LANHIDROCK.
HALS.
The manuscript relating to this parish is lost.
TONKIN.
Lanhidrock is in the hundred of Pider; hath to the west
Lanivet; to the north Bodmin; to the east Fowey river, between it and St. Winnow; to the south, Lanlivery.
This parish takes its name from St. Hidrock, and is the church of St. Hidrock.
This probably may be the manor that in Domesday is called the Lanredock; and if so, it is one of the manors given by William the Conqueror to Robert Earl of Morton, with the Earldom of Cornwall.
In the year sixteen hundred and —— John Lord Robarts, being disgusted on some occasion or other with the town of Truro, left his barony-house there, and new built a large one in this place, quadrangularwise, to which he added afterwards a noble gate-house, and enclosed a very handsome park, well-wooded, and watered by the river Fowey.
This noble lord was afterwards, in 1662, made Lord Privy Seal, in the place of William Lord Say, deceased. In Sept. 1669 he was made Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, but continued there no longer than the May following; and about this time he received the honour of being made Custos Rotulorum of Cornwall. In 1679, July 20, he was created Earl of Falmouth and Viscount Bodmin, but he kept the title of Falmouth only six days, when he got it changed to that of Radnor. In October of the same year he was made Lord President of the Council, in the room of Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury. He was twice married, 1st. to the Lady Lucy Rich, daughter of Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, by whom he had issue Robert Lord Viscount Bodmin. He married, secondly, a daughter of John Smith, Esq. of Kent, a lady of great beauty, who, it is said, was to have married his eldest son the Lord Bodmin; for which reason there was never a good understanding between the father and son. By her he had several children, the eldest of which was Francis Robarts, a very ingenious man, and a great mathematician, author of several small works. He was twice married, first to Penelope, daughter of Sir Courtenay Pole, of Devonshire, by whom he had no issue; secondly, to the Lady
Ann Fitzgerald, daughter of the Earl of Kildare, and widow of Mr. William Boscawen, of Tregothnan. The said John Robarts, Earl of Radnor, died at his house in Chelsea, very aged, July 17, 1685, and was brought to Lanhidrock, where he had constructed a vault for himself and family, and was succeeded by his grandson Charles Bodville Robarts.
Robert Robarts, Lord Bodmin, his father, was much esteemed by King Charles the Second, for his bright, lively parts and ready wit. He was sent Ambassador to the King of Denmark in July 1679-80, but died soon after his return. Charles Bodville Robarts, second Earl of Radnor, married Mary, the daughter and heir of Sir John Cutler, by whom he acquired a great accession of fortune, but no issue. He succeeded the Earl of Bath as Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall, and he was also Lord Warden of the Stanneries. He was succeeded by his nephew Mr. Henry Robarts.
Trefry, that is, the house on the hill, (for bre, bray, vre, fray, are synonymous terms, indicating a hill or a mountain,) adjoins Lanhidrock, and was formerly a barton belonging to the Trefrys of Fowey; although they took not their name from this place, but from Trefry in Linkinhorne. It now belongs to the Earl of Radnor, who keeps it as a domain to Lanhidrock. The Earl of Radnor’s arms are, Azure, three estoiles, and a chief wavy Or; the crest, a lion rampant Or, holding a flaming sword Proper, the pommel Or; supporters, two goats Argent, with a ducal coronet round their necks Or; the motto, “QUÆ SUPRA;” which coat was thus given by John Robarts Earl of Radnor, but for what reason I cannot tell, since the arms of the family granted to Sir Richard Robarts, afterwards Baron Truro, by the celebrated William Camden, Clarencieux King-at-Arms, were, Azure, on a chevron Argent three mullets Sable, as may be seen in their house at Truro, and also in the church.
THE EDITOR.
Henry Robarts, the third Earl of Radnor, in possession of the property when Mr. Tonkin wrote, was succeeded by his cousin John Robarts, son of Francis Robarts, youngest son of John Robarts, the first Earl of Radnor; and with him, who died in 1764, the family became extinct in the male line; and the estate reverted to a sister’s son of Henry Robarts, who had married Thomas Hunt, Esq. of Mellington in Cheshire.
Mr. George Hunt, the eldest son of this marriage, resided occasionally at Lanhidrock, and represented Bodmin in several Parliaments. This gentleman never married, and he was succeeded by his brother’s daughter, Anna Maria, now (1834) the widow of the Hon.Charles Bagnal Agar: left with an only son, who has assumed the name of Robarts.
