as it is
often redundantly styled), seat of the Treffry family. But most of the
old-time houses have in these later years been ruthlessly destroyed,
and the lanes of Fowey are becoming as commonplace as a London suburb.
Nay, even more, a suburb of London would be ashamed of the tasteless,
plasterful houses and vulgarian shop-fronts that have lately come into
existence here. It is a sorrowful fact that the West Country is the
last stronghold of plaster and bad taste and that things are now done
here, of which the home counties grew ashamed a generation ago. Lately
the old "Lugger" inn, almost the last picturesque bit of domestic
architecture in Fowey, has been rebuilt. Readers of "Q's" stories of
"Troy Town," by which, of course, Fowey is meant, will not, in short,
now find their picturesque expectations realised.
[Illustration: FOWEY: ST. FINBAR'S CHURCH, AND "PLACE."]
The last warlike experiences of Fowey, apart from the amusing antics
of the volunteers enrolled to withstand the expected French invasion
under Napoleon, celebrated by "Q," were obtained in the operations that
included the surrender of the Parliamentary army here in 1644. The
visit of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1846 is celebrated in a
misguided way, by a granite obelisk of doleful aspect on the quay. It
would add greatly to the gaiety of Fowey if it were disestablished.
St. Finbar, to whom the fine church is dedicated, was Bishop of Cork.
He is said to have been buried in an earlier church on this site.
The existing church, built 1336--1466, is one of the few in Cornwall
possessing a clerestory.
There are interesting monuments of the Rashleighs of Menabilly here;
the old family that came from Rashleigh in mid-Devon, but even then
bore a Cornish chough in their curious and mysterious arms. Their
heraldic shield includes, among other charges, the letter T, but the
meaning of it being there is unknown, even to the Rashleighs. The
family formerly owned Fowey. It was their Parliamentary pocket-borough,
and only their nominees could be elected. But this valuable privilege
passed from them in 1813, I know not how. It suggests, however, that
the Rashleigh punning motto, _Nec temere, nec timide_,--_i.e._ "Neither
rashly nor timidly," had in some way ceased to regulate their doings.
The Treffrys, too, are well represented in monuments and epitaphs, as
it is only right they should be, considering that their house, Place,
adjoining the church, has been their home for many centuries. They were
settled here long before the Rashleighs, but are now really extinct in
the male line. The great J. T. Treffry, builder of the harbour at Par
and constructor of the Cornwall Minerals Railway, and other works, was
an Austen before he assumed the name by which he is better known.
A former vicar of Fowey, the Rev. Dr. Treffry, who flourished in the
early part of the nineteenth century, before character had ceased
in people, and every man had his own noticeable peculiarities,
was outspoken to a degree. It is recorded that few dared let the
offertory-bag pass without a contribution, for if he noticed the
omission his voice would be heard in a stage whisper saying, "Can't you
spring a penny? I paid you an account last week."
No method of exploring the country on either side of the Fowey River
is to be compared, for ease and beauty, with that of taking boat on
the rising tide, and so being borne smoothly along those exquisite
six miles to Lostwithiel. Here, and for a long way up the estuary, is
deep water and safe anchorage for large vessels, as the pretty sight
of weatherworn ships anchored over against Bodinnick shows; their tall
masts and graceful spars contrasting with the wooded hills, and hinting
of strange outlandish climes to the nestling hamlets.
Bodinnick is, like Polruan, a ferry village, opposite Fowey. It looks
its best from the water. A mile up, on the same side, a creek opens
to St. Veep, a sequestered church dedicated to a saint called by that
name. Her real name was Wennapa, aunt of St. Winnow, and sister of
Gildas the historian.
The Cornish way of dealing with saints' names may seem to some
delightfully intimate, and to others a profane familiarity, almost
as bad as it would be to style St. John "Jack," but the West Country
saints are to the Evangelists and to the major saints what Irish and
Scotch peers are to peers of the United Kingdom; or perhaps, better
still, what Knights Bachelors are to Dukes. I do not mean to say that
they have not seats among the rest of the sanctified, but they are
decidedly of a lower grade; a good deal more human and less austere
than the great and shining ones. And when we find, as often we do find
among the Irish, Welsh, native Cornish, or Breton saints, that entire
families have attained to that state, we do right to look shyly upon
their title.
Further up the Fowey River, on our left side, we come to Golant and the
church of St. Samson, or Sampson, dedicated to a sixth-century Breton
saint, who early fled his country and was educated in Wales, and then
settled in Cornwall. Finally he returned to Brittany (when he thought
it quite safe to do so), and died Bishop of Dôl.
Passing Penquite, which means "Pen coed"--_i.e._ "head of the woods"--a
creek opens on the right, to Lerrin, a picturesque hamlet on the
hillside, where the creek comes to an end, and the futile comings and
goings of the sea die away in ooze. A prehistoric earthwork, running
inland between Lerrin and Looe, is locally attributed to the Devil, in
the rhyme:
"One day the Devil, having nothing to do,
Built a great hedge from Lerrin to Looe."
