VERYAN.
HALS.
Veryan is situate in the hundred of Powder, and hath upon the north Tregony and Ruan Lanyhorne, east Caryhayes, west Philley, south the British Channel.
Sure I am that in the Domesday Book 1087, this church
or district was taxed under the name and jurisdiction of Elerchy, situate upon the lands of the Bishop of Bodman, now the Bishop of Exeter’s manor of Elerchy; and by the same name it was taxed in the inquisition of the Bishops of Lincoln and Winchester 1294, where we read Ecclesia de Elerky in decanatu de Powdre £10. vicar’ ejusdem 40s.; and in Wolsey’s Inquisition 1521, alias St. Verian as aforesaid, £19; the patronage in the Bishop of Exeter; the incumbent ——; the rectory in possession of ——; and the parish rated to the four shillings per pound Land Tax 1696, for one year, £216. 9s. by the name of Verian.
Note further, that Cæsar in his Commentaries mentions several places in Gallia, called Elerci and Aulerci, from whence this word came into Britain. Those were of four sorts, viz. Aulerci Eburorices, now Eureæ in Normandy, Aulerci Diablentres, Aulerci Cenomanni, now Mans, and Elerci Branovices.
In this parish is the dwelling by lease of Richard Trevanion, gent. captain of a foot company in the militia, that married —— Maunder, his father ——, his grandfather Arundell, originally descended from the Trevanions of Tregarthin and Caryhayes, and giveth the same arms with them. His son Richard, that married —— Verman, was bred up in the school of Mars, under King William III. in his wars, wherein he accompanied him as captain of a foot company in all his Irish and Flanders war; and lastly, was posted to the command of Pendenis Castle in Cornwall, where he died. His son Nicholas was also bred up in the marine regiments of King William III. and afterwards had the command of the ——, a third-rate man-of-war, and demeaned himself so well therein, in point of valour and conduct, that after King William’s death, he was knighted by Queen Anne, and is now one of the commissioners at the dock of Plymouth for the Admiralty.
In this parish also at ——, by lease, is the dwelling of John Robins, esq. some time Commissioner for
the Peace and Taxes, that married —— Thomas, his father —— Lawry, his grandfather ——, and giveth for his arms, of a supposed allusion to his name, Argent, a fess nebulé, between three Robin Red-breasts Proper; whereas, robin in Cornish is Robert in English, and roobron is red-breast.
In the Domesday Book are taxed also the vokelands of two other manors, which I take it are now dismembered and situate in this parish, viz. Treviles, or Trefilies, and Govile.
TONKIN AND WHITAKER.
Veryan is in the hundred of Powder, and is bounded to the west by St. Just, [by Gerrans,] by Philleigh, by Ruan Lanyhorne, and by St. Cuby, [by Ruan Lanyhorne and the Fal,] to the east by St. Ewe and St. Michael Carhays, to the south by Gerrans and the sea [rather by the sea only, Gerrans being only west and south-west].
The name of this parish is a corruption, or rather abbreviation of St. Symphorian, of which name there are two; one, saith Mr. Willis (Not. Parl. vol.II. page 119), “born (as the Legenda Aurea tells us) in Augustinum, the head city of Burgundy, where he suffered martyrdom on the 22d of August, about the year 270.” The other [Mr. Willis’s own words are these, “though besides this person, I find mention made of another St. Simphorian, in Leland’s Collectanea, vol. I. a martyr, buried with St. Wolfran a Bishop at Grantham, to whose memory that church is dedicated. This St. Wulfran’s festival [was] celebrated the 15th of October.” (Note, that in many fines, records, &c. this parish is called Sancta Symphrogia, or Simphrosia, who was wife to Getulius, a rich citizen of Rome, and suffered martyrdom with him and seven of her sons at Rome, A. D. 136, under Adrian. See Le Seur, Hist. de l’Eglise et l’Empire, vol. I. page 516).
This church is a vicarage, valued in the King’s Book,
£19; the patronage in the Dean and Chapter of Exeter; the incumbent Mr. Fincher; the sheaf in Mr. Richard Kempe of Tregony, by lease [from Mr. Weston, who had a lease transmitted, I believe, from his father, Bishop Weston]; who resigning in 1734, was succeeded by Mr. Question.
But the antient name of this parish was Elerky, and so it is still called in the King’s Book, as it is too in Taxatio Benefic. 20 Edw. I. “Ecclesia de Elerky 10 lib. vicar’ ejusdem, xl. solid.” from the great
MANOR OF ELERKY.
In Domesday Book it is called Elerchi, which signifies the swan’s house or swannery; for Elerk in Cornish is a swan, and there are the remains of a large pool under the house, which seems to have been designed to that end.
