ROACH or ROCHE.

HALS.

Roach is situate in the hundred of Powdre, and hath upon the north St. Wenn and Withell, east Luxsillian, South St. Austell, West St. Dennis. For the name, in old Gaulish British it signifies a rock of stone, not unsuitable to the natural circumstances of this place; where, on a level piece of ground, stands the loftiest single ragged rock this county can shew, at least thirty foot high, and by it several other rocks of less magnitude.

In the Domesday Book, 20 William I. 1087, this district was partly taxed under the jurisdiction of Tre-roach, that is the rock town, now Tre-garrek, or Trecarrek, (i. e. the rock town, also in Cornish,) the voke lands of the still notable manor or lordship here so called; from whence may be inferred, that before the Norman Conquest here was an endowed rectory church, called Roch (i. e. Rock), and the village adjoining, still Roach Town, and Roach Church Town.

Moreover, in the inquisition of the bishops of Lincoln and Winchester, into the value of Cornish Benefices, 1294, Ecclesia de Rupe, in decanatu de Powdre, i. e. after the Latin, the church of the Rock, or the Rock church, was valued £6. 6s. 8d.

In Wolsey’s Inquisition 1521, the rectory of Roach was valued in £20. The patronage in coparcenary between Arundell of Lanherne and Heart alternately, (by a title derived from the heirs of De Rupes, or Roaches, who endowed it). The incumbent Treweeke. This parish was rated to the four shillings per pound Land Tax for one year, 1696, £147. 13s. 6d.

Moreover, in this parish, whereof I treat, upon the top of the stony rock before mentioned, is still extant the moorstone walls, durnes, and windows (the roof long since

dilapidated or demolished by time), an ancient chapel for divine service; though now, by reason the old stone stairs ascending thereto are pulled down by the tenants of the manor aforesaid, and converted to common uses, the access thereto is very difficult and dangerous. The wall consists of about twenty feet in length, ten feet in height, and about twelve in breadth; one part of it is cut by art out of the natural rock, about thirty feet high from the ground; the other part built of lime and stone, so strong and curious, that neither time, wind, nor weather can yet disfigure it. In its garret over, as appears by the beam holes, there was formerly a lodge or planchin (both which as aforesaid, long since, with the roof, are fallen to the ground). In this chapel wall is towards the east a large moorstone window where the altar stood, with a moorstone door or durns on the south for entrance, and another such door leading to the west, through which you are brought out into a little garden plot and tye-pit on the Rock, that overlooks the country many miles round. Who built this chapel, whether the De Rupes, lords thereof, or others, it is not recorded, nor at what time. But most certain it is, that from this stone rock, the chapel, church, and parish have the denomination Roach.

Mr. Carew in his Survey of Cornwall, p. 139, (p. 324 Lord Dunstanville’s edit.) tells us, that near this rock there is another, which having a pit in it, containeth water, which ebbs and flows as the sea doth. I was thereupon very curious to inspect this matter, and found it was only a hole artificially cut in a stone about twelve inches deep and six broad; wherein, after rayne, a pool of water stands; which, afterwards with fair weather vanisheth away and is dried up; and then again on the falling of rain water is replenished accordingly; which, with dry weather, abates as aforesaid (for upon those occasions I have seen it to have water in its pit, and again to be without it), which doubtless gave occasion to the feigned report that it ebbs and flows as the sea: of all which premisses thus speaks Mr. Carew further out of the Cornish Wonder-Gatherer:

You neighbour-scorners, holy, proud,

Goe people Roache’s cell,

Far from the world and neer to the Heavens;

There, hermitts, may you dwell.

Is’t true the Springe in Rock hereby

Doth tidewise ebb and flowe;

Or have we fooles with lyars met?

Fame says its, be it soe.

The last tradition of this hermitage chapel is, that when it was kept in repair, a person diseased with a grievous leprosy, was either placed or fixed himself therein, where he lived till the time of his death, to avoid infecting others; who was daily attended with meat, drink, washing, and lodging, by his daughter, named Gunett or Gundred; and the well hereby from whence she fetched water for his use is to this day shown, and called by the name of St. Gunett’s well, for St. Gundred’s well.

Tre-Roach, alias Tregarreck, i. e. the Rock town as aforesaid, before the Norman Conquest was in the possession of an old British family, from thence denominated Treroach, afterwards surnamed De Rupe or De Rupes after the Latin; and again, after the Gaulish French De Roach, i. e. of the rock: of which family Ralph de Rupe held in Cornwall by tenure of knight service three knight’s fees of land, tempore Richard I. 1189.—Mr. Carew’s Survey of Cornwall, p. 49. That is to say, for a man to bear arms in defence of his country was the tenure thereof: viz. at his own proper cost and charges.

