RAME.
HALS.
The manuscript relating to this parish is lost.
TONKIN.
Rame is in the hundred of East, and is surrounded to the west, south, and part of the east by the sea, to the rest of the east by Maker, and to the north by St. John’s.
This church is a rectory, valued in the King’s Book £12. 7s. 4d. ob.; the patronage in the Honorable Richard Edgcumbe, esq.; the incumbent Mr. Thomas Wolridge.
In anno 1291, 20 Edward I. (Tax. Benef.) this church was valued at xlvis. viiid. having never been appropriated.
THE MANOR OF RAME.
In the extent of Cornish acres, 12 Edward I. this is valued in twenty (Carew, fol. 48 b.) In 3 Hen. IV. Johanna de Rame held one great fee of Seviock, meaning (I suppose) that she held this place as a great knight’s fee of the said manor.
I take this Johanna de Rame to be the person that was married to Stephen Durnford, esq. who was Sheriff of Cornwall, 7 Henry V. whose only daughter and heir Jane brought this lordship, with a large inheritance, to her husband Sir Pierce Edgcombe of Cuttvyle, and in their posterity it still remaineth, the honorable Richard Edgcombe, esq. being the present lord of this manor, and in right thereof, patron of this parish, as was said before.
The arms of Rame were, in allusion to the name, Azure, a scalp of a ram’s head Argent, armed; and Durnford’s Azure, an eagle displayed Or.
But the barton of Rame hath since often changed its owners.
THE EDITOR.
Rame church is situated in a very peculiar manner, far out on the point of land, and immediately near a rocky cliff. It has several monuments to former rectors and others, but none of general interest.
The manor of Rame, and the advowson of the living, continue in the Edgcumbe family; but the barton has for some generations belonged to the Edwardses, and, under the name of Rame Place, is still their residence.
The remarkable feature of this parish is Rame Head, or as it is usually called, the Ram; and it is a general belief that the name is really taken from the resemblance of the point to the Roman battering ram; as the Lizard is supposed to be so called, from the long flat serpentine formation resembling the body of a saurian animal: but it seems to be much more probable that these observed resemblances should have corrupted some former names accidentally agreeing with them in sound, than that the promontories should be really distinguished by appellations so very modern.
Near the extremity of the point are the ruins of a chapel still very visible, dedicated to St. Michael, as all chapels similarly situated were dedicated by our ancestors, from the habits of a winged angel being assimilated to those of birds.
The Ram Head itself exhibits the appearance of a grand mass of rocks gradually tapering into the sea, much resembling Cudden Point in the Mount’s Bay. It forms the exterior boundary of Plymouth Harbour to the westward, as Penlee Point does of what is technically called the Sound. The extreme point of the Ram Head is laid down in the best tables with lat. 50° 18′ 52″ long. 4° 12′ 29.″ In time 16m. 50s. west from Greenwich. The time of high water at Plymouth dock yard at the new and full moon is 3h. 33m.
As this is the point of land nearest to the Eddystone lighthouse, it may be interesting to add, that the lighthouse is distant from the Ram Head just 8¼ sea miles,
bearing about somewhat less than a point to the westward of south, and from Looe Island 11½ sea miles bearing very nearly south-east. Lat. 50° 10′ 55″, lon. 4° 15′ 3.″ In time 17m. west of Greenwich. The Eddystone rocks had been for ages the dread of mariners; they lie nearly in the direction of the line joining the Lizard and the Start, and directly in the way of ships making Plymouth harbour from the westward; their extent is moreover considerable, reaching in one direction to about a mile, with only a small rock appearing above the water.
The desire of a lighthouse was therefore strongly felt, and at last, in the year 1696, Mr. Winstanley, of Littlebury in Essex, undertook this arduous work, and completed it in about four years; but Mr. Winstanley made his wooden fabric of a large size, and of great height, trusting to the tenacity of chains and iron rods for its support; not having learnt from experience that those materials are incapable of resisting, for any considerable time, the repeated percussions of a tempestuous sea.
Mr. Winstanley himself happened to be there on the 26th of November, 1703, when the storm took place, which is believed not to have been equalled since that time. On the following day every thing had disappeared, with the exception of two iron rods which were fastened in the rock, and not a trace of the building was ever discovered.
Three years afterward, in the year 1706, Mr. John Rudyard undertook to erect another light-house, undismayed by the terrible catastrophe of the former; and this gentleman adopted the correct principle of opposing the impact of waves by the force of gravity, a power equally constant, certain and stable, as that by which it is opposed. He therefore constructed a plain framework of wood, nearly cylindrical, with cross beams, and filled the whole with large blocks of granite, leaving no more room than was requisite for the lights, for the attendants, and for their stores; and he made so rapid a progress as to display the light on the 28th of July 1708, and completely to finish the whole in
the year following: notwithstanding that a French privateer took off some workmen and their tools in the progress of the work. But Louis the XIV. displayed on this occasion the real spirit of generosity and honour, of which he had endeavoured to support a weak resemblance throughout his long reign. He ordered the workmen and their effects to be restored, and committed to prison the persons concerned in this unprincipled act publicly; declaring that, although he was at war with England, he was at peace with the human race, for whose common benefit such works was constructed.
