PRUSSIA COVE AND ITS SMUGGLERS--PERRANUTHNOE--ST. HILARY--MARAZION--ST.
MICHAEL'S MOUNT--LUDGVAN--GULVAL
I had for long years wished to come to Prussia Cove, but for one reason
and another had always fallen short of it. If you are staying, for
example, at Penzance, Prussia Cove is a little beyond your ken; and if
Lizard Town or Mullion is your headquarters, then again the place is
remote. Therein you perceive at once a survival of its ancient solitary
and out-of-the-way situation, which made the place an ideal smugglers'
resort. For Prussia Cove is famous above all other places in Cornwall
in smuggling annals. Not, mark you, the mere legendary smuggling
tales, but sheer matter-of-fact details about the shy industry:
details that are so hard to come by; facts for which the historian of
smuggling cries aloud, and rarely gets. There are two coves: Prussia
Cove, originally named Porth Leah, and Bessie's Cove, separated from
one another only by a projecting reef. Bessie, who gave her name to
the westerly of the two inlets, was one Bessie Burrow, who kept an
inn called the "Kidleywink," on the cliff-top. "Kidleywink" was not
precisely the sign of the house: it appears to have been an old slang
Cornish term for a public-house.
The "King of Prussia" who imposed that title upon the erstwhile Porth
Leah was not in the first instance Frederick the Great, but John
Carter, the eldest of a family of that name who were settled here
in the eighteenth century. Among the eight Carter brothers and two
sisters, children of one Francis Carter, miner and small farmer, who
died in 1784, we hear in detail only of the three brothers, John,
Henry, and Charles. Ostensibly all small farmers and fisherfolk, they
were really smugglers on an extensive scale; "free-traders" in a bold
and open way, greatly respected round about by all the squires and
considerable people who knew them. They had, each one of them, the
reputation of being honest men who would touch nothing that was not
their own, and sold excellent cognac, hollands, and other articles
at fair prices. Very well thought-of men, I assure you, with whom
some "great men," darkly hinted at, did not disdain to enter into
partnership.
John Carter took his nickname of "King of Prussia" from the boyish
games of "King of the Castle" in which he and his brothers used to
fleet their youth away, and the name stuck to him in after life,
as often is the way with great and celebrated personages. Even so,
Dickens, the "Boses" (for Moses) of his and his brothers' games,
became "Boz"; and Louisa de la Ramée, who as a baby lisped her name,
"Ouida," became in after years famous in that signature. So the "King
of Prussia," _i.e._ John Carter, is in good company. In 1770 he built
a substantial stone house on the cliffs, and appears to have used it
in part as a residence, partly as a store for smuggled goods, and in
some degree as an inn (I fear quite unlicensed) known as the "King
of Prussia." There he lived until 1806, and from a small battery he
had constructed he had the impudence to fire on one occasion upon the
_Fairy_ revenue sloop, which had chased a smuggling craft into the cove
and had sent in a boat-party. The boat retreated, and notice being
given to the collector of customs at Penzance, a military force was
despatched to reduce his fort, by taking it in the rear. The smugglers
retreated to the "Kidleywink" and the soldiers then left for Penzance,
perhaps having demolished Carter's emplacements.
Elsewhere than in Cornwall all these things would have produced
bloodshed; but nothing more seems to have been said about the affair,
which is delightfully, entirely, and characteristically Cornish; own
cousin to Irish escapades, just as the Cornish might, if they cared to
do so, even call cousins with the Irish themselves.
Of Charles Carter we hear little, but of Henry--"Captain Harry"--a
good deal. He had many adventures; was "wanted" by the excise and fled
to America; returned and recommenced adventurous smuggling voyages to
Roscoff in Brittany; was made prisoner of war in France, and then
settled as agent for his brothers in Roscoff. He had all his life
been troubled by the qualms of religious fear, and had in 1789 become
converted. In after years he retired and lived in a small way as a
farmer in the neighbouring hamlet of Rinsey, where he died in 1829.