Tremoderet en Hell, in this parish, i. e. Aunt’s Hall Town, a place heretofore notable for its hall, was the vokelands of a considerable manor in Roach, taxed in the Domesday Book 1087 (near which is yet to be seen the ruins of Sacra-fons, or Holywell, free chapel or burying place); which formerly was the lands of Bodrigan, who forfeited it by attainder of treason on the part of Richard III. against King Henry VII. who settled it by an entail gift

upon his privy councillor Sir Richard Edgcumb, knight, whose posterity are now in full possession thereof.

Hens, alias Hains Burrow, i. e. old ancient graves or tumuli, situate upon the confines of this parish and St. Austell, being the highest mountain or pyramid or promontory of land in Cornwall, upon the top of which unparalleled great tumulus or burying place was the Cornish Avoh Bicken, becken, or beacon; that is to say, the signal, the bakininge watchhouse, or proclamation house; wherein, in times of war, one person was lodged to discover the approach of enemies’ fleets of ships on the sea coasts of Cornwall, and from this place he overlooked part of the Irish sea, Atlantic ocean, and British channel; who, accordingly on the discovery of enemies, was to set fire to his little hut of combustible materials wherein he slept and resided, to give notice, alarm the people, and to make signal, beconinge, or proclamation, to all other bickens to do the like. For heretofore every other parish in Cornwall, upon the highest lands of their said parish, had one of those bickens, beckeners, or beacons, for the same end and purposes. Now those words bicken, becken, beacon, in British, are synonymous, and signify to becken, cry out, to publish, to make known, or to proclaim any matter or thing. (See also Floyd on the word Proclamation.) Of this Hainsburrow Bicken. Mr. Carew, in his Survey of Cornwall, out of the Cornish Wonder-Gatherer, supplies me with those rhymes:—

Haynes-burrow’s wide prospect at once

Both feeds and glutts your eye;

With Cornwall’s whole extent, as it

In length and breadth doth lye.

Note further, that at coll-freth, i. e. strong neck or promontory of land, is the ruins of an old decayed Christian or Druidan chapel, under the walls of which is a well of pure, rapid, and chrystalline water, not far from Pen-ta-vale Fenton aforesaid.

Note also, that haine in French is hatred, strife, contention.

In the side of this mountain or promontory of land, under a rush bush in the Downes, is the original fountain of water called in British Pen-ta-vale Fenton; that is to say, the head, sacred, or consecrated vale, or valley well, or spring of water; from whence in Ptolemy, the Greek Geographer, Anno Dom. 140, we have Valubia and Cornwalia; as from it also we have the old name of Grampound Burrough, coyt-vala; that is, the vale wood, or wood on the river vale, part of which wood is still extant. Also the name of the priory of St. Mary de Vale, formerly in St. Anthony parish in Powdre; as also the name of the famous harbour of Fal or Vale Mouth, known heretofore to Phœnicians, Greeks, and Romans, under the names of ικτα, ikta, Ikta, cove, or harbourgood, and, οςτει, ostei, Ostei; οςτειονες osteiones, Osteiones; that is, the mouth or entrance into the promontory of Cornvaile, or the Vale river.

In this parish, at ——, liveth Mr. John Keen, a surgeon, who hath by his skill and care in his profession got himself considerable reputation and riches thereby,

TONKIN.

St. Roach, in the hundred of Powder, hath to the west St. Dennis and St. Stephen, to the north Great St. Columb, St. Wen, and Withiell, to the east Lanivet and Luxilian, to the south St. Austell.

This parish takes its name from, and is dedicated to St. Roche, born at Montpelier in France, of which city his father was lord. After his father and mother were dead, though but then twenty years of age, he took a resolution to dispose of part of his estate, which he distributed amongst the poor, left the administration of the remainder to his uncle, and from a prince became a pilgrim. He took the way to Rome, and both in his journey thither, and in that city, cured several people of the plague, by making only the sign of the cross. Being at last attacked by it himself, he withdrew into a wood, where a neighbouring gentleman’s

dog brought him every day a loaf of bread; at last, being cured, he returned to his own country, but it being in troublesome times, he was taken up for a spy, and by his uncle (who did not know him) shut up in prison, where he suffered incredible evils; and dying there in 1327, he was at last discovered by a writing found about him. The church celebrates his memory the 16th of August. [But this parish was called Roch before this saint was born, without the addition of saint; for it is named De Rupe in Taxat. Ben. 1291, from its remarkable rock, and was then dedicated to St. Conant, whose memory is still preserved by his well on Trefrank, his park and meadow corruptly called St. Gonnet’s. W.]

