LANIVET.
HALS.
The manuscript relating to this parish is lost.
TONKIN.
Lanivet, in the hundred of Pider, hath to the west Withiel, to the north and east Bodmin and Lanhydrock, to the south St. Roach, Luxilian, and Lanlivery.
This parish is a rectory, valued in the King’s books at 24l. The patronage in Kelland Courtenay, Esq. and the heirs of Anthony Nicholl, Esq. of Penrose, alternis vicibus. The incumbent Mr. Vasnoom.
A. D. 1291, 20th Edward the First (the valuation of Pope Nicholas) this Church is rated at 8l. having never been appropriated.
In treating of the estates of this parish, I shall begin with Tremere, the great town, called in Domesday book Tremer, being one of the numerous manors in this county given by William the Conqueror to his half brother, Robert Earl of Morton, with the Earldom of Cornwall. Mr. Carew calls it Tremore.
It had formerly owners of the same name, who, I suppose, held it in vassalage under the Earls of Cornwall;
they gave for their arms, Argent, three reap-hooks conjoined in the blades Sable. The last of whom was John Tremere, Esq. of this place, who left two daughters and heirs; Alice, married to Geoffrey St. Aubyn, of Clowance, Esq. which Alice, as appears by the inscription on her husband’s tomb-stone in Crowan church, died the 1st of May 1400.
And …
This place hath been for several generations the seat of the Courtenays, whom I take to be a younger branch of those of Trethurfe, to whom they have at length been heirs; for the present owner’s grandfather, Humphry Courtenay, Esq. during many years, and up to his decease, Representative in Parliament for the borough of Michell, married the daughter of Sir Peter Courtenay, of Trethurfe, and eventually sole heiress to her brother William Courtenay.
Their son, William Courtenay, married the daughter of —— Kelland, of Peynsford in Devonshire, and their son Kelland Courtenay, Esq. is the present possessor, 1734; Member of Parliament for Truro; he has two daughters, both as yet unmarried.
THE EDITOR.
On the decease of Mr. Charles Courtenay, son of the last-mentioned Kelland Courtenay in 1761, all the property devolved on his two sisters; one of whom married William Poyntz, Esq. of Berkshire, and the other Edmund Boyle, Earl of Cork.
Tremere, with much of the other property, has been sold; and Mr. William Stephen Poyntz has acquired the Boyle share of what remains.
This extensive parish contains several villages. The Church Town, Bodwanick, Bokiddick, Lamorick, St. Inganger, Trebell, Tregullan, Tremoore, and Woodly, with
a part of St. Lawrence, the locality of an ancient incorporated lazar-house.
The church and tower may be considered as handsome models of western ecclesiastic architecture, where all are superior to the average of other districts. This tower, as well as the adjoining one of Roach, are without the usual ornament of pinnacles.
In the church are some monuments; one to the memory of Mr. Richard Courtenay and Thomasin his wife, dated in 1632, is remarkable for its simplicity and quaintness of its inscription:
They lived and died both in Tremere,
God hath their souls, their bones lie here;
Richard with Thomsen his loved wife,
Lived sixty-one years—then ended life.
The advowson of this parish was purchased about the middle of the last century by Mr. Phillipps, a substantial yeoman of Roach; and the Editor has heard for a thousand pounds. It now belongs to his great-grandson, the Reverend William Phillipps, who is the Rector.
This parish possesses the curious and interesting remains of a convent or female monastery, dedicated to St. Bennet.
Very little is known of its history. The remote, and in former times almost inaccessible, situation of Cornwall, and perhaps the frequent insurrections during the reign of Henry the Seventh and of Edward the Sixth, have involved the history of its religious institution in a greater obscurity than what hangs over any other part of England.
This nunnery is believed to have been a cell to some foreign convent; and it is not certainly known whether it was entirely suppressed by Henry the Fifth, or whether, as some have conjectured, it became attached to the priory of Bodmin, and remained a parcel of that house till the general dissolution.
It belonged for a considerable period to the Courtenays
of Tremere, and in a state of repair, for there is a tradition of its having made some defence in the great Civil War, till cannon were used against it.
It was sold in the year 1710; and about ten years afterwards became the property of Mr. Grose, a farmer of the parish. His son or grandson, about the year 1775, built a new house on the farm, when some remains of a beautiful cloister, which the Editor faintly remembers, afforded a ready supply of materials. It is said, that Mr. George Hunt, of Lanhidrock, more impressed by the elegance of these ruins than by the splendour of his own house, interfered to the extent of remonstrance for their preservation; but when the proprietor replied that he would willingly spare them, if the difference of expense for getting stone from a neighbouring quarry were paid him, nothing further was done.