It is in the said book inserted among the manors given by William the Conqueror, to his half-brother Robert Earl of Morton and Cornwall.
Francis Tregian, esq. among the rest of his estates, forfeited his half of this manor.
WHITAKER.
The original name of this parish was the same with the name of the manor Elerchi, or Elerky; that the appellation of the manor in Domesday Book, this in the present time, and both derived from the manerial house. This house stood upon a rising ground, nearly opposite to the church, and on the west of it, which is now covered with several houses of a mean condition, and yet marked as something considerable to the eye, by a grove of tall trees upon it. The great house, which the ancestors of these trees shaded, has been long down, I suppose; and the mean houses on the ground have been constructed of the poorest remains of it. It was bounded on the south by the lane leading down
to its own mills, still called Elerky Mills, and distinctively noted as higher and lower; and on the east and north by its lively brook, without a name, that divides the glebe from the manor, then environs the house, and finally runs to the two mills below. The manor is accordingly noticed so late as the 5th of Charles the First, to have two mills within it. These mills even now proclaim their original relation to each other, by the restrictions which the higher is under to the lower, in not being able to keep up the water from the other, beyond a certain space of time. And the house thus environed by the brook could not have been very small, as it was the mansion of a district, which in the 12th of Edward the First was reckoned at forty-two acres, when so many are valued in much less, and when so few are valued in more; but whence is the original name of this house derived? Mr. Tonkin derives it from Elerk (C.) a swan, and makes Elerky to signify the swannery, adding, that “there are the remains of a large pool under the house, which seems to have been designed to that end.” In all that part of antiquarian researches where the eye is to be assisted by the imagination, and the past to be collected from the broken appearances of the present; every active and lively mind is apt to cry out against the creative fancies of the antiquarian poet, and to exclaim in the language of Shakspeare,
—— As imagination bodies forth
The form of things unseen, the Poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
But this spirit of exclamation should be checked. What depends in any degree upon imagination, may by minds without imagination be easily turned into ridicule. What is only to be inferred by slow and painful collation of circumstances, will be ridiculed at once by those who are too brisk to be slow, and too lively to take pains. And the very ingeniousness of antiquaries themselves, will at times
be a snare to them also, by inducing them to cut short the labour of investigation, to ridicule the dull laboriousness of conjecturing industry, and to leap over the difficulty which it will not take the trouble to remove. On the whole, therefore, I think Mr. Tonkin’s etymology of Elerky to be the only one which is easy and natural, and his reference to “remains of a large pool under the house,” to be sufficiently grounded. There has evidently been something of the kind there. A little dam below would easily make one now. The remains were probably more in Mr. Tonkin’s time than they now are. And these corroborating, and corroborated by the positive import of Eala, (I.) Alarch (W.) and Elerk, Elerchy (C.) a swan, and the undoubted signification of the latter when thus combined Elerch Chy (C.) for a swan’s house, compel us to adopt the etymon.
But this name has been entirely superseded in popular use by the name of the saint. So much was the spiritual patron of a church considered and talked of, that his name was used to the total neglect of the other. But who was the saint of this church? Symphorian, says Mr. Tonkin; and Mr. Tonkin is right. It seems odd indeed to suppose such a corruption of a name as this; Symphorian changed into Veryan. But we see in Leland, (Itin. ii, 112), that the parish of Trevenny at Tintagel in this county, “is of S. Symphorian, ther caullid Simiferian.” This is exactly in point. Symphorian was called in this parish, as well as in Trevenny, Simiforian or Simiferian, in order to accommodate it more to our liquified pronunciation. It would then be sure to be abridged soon, for the more rapid pronunciation of it, by leaving out the first half of the name, and taking only the last, just as Elizabeth is popularly abbreviated into Bet. The name would thus be Phorian, Ferian, Voryan, or Verian; as we have an estate in the parish before, denominated Tre-Veryan, and as the ordinary appellation of the parish is St. Veryan in a record above, and in common conversation Veryan. And the time of observing the parish feast coincides with all, and
confirms it; Symphorian, of Autun in Burgundy, having suffered martyrdom the 22d of August; and the feast in honour of his martyrdom being observed accordingly. Eight years ago the feast was agreed, for the sake of the harvest, to be postponed one month; as, upon the same principle, the memory of the parishioners says, it had been previously postponed one fortnight. It is now kept on the first Sunday in October, was previously kept on the first in September, and originally on the third Sunday in August.
Nor can the name of St. Symphrogia, or Simprosia, which is said to occur as the title of the parish “in many fines, records, &c.” be any thing else than a corruption of St. Symphorian. And as a full evidence, I find the picture of St. Veryan and his wife were within memory to be seen in the eastern window of the church.