He wrote his Autobiography, a human document of singular interest,
and preached fervently while still actively a smuggler, doubling the
parts of saint and sinner in the most extraordinary way; entirely
without suspicion of false dealing. He feared God and failed to honour
the King, in the important respect of chousing him out of his inland
revenue as far as it was possible for him to do. He lived respected
and died lamented. I have had occasion to refer to him at length
elsewhere[B] and I have no doubt that, according to his lights, he was
an entirely honest man.
Prussia Cove at the present time of writing is a place wholly
uninteresting. The "King of Prussia's" house was pulled down in 1906,
and a new road is on the site of it. Caverns, said, of course, to have
been the Carters' storehouses, yawn darkly in the low cliffs, above
high-water mark. A barbed-wire squalor abounds along the winding road,
and through the garden of an uninviting residence you come down to
Bessie's Cove and the dark rocks going sheer into the water; always
with "Trespassers will be Prosecuted" staring you in the face from
makeshift posts and notice-boards.
Going up out of the region of these singular developments, I met a man
raking over some stones recently placed in the road: a good-looking
man, with a beard and an indefinable air of being a retired officer
of the Royal Navy. He asked what I wanted there, a question I thought
impudent; but giving the inoffensive answer that I had been seeking
Prussia Cove, the scene of Carter, the smuggler's activities, and could
not find Carter's house, he replied that he thought people coming to
see the place for that reason was sheer morbidness.
"How so?" I asked.
"Oh!" said he, "all that kind of thing is past and done away with; and
besides, I've had the house pulled down; and this is a private road."
"Oh!" I rejoined, "the deuce it is, and you have! Who does it belong
to, then?"
"To me; but don't you trouble about that. Go just where you like."
I told him, as nicely as possible, that this was precisely what
I intended to do; and then this apparently contradictory but not
unamiable person began to dilate upon the want of respect the Cornish
had for antiquity. The text for this was the cantankerous nature of two
old maiden ladies, who jointly owned an old wayside smithy on the high
road between Ashtown and Germoe. When one had agreed to sell it to my
informant, if he could obtain her sister's consent, he went to the
other sister with the proposition.
"What does my sister say?" she asked.
"She agrees."
"Then I won't!"
And as neither would agree upon anything concerning it, the building
was unsold and went tenantless. Thenceforward, it fell into disrepair,
and eventually fell down altogether.
Laughing at this ridiculous, but true, story, I went my way. I
discovered afterwards that the narrator of it was the locally famous
Mr. Behrens, who has purchased the land in and about Prussia Cove and
has figured in some bitterly fought right-of-access cases here.
The headland beyond Prussia Cove, forming the eastern horn of Mount's
Bay, is Cuddan Point. The meaning of "Cuddan" is said to be dark, or
gloomy, but there is nothing exceptionally so in this not very striking
point, and the autumn corn-fields render the approach to it even
cheerful. But there is nothing gained by toiling to its extremity. The
embattled granite house looking over Mount's Bay from hence is known as
Acton Castle. From it the coastline can be plainly seen for miles.
Whichever way you go, by cliffs or by the high road, to Perranuthnoe,
the way is extremely dull, and Perranuthnoe--now called locally merely
"Perran"--is a dull little village. According to a wild legend, it was
to the shore by Perranuthnoe that an ancestor of the Trevelyans came on
horseback from the submerged land of Lyonesse between Land's End and
Scilly. The roaring waters that had engulfed that fabled land and its
140 churches could not keep pace with his marvellous steed.
The scenery has for several miles past been distinctly inferior in
interest and beauty to that of Mount's Bay and westward; but as it
is the most truistic of truisms that every eye forms its own beauty,
there may conceivably be those who can find it otherwise. The proof,
or disproof, of the assertion lies with the explorer; he is a poor
creature that takes his opinions ready-made.