The mere site of the building has been purchased within twenty years by the Rev. Francis Vyvyan Jago Arundell, Rector of Landulph; and in the present year this sequestered spot—scarcely visible in any direction at the distance of half a mile, inclosed in a deep vale, and surrounded by trees more lofty than its half-ruined tower; the appropriate retreat of those who choose their lot—
The world forgetting, by the world forgot,
Where round some mould’ring tow’r pale ivy creeps,
And low-brow’d rocks hang nodding o’er the deeps;
—is by the progress of recent improvement laid open to public view, and above all to the inspection of strangers. A hill so steep as to be dangerous for carriages, and extending to a mile in length, has been avoided, by conducting the London road through this valley, which, after an interval, perhaps, of a thousand years from the time when it was devoted to superstitious observances, directly opposed to the benevolence inseparable from the Author of all Good, and congenial only to the demon of evil, has at last become subservient to general utility.
This parish is possessed of certain lands, some within its
own limits, but others at considerable distances in other parishes. These are held by twelve feoffees, called the twelve men of the parish, a species of select vestry, which existed in all large parishes in Cornwall down to the early part of the last century, till it was tacitly done away by those improvident or insane acts of the legislature, made no doubt in conformity with the existing prejudices of the times, which have generated a rapidly increasing tribe of lazzaroni, threatening, if their progress cannot now be checked, most infallibly to reduce this once flourishing country, the favoured seat of arts, of science, of morals, and of legitimate refinement, to a state of vice and of degradation, worse than that of savages in their primeval condition of wandering hunters.
The rents are applied to the support of a school, and to some specific charities, and the surplus given in aid of the poor rate.
Mr. Lysons says, that these lands belonged to Credys in Padstow, a cell to St. Bennet’s. This does not, however, seem to be very probable, considering the nature of St. Bennet’s foundation. It is more likely that the lands were the immediate possession of this convent; and no such place as Credys is noticed by Tanner.
The history of Lanivet would here close, but the Editor hopes that he may be allowed to bestow a few lines on the Reverend John Lake, Rector of this parish more than thirty years; possessed of learning, piety, and benevolence,
In wit a man, simplicity a child.
He was educated in Truro, according to a custom evidently derived from Catholic times, in the acquirement of some classical knowledge, and then placed in an inferior line of business at Leskeard, where at that period resided Mr. Heydon as schoolmaster, an ornament to his country by every species of learning and of acquirement. Here Mr. Lake, forgetful of his having married early in life, and of a growing family, devoted his time to assisting Mr. Heydon, and in obtaining knowledge from his conversation, till on
a sudden he found himself deprived of his wife, left with two daughters, and his business failed.
Thus circumstanced, Mr. Lake placed the two daughters with his father; and having collected a hundred and thirty pounds, he proceeded to Oxford, became a member of Magdalen Hall, and contrived, on this scanty supply, to keep terms and to obtain orders. He then returned into Cornwall, served the curacy of Roach, and there married the daughter or sister of Mr. Phillipps, who had purchased the advowson of Lanivet; and a vacancy occurring in the course of a few years, he obtained the rectory.
Here he again became a widower, and married a third time Miss Bridget Hoblin, of Bodmin, by whom he had two sons. The eldest became a Fellow of Wadham, and the other of Exeter College. Both his daughters were dead; and in May 1805, Mr. Lake departed this life, having completed his 76th year, in peace with all men, having been pious without fanaticism, and to the utmost of his power, a practiser of the good doctrines which he taught.
His widow was left with a competence; and his sons were advanced by their merits and their talents into situations at once honourable and lucrative; but permanent happiness in this world was not to be their lot. William went to sea, and was lost with Admiral Reynolds in a first rate ship of the line; and the second, after struggling with a consumption, expired in his mother’s arms.
Lanivet measures 4690 statute acres.
| £. | s. | d. | |
| Annual value of the Real Property, as returned to Parliament in 1815 | 4086 | 0 | 0 |
| Poor Rate in 1831 | 375 | 12 | 0 |
| Population,— | |||
| in 1801, 513 | in 1811, 687 | in 1821, 803 | in 1831, 922 |
giving an increase of 80 per cent. in 30 years.
GEOLOGY, BY DR. BOASE.
The southern part of the parish reposes on granite; and proceeding northward, the next portion is composed of
rocks of the porphyritic series, which are again succeeded by those of the calcareous series. The middle portion is by far the most extensive, the other two occupying only a narrow part, on the extreme southern and northern parts of the parish. The middle, or porphyritic series, presents the most interesting phenomena.
Lanivet Hill is covered with large boulders and projecting torrs of massive rock, which have the appearance of granite; but on examination it proves to be a felspar rock. The greater part of this hill is composed of lamellar and slatey varieties of the same kind of rock, as may be seen in the rubbish of the numerous shafts that occur on the side of this hill. On the road to Bodmin, near the boundary of the parish, is a very interesting elvan course. The upper part of it is completely decomposed, resembling a mass of prepared China clay; the perfect rock is a greenish yellow compact felspar, with disseminated grains of quartz; it bears the same relation to the porcelainous granite of this and of the adjoining parishes, that the hard porphyritic elvans do to the common Cornish granite, near which they generally occur.