In Mr. Rudyard’s lighthouse the wooden frame was evidently an imperfection. It must be liable to decay, and might become the prey of flames. To obviate in some degree the former defect, contrivances were adopted for shifting the beams; but on the 2d of December 1755, after the work had stood forty-seven years, the wood-work actually caught fire and was entirely consumed. Boats were dispatched from ships as well as from the shore, when the flames became visible, which brought away the three men, who had used their utmost endeavours, but in vain, to extinguish the fire. Fortunately at that hour the tide was at its ebb, which allowed the men to retreat sufficiently at a distance from the heat to preserve their lives; two had received very little injury, nor was the other apparently much hurt, but standing near the foot of the building in front, and looking intently at the flames as they issued through the top, he gave way to an innate propensity, which anatomists have endeavoured to explain by two tubes leading from near the palate to the ear, by keeping his mouth wide open; when some melting lead descended and passed down his throat, which would otherwise have glanced from his skin without occasioning the least injury. This man, although he had advanced so far in life as to his ninety-fourth year, lived several days, and without suffering much pain. After his decease, a mass of lead weighing seven ounces, five drams, and eighteen grains, little less than half a pound, was taken
from his stomach. See a communication by Mr. Edward Spry, Surgeon of Plymouth, in the Philosophical Transaction, vol. XLIX. p. 459, and vol. X. p. 673, of the Abridgment.
Notwithstanding this second disaster, the lessees under the Trinity House were still resolved if possible to discharge their duty. They applied in consequence to Lord Macclesfield, then President of the Royal Society, who recommended the most eminent of our civil engineers, with whom no one can be thought to compare, excepting perhaps the late Mr. John Rennie.
Mr. Smeaton was in consequence of Lord Macclesfield’s recommendation applied to by the proprietors, and most fortunately for mankind he undertook the work.
Mr. Smeaton adopted the essential principle of his predecessor Mr. Rudyard, by opposing weight to the force of the waves: but he made improvements in many respects, by contriving a better figure, by more completely uniting the work into one mass, and by discarding wood altogether.
The construction and the dimensions of every part are given by Mr. Smeaton in an elaborate work with plates; and it may be a sufficient recommendation to say, that the greatest work of this kind executed since his time, and by a most able engineer, that on the Bell Rock near the Forth, is almost an exact copy of the Eddystone.
Mr. Bond, who visited the Eddystone on the 4th of August, 1788, has given the following description of it in his History of Looe, published in 1823.
“Immediately opposite Looe church, fourteen miles off and visible from the parade and hills, is the Eddystone lighthouse, built by the late Mr. Smeaton of Yorkshire. The lantern is an octagon of about nine feet diameter. Till within a few years last past, it used to be lighted with twenty-four very large candles, sixteen in one round frame, and eight in another. Now Argand lamps are used, with highly polished reflectors. The candle light was not frequently seen from Looe by the naked eye: now the light is very strong, and in dark nights does not appear above a league distant.
“At highwater the sea nearly embraces the base of the building. You ascend to the door by a ladder on the outside, almost perpendicular, according to my recollection, about fourteen staves long. You then arrive at the stairs within the building, which have, as no space can be lost, a coal place under them. The first room you come to is where the men keep their water, &c.; the next is a store room, where they keep their provisions, candles, &c. Round the room is engraved, as in relief, “Except the Lord keep the house, they labour but in vain that build it.” From this room you ascend to the next, which is the kitchen, by a ladder which goes up into a circular hole in the centre of the room. A large copper cover, like that of a saucepan, is placed to prevent falling through. You ascend to the next room, which is the bed room, in the same manner, this room is about twelve feet diameter. You next ascend in like manner into the lanthorn, which has a seat round it. Outside the lanthorn is a walk railed in round it. The view from hence is singularly and awfully grand, and perhaps has not its like. On the outside of the lanthorn are engraved the cardinal points of the compass, and over the door, “24th August, 1759.—Laus Deo.”
The village of Cawsand in this parish gives name to a bay, which before the construction of the artificial reef, afforded the only shelter in Plymouth Sound.
Rame measures 1296 statute acres.
| £. | s. | d. | |
| Annual value of the Real Property, as returned to Parliament in 1815 | 2,872 | 0 | 0 |
| Poor Rate in 1831 | 333 | 15 | 0 |
| Population,— | |||
| in 1801, 904 | in 1811, 978 | in 1821, 807 | in 1831, 896 |
giving a decrease of one per cent. in 30 years, with great fluctuations in the middle period, in consequence of the differences round Plymouth between war and peace.
Present Rector, the Rev. Thomas Hunt Ley, presented by the Earl of Mount Edgcumbe in 1824.
THE GEOLOGY, BY DR. BOASE.
This parish is principally composed of strata of red and greenish-grey slate, inclosing here and there beds of a compact quartzose rock. These rocks are all similar to those of St. Anthony, and to those in the cliff under Mount Edgcumbe, and at Saltash; but whether they belong to the calcareous series, or to a more recent one associated with the fossilliferous limestone of Plymouth, remains to be ascertained.