Regaining the dull high road from Perranuthnoe, the very considerable
village of Marazion is met, fringing the highway. There is very much
more of Marazion than those who look at it from below would suppose,
but as the view _from_ Marazion is infinitely better than any view _of_
it, there need be no curiosity cherished by Penzance visitors looking
eastward, as to what is there, immediately over the shoulder of the
hill, beyond the Mount. Yet, if there can be no interest in Marazion,
there is plenty of the antiquarian kind in its parish church of St.
Hilary, over a mile distant, away back in a north-easterly direction,
in a lonely situation off the road. It was in 1853 that the body of the
church was burnt down, with the exception of the Early English tower,
with stone spire, remarkable in Cornwall, where spires are rare. In the
rebuilt church, removed from the churchyard, now stands the famous
"Constantine stone," inscribed
IMP . CAES . FLAV . VAL . CONSTANTINO . PIO .
CAES . NOB . DIVI . CONSTANTI . PII . AVG . FILIO.
Rendered in full, this, the longest Romano-British inscription in
Cornwall, becomes a dedication to the Emperor Constantine the Great.
The date has been fixed at A.D. 307. The stone was perhaps a milestone,
but there is very much more about the ruling monarch than modern
travellers would welcome, and if there was ever a mileage inscription
as well, it has wholly disappeared. It will probably be conceded by
all that in the matter of milestones, at any rate, we are superior to
the Romans. It is a somewhat curious coincidence that a contemporary
milestone has in recent years been discovered at Tintagel, bearing an
inscription to Licinius, co-ruler with Constantine.
[Illustration: THE "NOTI-NOTI STONE," ST. HILARY.]
A more mysterious stone exists at St. Hilary. This is the well-known
but imperfectly understood "Noti-Noti stone" a seven-foot long block
of granite, inscribed with those two words and six not very distinct
symbols supposed to represent masonic tools. Some antiquaries are
disposed to regard it as the tombstone of an unknown Notus, the son of
Notus; but the meaning is quite uncertain.
But to return to Marazion, where another insoluble problem awaits
us and wordy warfare continually rages around the derivation of the
place-name. It was once alternatively, in the local speech, "Market
Jew," and thus arose the popular legend that the Jews anciently
established here a market for tin. But it seems reasonable to suppose
that "Market Jew" was only a corruption, by people who had almost
wholly forgotten the now extinct Cornish language, of the Cornish
words _marghasiou_, signifying "markets." Those "Jews" are supposed
to have really been Phœnician traders. A further theory, that the
name derived from _Margha-ziawn_, meaning "market-strand," deserves
consideration. But whatever may be the truth, there is no doubt that
here was situated a tin-smeltery in very remote times, for in 1849 the
ruins of such a building were discovered. The Marazion people styled
it, of course, the "Jews' House," and some of the "Jews' House tin"
found there is to be seen in the museum at Penzance. A great deal of
ingenuity, unsupported by any real evidence, has been employed in
attempts to solve the meaning of the place-name, and it has been put
forward that the spot was originally inhabited by a colony of Jews, who
handed down the bitterness of their exile by styling it "Mara-Zion,"
_i.e._ "Bitter Zion." Still another theory has been advanced, namely
that St. Michael's Mount was the original Marazion, from the Hebrew,
"marath-aiyin," "the landmark"; the Mount being the most prominent
object for many miles out to sea. So it will be perceived that there is
no lack of choice.
Coming down the long street of Marazion to the shores of Mount's Bay,
the most remarkable scene in Cornwall opens out before you. There
stretch the flat curving shores of the bay, fringed with sands, but
for the most part solitary, with the last miles of the Great Western
Railway running along the levels, just above high-water mark; and
Penzance town showing white in the distance, three miles away. There
are more beautiful bays in Cornwall, and better sands, and repose
rather than ruggedness is the note of the scene; but the great
distinguishing feature of Mount's Bay--the feature that gives the
bay its name--is St. Michael's Mount, rising majestically in the sea
off Marazion, half a mile distant from the mainland, with its castle
and priory, now the residence of Lord St. Levan, cresting the rocky
pyramid with a coronet of towers and pinnacles. St. Michael's Mount
is an inspiring sight, whether you are in expectation of seeing it or
not. But nothing is unexpected in the way of scenery nowadays. You know
what lies round every bend of the road. If we could only recapture the
unexpected, how fine that would be!