The square tower of Veryan church appears from its position on the side of the church, and at the south-western end of the chancel, to have been an addition to the church. After the lord had deserted Elerkey for Ruan, the lord’s chapel was lengthened out into a belfry, with a tower over it. The architecture of this tower seems to a passing eye different from that of the church itself. And within, I doubt not, evident traces will appear on examination, of the posteriority of the tower to the church.
THE EDITOR.
There is very little to add respecting Veryan. Mr. Lysons states that the manor of Elerkey, which gave its secular name to the parish, now lost in that of the patron saint, belonged with Ruan Lanihorne to the family of Archdeknes, from them it passed to the Lucys and Vaux, &c. and that it was finally purchased by the late Mr. Francis Gregor in 1790.
The Dean and Chapter of Exeter have the great tithes, and they are patrons of the vicarage; and, what is perhaps without example in reference to so fluctuating a body, three
successive vicars have stood in near relationship to each other. The Reverend Mr. Mills was succeeded by his son-in-law the Rev. Jeremiah Trist, and Mr. Trist by his son, the Rev. S. P. J. Trist, who was instituted in 1829. The net income of the benefice in 1831 was £339.
In the charter of William Earl of Morton, founding his priory of Montacute, among the endowments is the following: “Et in Cornubia Ecclesiam de Lerky,” which cannot be any other than Veryan, by its original name.
The late Mr. Trist built a very excellent house on his own land adjoining to the glebe.
Veryan measures 4864 statute acres.
| £. | s. | d. | |
| Annual value of the Real Property as returned to Parliament in 1815 | 6625 | 0 | 0 |
| Poor Rate in 1831 | 1255 | 12 | 0 |
| Population,— | |||
| in 1801, 1007 | in 1811, 1082 | in 1821, 1421 | in 1831, 1525 |
giving an increase of 51½ per cent. in 30 years.
THE GEOLOGY, BY DOCTOR BOASE.
This extensive and interesting parish is entirely situated within the boundaries of the calcareous series. The prevailing rock is a blue argillaceous slate, the surface of which, when perfect, is either glossy and irridescent, or finely striated: it alternates with several kinds of massive or coarsely lamellar rocks, into which it gradually passes. These rocks present the following varieties: a fine grained rock abounding in scales of mica; a variety of greenstone or cornean quartz rocks; and dark-coloured limestone.
This suite of rocks offers many objects worthy of a minute inquiry, far beyond the limits of these short notices.
A very excellent account is given of the Veryan limestone by S. J. Trist, esq. in the first volume of the Transactions of the Geological Society of Cornwall.
Mr. Trist says,
The limestone occurs on the coast at Pendower Beach, and may thence be traced for a mile and a half inland.
It comes to the surface, in three different places, nearly equidistant from each other, but at different elevations, the most inland being probably a hundred and twenty, or thirty feet above the level of the sea. In each instance it creeps out at the brow of a hill, and no where appears in the vale below, where it would seem originally to have stretched across the valleys, but to have been subsequently carried away, together with the accompanying matter, by diluvian action.
In breadth it extends over a superficies of 350 yards, but alternates with an argillaceous schist, the lime itself never exceeding three feet in thickness, and that only in the upper beds of the strata. The lime scarcely amounts altogether to one eighth of the whole mass.
According to an analysis made by the Rev. William Gregor, a good specimen of this stone consists of about nine parts in ten of carbonate of lime.
Mr. Trist then gives a comparative statement of the results from calcining this limestone, and the well-known limestone of Plymouth, that 200 Winchester bushels of lime from the kiln, provincially called shells or foreright lime, are produced from 11 tons of the Veryan limestone, by the consumption of 46 Winchester bushels of culm, more universally known as Welsh stone coal; but that 14½ tons are required of the Plymouth limestone to give the same quantity of lime from the kiln, with the consumption of 56 bushels of culm, which would make the Plymouth limestone inferior to that of Veryan, in about 32 per cent.
as to quality, and about 22 per cent. more in regard to fuel. As a cement, its quality is remarkably good. Small spherical masses of oxide of iron occur in great abundance; they are, in the opinion of Mr. Gregor, pyrites in a state of decomposition, the sulphur having escaped.
The colour of the rock is blue, and it is frequently traversed by veins of calcareous spar.
In the schist which immediately reposes on the limestone, mica appears in considerable abundance, and the whole is strongly impregnated with lime. It is of a soft crumbling nature, decomposing on exposure to the atmosphere, and in that state it is much esteemed as a manure.
The floor on which the lime rests (probably the whole alternating formation) is an argillaceous schist, with veins of manganese, which have been partially wrought.
Mr. Greenough has laid down on his map a broad line extending about E. N. E. from Gerrans and Veryan, crossing St. Blasey Bay and ending near Looe, with the inscription, “calcareous matter along this line”.