"Hedge," to any one from the Home Counties, indicates a boundary formed
by growing bushes. In Cornwall it is often either a rough stone or
earthen bank.
Above Lerrin Creek is St. Winnow, a fine old church standing by the
waterside. St. Winnoe is an obscure saint. He was son of Gildas, the
pessimist historian of the woes of Britain at the coming of the Saxons.
There is some good old stained glass in St. Winnow church, and an
inscribed font (inscription not decipherable).
[Illustration: ST. WINNOW.]
A curious anagram-epitaph on one William Sawle, who died in 1651,
may be seen here. It has been restored of late years by one of his
collateral descendants:
"William Sawle, Annagr. I was ill; am wel.
When I was sick, most men did deeme me ILL.
If I had liv'd I should have beene soe still.
Prais'd be the Lord, that in the Heavn's doth dwell,
Who hath receiv'd my Sovle, now I AM WEL."
This perhaps plumbs the depths of tortured conceits, with its back
and forth play upon "William Sawle," "I am well," and the resemblance
of "Soul" to "Sawle": a closer resemblance in the speech of the West
Country than it would appear in print to be. Any day the stranger in
Devon and Cornwall may, for instance, hear the common salutation,
"Well, how be 'ee t'-daa, my dear sawle?"
"Aw, pretty tidily, thank 'ee."
There is no village of St. Winnow, only a farmhouse and a vicarage, at
the foot of a hill, bordered by a noble beech avenue.
About a mile above St. Winnow, the narrowing stream comes to
Lostwithiel quay, where the navigable Fowey River ends.
[Illustration: LOSTWITHIEL CHURCH.]
"Lostwithiel!" I like that name. It is musical. To repeat it two
or three times to one's self is an ineffable satisfaction. One is
immediately seized, on hearing it, with a desire to proceed to the town
of Lostwithiel. Romance, surely, lives there. Foolish country folk
in the neighbourhood, noting that great heights rise all around the
little town, say the meaning of its name is "Lost-within-the-hill."
I blush for them, for it means nothing of the sort; but who wants
to attach a meaning to that melody? Not I, at any rate, and I care
little whether it be properly "Les Gwithiel," the Palace in the Wood,
or the "Supreme Court." The old palace indicated is the ancient Duchy
House, a seat of the early Dukes of Cornwall, who also had their
Stannary courts, that is to say, their tin-mining tribunals, here. The
buildings, much modernised, in part remain; and up in the valley of the
Fowey, one mile further inland, are the remains of their stronghold,
Restormel, properly "Les-tormel," Castle.
There is not much of Lostwithiel. Past the railway station, and over
the nine-arched, partly thirteenth-century bridge across the river
Fowey, and you are in a town of about two thousand inhabitants, which
looks as though it accommodated only half that number. Yet, small
though it be, it is divided into two parts, Lostwithiel proper, and
Bridgend, and has a Mayor and Corporation. The central feature and
great glory of Lostwithiel is the lovely octangular stone spire
and lantern of its parish church of St. Bartholomew, a work of the
Decorated, fourteenth-century period of architecture, before which most
architects very properly abase themselves in humble admiration, while
many hasten to adopt its beautiful lines for their own church designs.
Lostwithiel spire has, in especial, been the model for the spires of
many latter-day Wesleyan and Congregational chapels.
[Illustration: FONT, LOSTWITHIEL.]
The description of architecture without the aid of illustration is
a vain and futile thing, and what the likeness of this work is let
the drawing herewith attempt to show. The tower itself is an earlier
building, of the thirteenth century, but tower and spire taken together
are of no great height--about 100 feet. The effective tracery of the
eight windows surmounted by gables is all of one pattern, except a
window on the north side, whose feature is a wheel. The font is one
of the most remarkable in Cornwall. It seems to be of the fourteenth
century. Its five legs are of different shape. The strangest feature
of its eight sculptured sides, which include a most clumsy and almost
shapeless representation of the Crucifixion, is a curious attempt at a
hunting scene, rendered in very bold relief. A huntsman on horseback is
shown, holding a disproportionately large hawk on one upraised hand,
and a queer-looking dog bounds on in front, in a ludicrous attitude.
This font is historically interesting, as figuring in the disgraceful
doings of the Parliamentary troops, who in 1644 occupied Lostwithiel
and used the church as a stable; baptizing a horse at it, and calling
it "Charles," as Symonds, the diarist trooper, tells us, "in contempt
of His sacred Majesty."
Probably one of the longest leases on record is alluded to, on a stone
in the wall of a shed at the corner of North Street and Taprell's Lane,
in the inscription: "Walter Kendall of Lostwithiel was founder of
this house in 1638. Hath a lease for three thousand years, which hath
beginning the 29th of September, Anno 1632."