It is obvious that all families, to whatever degrees of elevation they may afterwards ascend, must at some period or another have emerged from the ordinary fortunes of mankind. At the time of the Norman Conquest, hundreds started forth at once by successful warfare and confiscation; others have risen or fallen by the chances of civil war, favouritism, marriages, adventures, or speculation in foreign countries, by professions, or commerce; these last have recently been more efficacious for ordinary individuals and families than force of arms.
The family of Robarts, illustrious as it has since been, derives its origin entirely from trade, and that too conducted in the town of Truro, now indeed, and for a century past, a place of opulence, and connected with a productive mining district, where several ample fortunes have been acquired; but in the reign of the Tudors it could have been no more than an obscure place in a remote province.
There is nothing known of any particularly fortunate occurrence which might have heaped wealth on this family;
they probably accumulated patiently through several generations from father to son, when the rate of interest on all capital gave a facility to the increase of wealth unknown at the present day. That the family made their progress in the world after this manner, is evinced by the nature of the possessions transmitted to their heirs. Extensive on the whole, but instead of being made up of large masses, like those acquired in feudal times, it mainly consists of small pieces of land scattered over the country, on which the successful merchant or dealer lent his superfluous money on mortgage, and afterwards entered into possession or foreclosed.
The first Lord Robarts, created a Baron through the influence of George Villiers Duke of Buckingham, with King James the First,[9] who emerged from Truro, and built or improved the house at Lanhidrock, and planted in all probability the magnificent avenues, must have been a man worthy of his high fortune.
The editor remembers the house, a complete square, with a superb barbican in front, united to the house, or rather castle, by two lofty walls.
These walls were first taken down, and then the front, by Mr. George Hunt, which he replaced by green palisades. This gentleman had the reputation of being a classical scholar, and he travelled into the south of Europe, where Taste once fixed her abode, and where she still lingers or loves often to return; but according to all the opinions now entertained, he never met her in his walks, nor profited by the contemplation of her works. Perhaps in his youth the prejudice had not disappeared which confined all the elegance and beauty of architecture to upright pillars with horizontal cornices, and esteemed the word Gothic as of the same import with barbarous, and inviting destruction wherever it was applied.
This parish was heretofore a complete impropriation to the priory at Bodmin, in respect to small tithes as well as the great; and being situated so near the monastery, it was
probably served from thence, and considered as exempt from the canon enjoining the residence of some spiritual person on all benefices, and it has continued a donative to the present time. Mr. Tonkin conjectures that the parish is dedicated to a Saint Hydrock, or Hidrock. No such name is to be found; but it may belong to the list of missionaries.
The Editor remembers to have heard as facts, from an old lady of Bodmin, who died many years before the words ‘political economy,’ were pronounced in England, that the last Lord Radnor kept house at Lanhidrock in the style of ancient baronial magnificence; that a bullock was killed every week, and a sheep every day; and that whatever remained over-night of meat, of broken bread, or of certain allowed quantities of beer, were on the morning distributed at the gate; and that in consequence the whole neighbourhood became idle, depraved, and vicious, to such a degree as to force itself on the notice of every one, and to produce a full conviction of the utter destruction that must ensue if it were possible that such mistaken liberality could be common.
The manor of Lanhidrock belonged in former times to the Glynns, of Glynn. Mr. Lysons says that it passed from them as a marriage portion to the family of Lyttleton, and from them by a heiress to Trenance; and that in the year 1620 Lyttleton Trenance, Esq. sold it to Sir Richard Roberts, afterwards created Lord Truro. Mr. Tonkin has stated that this gentleman built the house; but the whole place has the appearance of much greater antiquity: that he improved and decorated the building, and perhaps added the barbican and the connecting walls, is very probable.
Lanhidrock measures 1659 statute acres.
| £. | s. | d. | |
| Annual value of the Real Property, as returned to Parliament in 1815 | 1213 | 0 | 0 |
| Poor Rate in 1831 | 137 | 6 | 0 |
| Population,— | |||
| in 1801, 187 | in 1811, 235 | in 1821, 251 | in 1831, 239 |
giving an increase of 28 per cent. in 30 years.
GEOLOGY, BY DR. BOASE.
The south-western corner of this parish touches on the granite; the rest is composed of rocks belonging to the porphyritic series, being principally varieties of compact and schistose felspar rocks, containing mica or horneblende, or a mineral of an intermediate nature, not easily discriminated.
[9] See Nichols’s Progresses, &c. of King James, iii, 230.