But, whether you first see St. Michael's Mount at high tide, when it is
an island, or at the ebb, when it is joined to the land by half a mile
of slimy, seaweedy causeway, it is grand.
At the same time, I like best to think of St. Michael's Mount as I
first saw it, on first coming into Cornwall. I had come by train from
Paddington, and the day had long given place to night. The weary train
pulled up for the ticket-taking at Marazion Road, and in the quiet
interval the wind boomed about the station buildings, and the wash of
the waves could be plainly heard on the sands. Eagerly one looked out
upon the night for a possible glimpse of the famous Mount, and there
indeed, guided by a twinkling light so high that it looked like a star,
the eye saw vaguely a monstrous pyramidal bulk, a something darker than
the surrounding darkness. "It is the Mount," I said, and a thrill of
romantic delight possessed me.
Well, you know, St. Michael's Mount is 231 feet in height. It is no
mean altitude, and the rise is so sharp up its sides that one need not
be of the Falstaff kind, fat and scant of breath, to find the climbing
it something tiring on a hot day. But St. Michael's Mount the next
morning was a less impressive object than that darkling glimpse gave
warranty for. It was inevitable. Just as the impression overnight had
been finer than expected, so the reality suffered. But ordinarily St.
Michael's Mount does not disappoint; always with this proviso, that
you do not see its bigger brother, Mont St. Michel, on the coast of
Normandy, first.
An ingenious eighteenth-century writer remarked of St. Michael's
Mount that "it seemed emblematic of a well-ordered State, its base
being devoted to Trade and Commerce, its sides to the service of the
country, and its summit to the glory of God." By "trade and commerce"
he indicated the little village and harbour at the foot of the Mount,
and the reference to the glory of God was of course an allusion to the
remains of the Abbey, but what he could have meant by "the service of
the country" I cannot tell, unless by any chance it was an allusion to
the ineffectual popgun battery mounted on the crags.
The history of St. Michael's Mount begins like most history, in
uncertainties. It is supposed--and much criticism has not destroyed
the supposition--that it is the place called _Iktis_, referred to by
Posidonius, who travelled in Britain during the first century before
the Christian era. He spoke of the "little islands called Cassiterides,
lying off the coast of Iberia," from which much tin was obtained,
and then mentioned the isle of Iktis, in Britain. It is quite clear,
therefore, that the supposition that by the Cassiterides he meant the
Scilly Islands, or any islands in Britain, must be baseless. They were
what we know as the Balearic Islands, off the coast of Spain, the
_Iberia_ of the ancients. But in other writers we find the Cassiterides
to indicate tin islands in general.
Diodorus Siculus, who was contemporary with Julius Cæsar, and wrote
a _Universal History_, a considerable undertaking for one man even
then, appears to have copied a good many of the statements made by
Posidonius, in addition to having described places seen in his own
travels. He is not always regarded as a reliable authority, but there
seems no reason to doubt the essential truth of his statements.
Referring to "Belerion," otherwise Cornwall, he says: "The inhabitants
of that extremity of Britain both excel in hospitality and also, by
reason of their intercourse with foreign merchants, are civilised
in their mode of life. These people prepare the tin, working very
skilfully the earth which produces it. The ground is rocky, but has
in it earthy veins, the produce of which is wrought down and melted
and purified. Then, when they have cast it in the form of dice-shaped
cubes, they carry it into a certain island adjoining Britain, and
called Iktis. For, during the recess of the tide, the intervening
space is left dry, and they carry over abundance of tin to this place
in their carts. And there is something peculiar in the islands of
these parts lying between Europe and Britain, for at the full tide
the intervening passage being overflowed, they appear islands, but
when the sea retires, a large space is left dry, and they are seen as
peninsulas. From them the merchants purchase the tin of the natives and
transport it into Gaul, and finally, travelling through Gaul on foot,
in about thirty days they bring their burdens on horses to the mouth
of the river Rhone."