It is a rectory, valued in the King’s Book, £20. 0s. 0d.; the patronage in the heirs of Sir John Arundell; the incumbent Mr. Treweek, dead in 1733, now Mr. John Tregenna, Rector of Mawgan in Pider, who holds them both together by [dispensation,] having bought the perpetual patronage of three times out of four from Lord Arundell, [which was sold again by his daughters and heirs to a Society in London, self-combined for the laudable purpose of purchasing the advowsons of livings, to confer them on religious clergymen. And on the death of Mr. Tregenna in 1754, the representatives for the Society nominated Samuel Furley, M.A. the present rector, the sale of the patronage having been so far completed as to belong to the Society, and yet not so far as to enable it legally to present. W.]

This parish was valued (Tax. Ben.) in anno 1291, 20 Edw. I. at £6. 6s. 8d. having never been appropriated.

There being several manors in this parish, I shall begin with one of the largest extent, royalties, &c. viz. the manor of Tregarick, so called by corruption [rather by the customary variation of a letter in composition, from carick, a rock, the dwelling of the rock, as having in it the famous great rock, which (as is said above) gave the name to this parish. W.] This was antiently the seat of a family of the

same name, whose pedigree I have not been able to recover, or to say any more of them, than that John Tregarrek was knight of the shire, 7 Richard II.; [and that] the last of them, —— Tregarick, left only one daughter and heir, Matilda, married to Ralph Trenowth of Fentongollan, esq. anno ——, by whom she had only one daughter and heir Johanna, who as being heir to her mother, carried this manor to her husband, Hugh Boscawen of Tregothnan, esq. anno —— [about 1400, see Peerage.] Ever since which it hath been in the possession of this family, the Lord Viscount Falmouth being the present lord thereof.

[Authors cannot always draw conclusions from their own premises: we have an instance of this here. The parish of Roch has no relation to the noble pilgrim of France. It was called Roch before this saint was born; and the saint of the church was St. Conant, whose memory is still preserved by his well on Trefrank, his park and meadow, corruptly called St. Gonnet’s. But this saint was afterwards superseded by a more modern one, a nameless one, who, actuated with the spirit of the pilgrim in France, renounced the world, retired to this rock, built a small house of stone upon a point at one end of it, and there spent his days in hermetical devotions. The house is still entire in the shell of it, having a small sort of common window at the outer end of it, and a little flat for a garden upon one side; this, from its proximity to the church and church town, was very near to the haunts of men for a hermitage, but it was raised upon a most extraordinary mass of rock, that here rises upon the ridge of a heath in a rough and huge kind of carcass, and spreads in its large limbs to a considerable distance along the heath. On a tall and pillar-like spire of this rock, ascendible only by a ladder, is the hermitage, and the view from it must have been then, not much more wild and savage than it is at present; the house and lands of Tregarick being just under it. Indeed, the hermitage must have been built by the family itself, as it is planted upon their ground. Even one of the family I suppose was

the very hermit. Nor could it have been constructed for this purpose at any period earlier than 1291, as appears from the Valor of Edward, which calls the parish only Roche, and knows of no saint of the name; the look of the whole building, and the form of the window particularly, concur to fix the hermit probably as late as the year 1400, and to mark him perhaps for the last of the Tregaricks. Deprived of all male issue, he perhaps grew disgusted with the world, resigned up his mansion and his estate to his daughter, and devoted himself for the remainder of his life to poverty, to sequestration, and to prayer; and from the natural tendency of mankind to revere those virtues of self-denial and devoutness in others, which they are too gross and too indulgent to practise themselves; he became revered in his life, he was canonized after his death, and the parish took its denomination from its native saint, its saint of the rock, and its own St. Roche, preferring him to its old saint, Conant, and for his sake attaching the name of saintship to its old name of Roche. W.]

THE EDITOR.

Roach rock and tower are very conspicuous objects. The tower, like some others in that neighbourhood, is lofty and without pinnacles.

The rock is in itself the most remarkable object in all that range of crystaline formations, and it is crowned by the building described by Mr. Hals, which bears every appearance of having been the cell of an anchorite, a Stylites, or pillar saint, so far as this climate would admit. Mr. Lysons, but without quoting any authority, says it was dedicated to St. Michael. Mr. Whitaker, clearly drawing on the resources of his own fancy, has transformed Gunett or Gundred, the traditionary daughter of the Leper who retired to this place, into a masculine saint, whom he names St. Conant, and to whom Mr. Whitaker says, that not only the hermitage but the church is dedicated.

