About four score years ago, there was no wheel-carriage for the
high-road West of Trereife. On some of the farms, there were werries,
with three solid wheels (druchars.) These things, between wheel-barrow
and cart, were used for bringing home the turf from the moors, taking
out manure on level ground, &c. Corn, hay and furze were carried in
trusses on horse-back; but horses, furnished with pack-saddles,
dung-pots, or crooks, were then generally used for conveying almost
everything we now see on some sort of wheel-carriage. Ox-butts and
wains were in use long before carts became common. One end of the axle
was fast in the wheel, and the axle was made to work in gudgeons under
the butt or wain. For building the many large mansions about in the
West, the timber had to be dogged from Market-jew, or floated to some
of the Coves near the building site. Slate, lime, laths, &c., were all
borne on the poor horses’ backs.
I have often heard that the first coach, or chariot, as the old Noah’s
arks on slings or springs were called, was the old machine still at
Trewinnard, which was constructed to take out the old Hawkins’ in great
state, if not in a state of comfort. The Hawkins’ lived in such grand
style at the time their chariot was set up (so that everything might be
in keeping with the grandeur of their land-ship) that they very much
impoverished themselves, and their descendants were consequently
obliged to live with such economy as appeared mean for persons of their
rank, which gave rise to the lines about Trewinnard:—
“Here is a grand hall, and no cheer;
A great cellar, and no beer;
A great park, and no deer;
And Sir Christopher Hawkins lives here.”
When the ladies and gentlemen of Trewinnard drove out in their chariot,
accompanied by a cavalcade of belles and beaux, with hawk and hound,
they must have thought themselves as grand and glorious as the Queen of
Sheba and King Solomon, till stuck fast in a hole, or jolted out in the
mud, when the half-a-dozen or more men by whom they were attended, with
poles and ropes, picks, spades, and led horses, contrived to set them
in motion again, at about the rate of three miles an hour, at least
where the roads were the best.