That Diodorus should refer to "islands," rather than the one island
that becomes a peninsula at low water, has been held as a proof that
he knew nothing at first hand about this coast, but it may well be
that in the changes known to have taken place here, other islands
have disappeared. Quite apart from the fantastic legends of the lost
land of Lyonesse between Scilly and the Land's End, where the lone
waters, empty except for a few intervening reefs, now roll, it is
quite certain that at some early period what is now Mount's Bay was a
forest. Hunt, in his "Popular Romances of the West of England," tells
us--not romancing: "I have passed in a boat from St. Michael's Mount to
Penzance on a summer day, when the waters were very clear and the tide
low, and seen the black masses of trees in the white sands, extending
far out into the bay. On one occasion, while I was at school at
Penzance, after a violent equinoctial gale, large trunks of trees were
thrown up on the shore, just beyond Chyandour, and then with the other
boys I went at the lowest of the tide, far out over the sands, and saw
scores of trees embedded in the sands. We gathered nuts--they were
beech-nuts--and leaves in abundance." I, too, have found, cast upon the
shore, traces of this submarine forest.
Now it is a curious thing, in this connection, that, among the various
names by which St. Michael's Mount has been known, including the
earliest of all, "Din-Sûl," or the "Fortress of the Sun," is that of
_Carregloose-in-coes_, which, spelled in slightly different ways,
means the Hoar Rock (that is to say the grey rock) in the Wood. "Coes"
appears to have been a form of the early British "coed," for woodland.
The town of Cowes, for example, in the Isle of Wight, takes its name
from the woodlands that once occupied its site. St. Michael's Mount
was once, therefore, a part of the mainland, and if we observe, still
further, that the Chapel Rock on the approach to it, and the great
pyramidal form of the Mount itself are hard greenstone and granite,
resting upon slate and clay, we shall see exactly why they remain
whence all other land has disappeared.
That foreigners, in times long before the Romans came to Britain, were
accustomed to resort to this neighbourhood for tin has already been
shown, and that they were Phœnicians is certain. Many people dismiss
the Phœnicians as a people almost as mythical as the phœnix itself,
but they were the earliest maritime traders. They were the people who
founded Carthage, and they penetrated to the ends of the known world.
Also they were of a strongly marked Semitic, or Jewish type; and thus
ancient Cornish traditions about "the Jews" are well based on facts.
As "St. Michael's" Mount the island became early known. At some
uncertain time the Archangel is said to have appeared here to some
hermits, and the place was therefore already holy when St. Keyne came
from Ireland in A.D. 490 and visited it. Edward the Confessor, in the
eleventh century, granted St. Michael's Mount to the Benedictine Abbey
of Mont St. Michel in Normandy, and until the reign of Henry the Fifth
it remained the property of that Abbey, with a priory established on
its summit. It was then transferred to the Abbey of Sion, in Middlesex.
The Abbey of Mont St. Michel and the Priory of St. Michael's Mount
were fortresses, as well as religious establishments. The monks had
fortified themselves for their own protection, and the strongholds
seemed so useful to men of strife that we early find St. Michael's
Mount seized and held by them when trouble was brewing. Thus, when
Richard Lion-heart was a prisoner abroad, one Henry de Pomeroy got
possession of the Mount on behalf of John. But when Richard, contrary
from all reasonable expectation, returned, the position became
untenable, the garrison yielded, and Pomeroy opened one of his veins
and bled himself to death; a more excellent way than reserving himself
for the picturesque and long-drawn agonies that in those times were the
penalty of high treason.