As Mr. Whitaker and Mr. Lysons have failed of producing any document, or of alleging any tradition worthy of the smallest reliance, it may fairly be concluded that nothing is known with respect to the origin or specific use of this cell. It may therefore have been constructed as they think, by some proprietor of a neighbouring estate impelled by the insane mythology then in fashion, for it cannot be called religion; and afterwards, as appears to have been the case in various other situations, it may have been used for a place of penitentiary exile from St. Petrock’s Monastery. Mr. Lysons has given a perspective view, and an exact plan of this building, accompanied by measurements, from which it appears to be 14 feet 8 inches long, by 10 feet 6 inches wide, and the wall about 2 feet 3 inches thick, except at the south-eastern end, where the wall is laid down 3 feet 6 inches. No one can wish to see this building again appropriated to its former superstitious purposes; but it may be a fair subject of regret, that such a remnant of antiquity should not be protected from injury by the addition of a roof.

Mr. Treweeke, the incumbent mentioned by Mr. Hals, was succeeded by Mr. John Tregenna, who held also the rectory of Mawgan in Pider, and on his decease in 1754, the Rev. Samuel Furley was nominated by a Society in London, who had purchased this and other livings, especially in populous places, for the avowed purpose of inculcating specific religious opinions. At Roach it is understood that benefit has resulted to the inhabitants from these appointments, and certainly no clergyman could be more exemplary in the discharge of his parochial duties, or more liberal in his conduct, than the able and intelligent individual and excellent scholar who, to the regret of the whole neighbourhood, has recently retired from the arduous care of a flock, consisting chiefly of stream-work miners, the least cultivated portion of a class of men, in general much exceeding the average population of this kingdom in general

knowledge, and consequent good conduct, in relation to their duties both in public and in private life.

Yet, notwithstanding this instance, the Editor cannot but think that such a system of mortmain for making church patronage permanently subservient to self-constituted bodies, as the medium for giving currency to peculiar doctrines, thus erecting mere wealth into an hierarchy as well as an aristocracy in this kingdom, requires a prohibition from the legislature; more especially as the desire and the zeal for acquiring proselytes have been found in all times, in all nations, and under every form of religion, not to bear a very strict relation either to the soundness of doctrine, or to the virtues such doctrine may be likely to produce.

It is clearly impossible that this parish can have been dedicated to St. Roche, since the name occurs in the Valuation of Pope Nicholas made about the year 1291, where, under the Deanery of Pouder, stands: Ecclesia de Roupe, Taxatio, £6. 6s. 8d. Decima, 12s. 8d. while St. Roche is said to have died in 1327, forty-six years afterwards; and if that were not sufficient, the name occurs in the Domesday Survey made two hundred years before the time of Pope Nicholas, and two hundred and fifty before that of the saint.

The similarity of the sounds—parish of the Rock, and parish of St. Roche,—may have occasioned a subsequent adoption of this saint: of whom it is stated, from the very scanty materials remaining to make out his life, that having left Montpellier, the place of his birth, to proceed on a pilgrimage to Rome, he encountered the plague at the city of Placentia; that not obtaining any assistance or human help, after that most dreadful disease had manifested itself on his person, he got into a wood where dogs miraculously afforded him all the aid in their power, after a manner suggested by the parable of Lazarus. Getting well, he bestowed on others in the town that help which had been refused to himself; and fully satisfied with this effort

on behalf of humanity, he returned into France, and spent the remainder of his life in idleness and solitude.

He is fervently adored, and his aid entreated, over France and Italy, as the individual to whom Almighty God has delegated the care and superintendence of all cutaneous complaints or exterior ulcers; and it is rather curious that throughout Cornwall a congeries of pimples is denominated a roach up to the present time.

This parish measures 6,080 statute acres.

£.s.d.
Annual value of the Real Property, as returned to Parliament in 1815398900
Poor Rate in 1831577170
Population,—
in 1801,
954		in 1811,
1161		in 1821,
1425		in 1831,
1630

giving an increase of 71 per cent. in 30 years.

Present Rector, the Rev. Charles Lyne, presented by the Trustees in 1833.

THE GEOLOGY, BY DR. BOASE.

The grand geological feature of this interesting parish is the large mass of granular shorl rock, which towers above the adjacent country. It has all the appearance and form (so far as regards the mechanical structure of this mass) of a projecting tor of granite, such as commonly cap the most elevated hills in Cornwall: but a nearer examination shows that it is a compound of shorl and quartz. This rock is entirely surrounded by a felspathic slate, being about a mile distant from the granite. St. Mewan Beacon is an instance of another large tor of shorl rock, a notice of which was omitted under the head of St. Mewan; this rock differs however from that of Roach in having a base of compact crystalline quartz, throughout which the shorl is disseminated in various proportions. Its position is also different, for that rises immediately out of the granite.

The southern part of Roach parish reposes on granite;

the remainder on rocks of the porphyritic series. It corresponds in its geological structure with the parish of St. Dennis.