PHILLACK.
HALS.
The manuscript relating to this parish is lost.
TONKIN AND WHITAKER.
Phillack is situate in the hundred of Penwith, and hath to the west Haile and St. Ives Bay, to the north Gwythian, to the east Gwyniar, to the south St. Earth.
This parish takes its name from a female Saint, to whom the church is dedicated, Sancta Felicitas, by corruption Phillack. [Query, who or whence was she? I apprehend the Saint to be the same with that of Philly or Philleigh in the next article.]
It is a rectory, valued in the King’s Book at £45. 10s. 8d. The patronage in the heirs of Sir John Arundell of Lanherne. The incumbent Mr. Edward Collins, who succeeded Mr. Jasper Philips.
In anno 1291, 20 Edward I. this church was valued at (Tax. Benef.) £6. 8s. 4d. having never been appropriated.
THE EDITOR.
The church is neat but small, and very inadequate to the increased number of inhabitants in the parish: the tower, like most others in this part of Cornwall, is of granite. Phillack stands near the eastern branch of Hayle River, and towards the sea, from whence comminuted shell sand is continually brought inland by the wind, threatening to overwhelm the whole village. Notice has been taken under Lelant of this ordinary incroachment of the sand, and of the inundations which have occurred at different periods remote from each other. Very considerable parts of Phillack, and of Gwithian the adjoining parish, are covered with sand formed into hillocks of twenty or thirty feet high,
representing in miniature one of the most uneven districts that can any where be found. Under these are frequently discovered fences, inclosures, and the walls of houses; and the high valuation of the living in Wolsey’s Survey seems to prove that much land must have been covered with sand since that time, and converted into what is named Towan.
Notwithstanding this loss, however great it may have been, the parish has flourished in recent times, far beyond all former example or expectation, by the extension of trade, and by the consequent improvement of the harbour. The progress in both has been greatly accelerated by the successful working of various mines in the immediate neighbourhood; but the first step was taken when a copper smelting establishment was made there, soon after the middle of the last century.
An opinion, or rather a feeling, had prevailed in Cornwall that the copper ores should be smelted at home, and not sent to the opposite coast of Wales. Nothing could be more erroneous. About three times the quantity of coal is required to smelt any given weight of the copper ore; and the importation of coal from Swansea being very large, the conveyance of copper ore there produced alternate cargos. The whole scheme seems to have originated in mistaken analogies drawn from ordinary operations.
A plan so injudicious and adopted without estimate or consideration must have failed, and would have done so at once, but for the counteracting power of individual ability, in the person of Mr. John Edwards; a young man of Ludyan, who had been recommended at a very early age, to some situation requiring talent, by our celebrated historian Doctor William Borlase. Mr. Edwards speedily acquired the entire management and direction of the whole concern, which soon extended itself to the importation of coal, timber, limestone, iron, &c. for the supply of the neighbourhood; and by the unwearied exertion of his superior genius, the business continued with success up to the period of his decease in Jan. 1807.
Mr. Edwards may be reckoned among the distinguished persons whom Cornwall has produced, equal in number at the least, as we flatter ourselves, with those of any similar district. He acquired extensive general knowledge, and obtained an ascendancy over most persons on all occasions. Mr. Edwards had a numerous family, but only two have married: his eldest daughter to Mr. John Tippett; and their son has succeeded to the large property of Mr. Vivian of Pencalenick, and taken the name.
His youngest son, Mr. Joseph Edwards, married Miss Devonshire of Truro, where he practised the Law with great credit and success.
The company directed by Mr. Edwards experienced the rivalship in trade of a very able and enterprising individual Mr. John Harvey, and after his decease, still more powerfully of his son. Each party in this legitimate and beneficial contest endeavoured to improve their respective portions of the harbour, and by so doing acted favourably on the whole. Mr. Edwards led the way by extending a mound across the eastern arm, and keeping back the high water at flood tide, which being suffered to escape through gates some hours afterwards, swept the sand before it, and deepened the channel. Mr. Harvey on his part constructed quays and wharfs, and recently a sluice, so that the interior of the harbour may be considered as improved to the utmost extent; but works are still wanting to confine the current of water beyond the entrance, and thus to force a channel through the bar, produced here as in all other debouches of rivers, by the deposit of silt, of sand, or of mud, where the currents meet and occasion comparatively still water.
A work most beneficial to the whole country was completed at Hayle in the year 1825, under the authority of an Act of Parliament. The passage across the main estuary was frequently dangerous and always interrupted by the tide; several of the branches could not be passed at high water, and lives were not unfrequently lost. A causeway
provided with arches and parapets, now affords a safe line of communication from Penzance and the Western Peninsula, to the eastward; and all the roads are raised above the utmost range of the tide.
Mr. Lysons notices two castles said to have formerly stood in this parish, one still called Castle Cayle; but it seems to be very doubtful whether any castellated house was ever built there, or even a military work, as the word castle appears to have been frequently applied in ridicule, and there are not extant any accounts relating to this place.
The other, situated at the entrance of the river, a much more probable situation, and called Riviere or Theodore’s Castle. The walls, if any ever existed, are taken down, and all traces of a foundation are hidden by the sand.