A more desperate affair was that of 1471, when the Earl of Oxford,
and a party of fugitives from the Yorkist crowning mercy at Barnet,
fled from the vengeance of Edward the Fourth and took possession of
the Mount. They came as pilgrims. You may quite easily picture them
coming to the shore, pausing a moment at the Chapel Rock, then with
a chapel on it; and thence walking the causeway to the Mount, kissing
the relics at the foot of it, praying at the two wayside crosses up its
steep sides and then admitted to the Priory itself, where, with drawn
swords, produced from beneath their travel-stained pilgrims' garb,
they soon made themselves masters of the place. Sir John Arundell,
sheriff of Cornwall, was sent to dislodge them, and was after several
attacks slain on the sands. According to the received account, Edward
the Fourth pardoned the Earl of Oxford, on account of his so gallantly
defending himself here; but we may well suppose that he "pardoned" him
because he could not by other means dislodge this valorous rebel.
The Priory became a sanctuary for Lady Catherine Gordon, wife of
Perkin Warbeck, in the time of Henry the Seventh, but sanctuaries were
generally violated, and this was no exception. She was dragged out and
sent to London.
During the west-country rebellion against the reformed religion in
1549, the Priory having by that time been dissolved and the property
granted to the Arundells of Lanherne, Humphrey Arundell held it for
the rebels. It was taken and retaken in the fights that followed,
and Arundell at last was captured and put to death. The last warlike
operations at St. Michael's Mount were the defence by the Royalist,
Sir Francis Basset, and the capture by Colonel Hammond, on behalf of
the Parliament. Since 1660 it has been the property of the St. Aubyn
family.
[Illustration:
[_From the painting by Clarkson Stanfield._
ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT.]
The village at the foot of the Mount, with its little harbour, occupies
a humble feudal situation beneath the castle of my Lord St. Levan.
If you would seek revived mediævalism in a democratic age, then St.
Michael's Mount is the place to find it, for Lord St. Levan maintains
a body of gorgeously liveried boatmen to row him across, to and from
his island hold; and nowadays, instead of being free to ramble about
the craggy sides of the Mount, the stranger must resign himself to
a guide. Whether wanton mischief on the part of holiday-makers, or
the scattering of sandwich-papers, has aught to do with this changed
condition of affairs, or whether it is merely due to the increased
consideration the St. Aubyns cherish for themselves since the barony of
St. Levan was conferred upon the family in 1887, I will not pretend to
say.
The interior of the castellated residence is of somewhat varied
interest. The chapel, although originally of Perpendicular
architecture, was so altered in the "restoration" of 1826 that it is
now merely a melancholy example of what was in those days considered
to be Gothic. It is chill and bare and quite without any feature of
note, with the exception of one thing that, being just a hole in the
floor, can scarce be described as a "feature." This is an _oubliette_,
discovered during the works of 1826.
Romantic novelists have been largely responsible for a general
indifference to the very real mysteries and tragedies of ancient
buildings, and the public, unable to distinguish between fact and
fiction, have agreed to look upon everything out of the common as
fiction. Yet here, the workmen of some eighty years ago, removing the
old woodwork, discovered a walled-up door in the south wall, and,
opening it, a narrow flight of stone steps was revealed, leading down
into a grim stone cell, six feet square, without any window or other
opening than the door by which they had entered. They were horrified by
stumbling in the darkness of that dreadful place upon what proved to
be the skeleton of a man of extraordinary height. Who that unfortunate
wretch was, flung into this living tomb, to be conveniently "forgotten"
and to die of starvation, has never been discovered. The appalling
cynicism that constructed this particular example of an _oubliette_
beneath the chapel floor is worthy of remark. While the doomed man
lay there, above him the pious castellan and his fellow-villains were
praising God.
