THE CLIFFS, NEWQUAY
Be this as it may, and there is no doubt a good deal of truth in the tradition, we do know that until comparatively recent years the now sand-choked estuary of the Gannel had a sufficient depth of water for fishing craft and coasting schooners; while old historians assure us that the channel could at one time be navigated by ships of large tonnage. It is quite possible that the "new quay" of the now fashionable watering-place owes its existence to the silting-up of the estuary that gave access to the old quay at Crantock. In Carew's Survey of Cornwall reference is made to "newe Kaye, a place in the north coast of this Hundred (Pider), so called, because in former times, the neighbours attempted, to supplie the defect of nature, by art, in making there a Kay, for the Rode of shipping".
An old well in the centre of the village is said to be a "holy" one, but this has been disputed by antiquaries.
The weird and uncanny cry of the "Gannel Crake" is heard by everyone who woos the charms of a romantic coast after the sun has set beyond the western sea. It is said to be the cry of some species of night gull, but is traditionally referred to by the superstitious natives as the cry of a troubled spirit that ever haunts the scene.
A short distance inland from the porth is St. Columb Minor, the church of which, together with that of St. Columb Major some six miles farther inland is said to be dedicated to Columba, a maiden saint who is not to be confounded with the great Irish saint of the same name. St. Columb Minor is the mother parish of Newquay and possesses a fine late Decorated church with a remarkably good western tower, said to be the second highest tower in the county. The village is quite a large one from which some fine views of the coast may be obtained. Close at hand is Rialton, from which the statesman Sidney Godolphin took his title, and where, in the surrounding park and dells, many sketches were made by Stansfield, when he visited the district with his friend Charles Dickens.
Rialton Priory is a much desecrated building that once belonged to the priory of Bodmin, it having been erected towards the end of the fifteenth century by Thomas Vivian, prior of Bodmin. In 1840 someone carried off a large amount of the priory's ancient stonework to Somerset, where it was placed in private grounds, but the Crown made an order for it to be returned and re-erected at Rialton.
St. Columb Major occupies the crown of an eminence, the conjectured site of a Danish fortress. The church is large, mainly early Decorated, and of much beauty. In the chancel is the pre-Reformation stone altar, marked with the five crosses, and supported on slabs of granite. This had been buried beneath the floor and was discovered during some restorations in 1846. Other noteworthy features are the window of the south transept and the grotesque carvings that adorn the font. There are also three good brasses commemorating members of the Arundell family.
The whole of this neighbourhood is famous for its "hurlers" and "wrestlers", a memento of which could be seen at the Red Lion a few years ago, for here the landlord used to exhibit with pride the silver punchbowl given to his grandfather (Polkinhorne) when that worthy escaped defeat in a wrestling bout with Cann, the champion of the adjoining county of Devon.
The art of wrestling appears to have died out, but the once popular game of hurling is revived once a year, either in the village itself or along the sands towards Newquay. The ball used is about the size of a cricket ball, and after being coated with silver is inscribed:—
"St. Columb Major and Minor,
Do your best;
In one of your parishes
I must rest."
At one time the game was very common throughout Cornwall, and many interesting records relating to it are in existence; but at the present day only the two parishes of St. Columb keep up a survival of this ancient game.
The whole of the St. Columb district is rich in large tracts of wild and picturesque country, which include such heights as Denzell Downs, St. Issey Beacon, and St. Breock Downs, near which last stand the "Naw Mean", or, in modern English, the Nine Maidens. At the present time there are but eight of these upright stones, which tradition asserts were originally maidens who were turned into stone for dancing on Sunday to the strains of a fiddler, who shared the same fate, as witness a tall pillar of rock near by called the "Fiddler".
On the drive from Newquay to Bedruthan Steps no one should fail to make a halt at Mawgan, or, to be strictly accurate, St. Mawgan in Pydar, either on the outward or the return journey. The village is a pretty one that lies in the centre of the beautiful Vale of Mawgan, or Lanherne, which stretches from St. Columb to the porth, or cove on the coast. Mawgan possesses an ancient parish church and a Roman Catholic convent and chapel. The church is a very fine Perpendicular building with a tower 70 feet in height. The building was restored by Butterfield, but contains some interesting old screenwork and a number of well-carved bench ends. The brasses include that of a priest, circa 1420; Cecily Arundell, 1578; a civilian, circa 1580; and Jane, daughter of Sir John Arundell, circa 1580. This last is a palimpsest, made up of portions of two Flemish brasses, circa 1375. The churchyard contains a beautifully sculptured fourteenth-century lantern cross, of mediæval date, in the form of an octagonal shaft. Under four niches at the summit are sculptured representations of: God the Father with the Dove bearing a crucifix; an Abbot; an Abbess; and a King and Queen. The height of the cross is 5 feet 2 inches, the breadth of the head being 1 foot 1 inch.
The convent, the "lone manse" of Lanherne, was originally the manor house of the Arundells, which was, in the last years of the eighteenth century, presented by a Lord Arundell of Wardour to a sisterhood of Carmelite nuns who had fled from Antwerp in 1794. One or two of the pictures in the convent chapel are attributed to Rubens. Strangers may attend service in the chapel, but the nuns, like those of the order of St. Bridget at Syon Abbey, Chudleigh, are recluses of the strictest kind.
While at Mawgan a stroll should be taken through the groves of Carnanton, the old-time abode of William Noye, the "crabbed" Attorney-General to Charles I, whose heart, we are told by his biographers, was found at his death to have become shrivelled up into the form of a leather purse.
A mile beyond Mawgan Porth are the far-famed Bedruthan Steps seven miles from Newquay. Here the visitor will find a fine stretch of cliff scenery, with a succession of sandy beaches strewn with confused and broken masses of rock, and some large caverns that are well worth exploring should the state of the tide permit. The largest of these caverns is of vast extent and is said to be unrivalled in this respect along the whole of the Cornish seaboard. At low tide the great spurs of rock embedded in the sand have a fantastic beauty, while one of the largest of them bears a more than fancied resemblance to Queen Elizabeth, and is named after her. Another is known as the Good Samaritan, as against these jagged points an East Indiaman of this name once came to grief, when the local women folk are said to have replenished their wardrobes with a quantity of fine silks and satins.
The coast beyond Bedruthan, by Trevose and Pentire Heads, Padstow, Tintagel, Boscastle, Bude, and Morwenstowe, although abounding in wild and rugged scenery, and full of romantic and literary associations, is beyond our present limits. This being so we may conclude with the words of J. D. Blight, one of the most learned of the older school of Cornish antiquaries:
"Those who wish to behold nature in her grandest aspect, those who love the sea breezes, and the flowers which grow by the cliffs, the cairns and monumental rocks, all hoary and bearded with moss, those who are fond of the legends and traditions of old, and desire to tread on ground sacred to the peculiar rites and warlike deeds of remote ages, should visit the land of Old Cornwall."