Mr. Whitaker, who captivates every reader by the brilliancy of his style, and astonishes by the extent of his multifarious reading, draws, however, without reserve on his fertile imagination for whatever facts may be requisite to construct the fabric of a theory. He has made Riviere the palace and residence of Theodore, a sovereign Prince of Cornwall, and conducts St. Breca, St. Iva, with several companions, not only into Hayle and to this palace, after their voyage from Ireland, but fixes the time of their arrival so exactly as to make it take place in the night. In recent times the name of Riviere, which had been lost in the common pronunciation, Rovier, has revived in a very excellent house built by Mr. Edwards on the farm, which he completed in 1791.
The place of most importance in Phillack was Trevassack, for many years the residence of the Yorkes, a considerable family from Somersetshire.
Richard Yorke, of Wellington, married a daughter of Andrew Luttrell, of Dunster Castle; and his grandson, Humphry Yorke, settled at Trevassack; married Barbara, daughter of John Vyvyan, of Trelowarren; and their granddaughter, Sarah Yorke, was the mother of Attorney-general Noye. Some traces of its former splendour may
still be discovered. Erasmus Pascoe, who served the office of Sheriff in 1720, resided at this place; it now belongs to the partnership carrying on copper-smelting and trade at Hoyle.
In much more modern times a good house has been built on Bodrigy, which belonged to a branch of the Pendarveses, then to Williams, and was sold by three sisters, coheiresses of that family, to Mr. John Curnow, who acquired a large fortune by carrying on the trade of Hoyle for more than half a century, before modern energies altered and extended the scale of every mercantile transaction.
Mr. Curnow also purchased Penpoll, and resided there. His property became ultimately divided between three daughters, one of whom married Mr. Robert Oke Millett, who succeeded Mr. Curnow at Penpoll, and has made it a handsome place. It now belongs to his son, the Rev. John Curnow Millett. Another daughter married the Rev. William Hocken, the late Rector of the parish: and the third married Mr. Parmenter from Ilfracombe. Mr. Curnow was of the family mentioned under Lugvan.
Treglisson is a large farm, having on it a good house inhabited for many years by the family of Nichols, proprietors of the freehold.
Phillack, in addition to the copper works at Hoyle, possesses also a tin smelting house at a village called indifferently Angarrack or Vellarvrane. It is said to be the first smelting house established by Becher and the other Germans for smelting tin ores in reverberatory furnaces by means of coal. During the life of Mr. William Tremaine the late managing partner, this place was decorated with the finest garden in the West of Cornwall.
The advowson of this Rectory was in the Arundell family, but held for a considerable time on a lease for lives, by the Collinses of Treworgan in St. Erme: but on the death of Mr. Edward Collins in Jan. 1734, the lease having expired, and the presentation having reverted to Lord Arundell, a Catholic, the exercise of the right for that turn lapsed
to the University of Oxford; and the living was given by convocation to the Rev. William Glover from Worcestershire, originally a member of Balliol College, and afterwards one of the Chaplains of All Souls. He married a daughter of the preceding Rector, and resided at Phillack all the remainder of his life.
To guard against a similar lapse, a new lease for lives was granted by Lord Arundell to Mr. Hockin of Gwithian, whose son succeeded to Mr. Glover; and on the general sale of the Arundell property, this gentleman had the opportunity of purchasing the freehold, and his son the Rev. William Hockin is now the Patron and Rector of Phillack.
The parish feast is kept on the nearest Sunday to the 23d of November, being the day consecrated to St. Clement, Pope and Martyr.
Phillack measures 2575 statute acres.
| £. | s. | d. | |
| Annual value of the Real Property, as returned to Parliament in 1815 | 16,393 | 0 | 0 |
| Poor Rate in 1831 | 352 | 19 | 0 |
| Population,— | |||
| in 1801, 1475 | in 1811, 2119 | in 1821, 2529 | in 1831, 3053 |
giving an increase of 107 per cent. in 30 years.
GEOLOGY, BY DOCTOR BOASE.
The rocks of this parish, like those of Gwinear adjoining, belong to the prophyritic series; the northern part is covered with hillocks of sand, a considerable portion of which, as on some part of Gwithian, has been drifted from place to place by the action of the wind; this to a certain extent is now prevented by a covering of arenaceous plants, the extensive fibrous roots of which form a loose spongy net work, which serves to retain the sand in its place. This sand was originally of marine origin, being at low levels entirely composed of fragments of marine shells; but inland, on more elevated places, a considerable portion of terrestrial
shell enters into its composition: these have been derived from the myriads of the snail tribe, which browse on the scanty herbage of these dreary Towans. The inland drifts, after a strong wind, will be found to consist almost entirely of the fragments of those land shells. On the coast this testaceous sand is in several places consolidated into calcareous sandstone; but this has taken place on a more extended scale in the parish of Crantock.
THE EDITOR.
This parish, like Guinear, has large copper lodes running through it, and elvan courses of an extraordinary breadth. Whele Alfred has been wrought on a larger scale than any copper mine so far west.