The Chevy Chase Hall, a room formerly the refectory of the Priory,
but remodelled in the seventeenth century, is a small apartment with
timber roof. The name now given it refers to a curious plaster frieze
representing hunting scenes. The Tower is the oldest portion of the
buildings, rising to a total height of 250 feet from the sea. A
projecting granite framework, looking out from the south-west angle of
the battlements, is known popularly as "St. Michael's Chair." It is
really the frame of an ancient lantern, beacon, or cresset, lighted
in former times to guide the fishing-boats safely into harbour; but
a legend has obtained currency that any sweetheart, or husband, or
wife, first taking a seat in it will be "master for life." It is not
a difficult matter to edge into the "chair," but it requires rather
more agility, and a cool head, to return. In spite of this, very many
women do perform the act; which shows at once their superstition and
the real keenness they have to obtain the upper hand. But at the same
time, it may not inaptly be supposed that, to any contemplative and
philosophical man, the spectacle of his chosen one attempting the
hazardous feat will be something in the nature of a danger-signal. If
the loved one be now ready to risk a broken neck for this supposed
advantage, what, he might suppose, will be his chance of happiness?
[Illustration: ST. MICHAEL'S CHAIR.]
The church-tower peeping over the hill-top on the right hand, as you
proceed along the dull flat road to Penzance is that of Ludgvan, and
the marshes are those of Ludgvan Leaze. Ludgvan church, although an
extremely blue-mouldy edifice, is not without interest and has a
particularly good tower. Moreover, there are tablets in it to the
memory of the Davy family, of whom the celebrated Sir Humphry, born
at Penzance in 1778, is the most notable. Dr. Borlase, who may be
described as the father of Cornish archæology, was rector here for
fifty-two years, and died in 1772. A well in Ludgvan has, by ancient
tradition, the curious property of insuring whosoever drinks of its
water from being hanged. It may be testimony to the law-abiding
character of the Ludgvan people that they do not set much store by
the virtues of their well; but at the same time they are somewhat sly
humorists, as perhaps any stranger not duly forewarned may discover,
on asking if there is anything of interest in the place. "Oh! yes,"
you are likely to hear; and then comes the story of the well and an
urgent invitation to drink of it, by way of insurance. The origin of
this legend is altogether unknown, but may be an entirely distorted
recollection of some special property connected with a holy well of
St. Lidgean, one of the numerous Irish saints of Cornwall, whose name
survives in that of the village.
Behind Ludgvan, rising to a height of 765 feet, is the hill of
Castell-an-Dinas, not perhaps so much a hill as a culmination of the
downs stretching between the north coast of Cornwall and the south,
a distance from sea to sea of only five miles between Marazion and
Hayle, and between Penzance and St. Ives of only seven miles. From
the hill-top both the Bristol and the English Channels can at once be
seen. Castell-an-Dinas is a prehistoric camp, with a modern roughly
constructed stone tower, locally known as "Roger's Tower," in its
midst. It seems to have been built about the time when one "J. H., aged
63" was buried, in 1823. This person, together with three others of his
family who died in 1812, lie within a little walled enclosure on the
hillside. He had some dispute with the vicar of Gulval, and so refused
to allow any of his family to be buried in the churchyard. Something of
a key to his sentiments will be found in the inscriptions within the
enclosure: "Custom is the idol of fools," and "Virtue only consecrates
this ground."
As Penzance is approached, Gulval appears on the right, its
church-tower glimpsed from amid its surrounding trees. The flat fields
are devoted to the cultivation of broccoli, and early vegetables,
fruits, and flowers for the London market. The saint whose name is
hidden in that of Gulval is said to be Wulvella, a Welshwoman, sister
of St. Pol de Leon to whom the church of Paul near Mousehole, is
dedicated. It is also said to indicate St. Godwald, a sixth-century
Welsh bishop-hermit.
Gulval is one of the prettiest churchyards in Cornwall, beautiful
with subtropical plants and pampas grass. Behind Gulval, on the little
Trevaylor brook, is Bleu Bridge, a footbridge only remarkable for a
tall granite pillar at one end, inscribed lengthways QVENATAVCI ICDINVI
FILIVS.
Penzance is reached past the fringe of houses called Chyandour, on
the level, approaching the railway station, where the Trevaylor brook
enters the sea. "Chyandour" means "the house by the water," and
probably marks the site of a prehistoric settlement of tin-streamers.
Tin-smelting works are now situated on the brook.
FOOTNOTE:
[B] "The Smugglers," pp. 165-182.