ZENNAR.
HALS.
Zennar is situated in the hundred of Penwith, and hath upon the north the Irish sea, north-east Tywidneck, south Maddarne. For the name, if it be compounded of Sen-nar, it signifies Holy Pool or Lake; otherwise, if it be a corruption of Se-nar or Seynar, English Cornish, it signifies the sea lake, or creek of the sea; and the church is situated in a valley near the sea, with a rivulet of water flowing by it.
At the time of the Norman Conquest, this district was taxed under the jurisdiction of Trenwith, or of Alvorton. When the first inquisition into the value of Cornish Benefices was made, this church was not endowed, if extant; however, in Wolsey’s Inquisition (1521), it was rated by the name of Zennor or Sennor £5. 5s. The patronage in the Bishop of Exeter. This parish was rated to the four shillings in the pound Land Tax in 1696, for one year, at £86. 10s.
This church, I take it, was endowed by the Prior of St. Michael’s Mount, and was formerly wholly impropriate. This parish is comparatively scattered all over with stones and rocks of great bigness; yet amongst those are found very many fertile plots of ground for corn, grass, and barley, as also many tin lodes, tending to the great profit of the farmers and tinners thereof.
In this parish are the ruins of an old free chapel called Chapel Jane, that is the narrow chapel.
TONKIN.
Zennar is in the hundred of Penwith, is bounded to the west by Morva, to the north by the main ocean, to the east by Tawednack, to the south by Madderne.
This parish takes its name from its tutelar saint.
This is a vicarage, valued in the King’s Book £5. 5s. the patronage in the Bishop of Exeter; the incumbent Mr. Oliver.
This parish is beautifully situated, mainly consisting of a belt nearly a mile wide, between the sea on one hand, bounded by high and rocky cliffs, and on the other hand by a chain of granite mountains.
The belt of land, including the church town, is very fertile, particularly abounding in milk and honey, which we early learn to consider as proofs of the most abundant soil.
The church and tower are neat and plain, and it is probable that Mr. Hals’s conjecture respecting its ancient dependence on St. Michael’s Mount, may be correct, since one or more of the bells are said to bear an inscription declaring them the gift of the prior of the Mount.
Mr. Tonkin says, that the name is taken from a patron Saint, but no such saint can be found; and the parish feast is kept on the nearest Sunday to the 6th of May, when the festival is observed by the Church of Rome, in commemoration of the virtual martyrdom and miraculous preservation of St. John the Evangelist; when, by the order of Domitian, he was cast into a caldron of boiling oil before the Latin or Lateran Gate of Rome, where the church of St. John Lateran has since been built, the chief sacred edifice in Rome previously to the construction of St. Peter’s, and celebrated for the assemblage of various general councils of the Catholic Church, thence denominated Councils of Lateran. It is probable, therefore, that this parish may be under the protection of the divine and beloved Apostle.
Towards the western extremity of the parish a bold promontory stretches out into the sea, called Trereen Dinas, but in recent times, from some fanciful resemblance, the Gurnet’s Head. This is by much the finest and most romantic point on the north side of the Land’s End, and it would rival the promontory nearly opposite to it on the south, called by the same name, Trereen Dinas, or Castle Trereen, if that were not composed of granite and crowned by the Logging Rock; while in Zennar the sea shore and
the cliffs are every where green stone, surrounding the granite.
For a description of this headland, see the Second Volume of the Transactions of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall, p. 200. The Editor was so much struck with the appearance of this bold formation, that he purchased the manor of Treen and Baswedneck chiefly for the purpose of acquiring the property of a mass of rocks so geologically interesting.
The impropriation of the great tithes belongs to George John, esq. of Rosemorron, and of Penzance.
Zennar measures 3,647 statute acres.
| £. | s. | d. | |
| Annual value of the Real Property as returned to Parliament in 1815 | 2,137 | 0 | 0 |
| Poor Rate in 1831 | 187 | 5 | 0 |
| Population,— | |||
| in 1801, 544 | in 1811, 671 | in 1821, 715 | in 1831, 811 |
giving an increase of 49 per cent. in 30 years.
Present Vicar, the Rev. W. Veale, collated in 1824 by Dr. Carey, the Bishop of Exeter. The net income of the living, as returned in 1831, was £179.
THE GEOLOGY, BY DR. BOASE.
The greater part of this parish is situated on granite, which presents the varieties common to the Land’s End district. The northern part, in the form of an irregular band, consists of schistose rocks, with the exception of a small patch a little to the north of the church, and another which extends from Polmear Cove to the western boundary of the parish. These slates are for the most part felspathic, and, at their points of junction with the granite, exhibit some beautiful illustrations of granitic veins in the slate.
Note, that Penzance, by a mistake, is not numbered among the parishes [nor is Tregoney]; so that the real number of them must be 204 [or rather 205].
GENERAL REMARKS ADDED HERE BY MR. WHITAKER.
It is stated by Carew:
Fol. 8. “They [the Cornish Tinners] maintaine these workes [“two kind of Tynne workes, Stream and Load”] to have beene verie auncient, and first wrought by the Jewes with Pick-axes of holme, boxe, and hartshorne: they prove this by the name of those places yet enduring, to wit Attall Sarazin, in English, the Jewes’ Offcast, and by those tooles daily found amongst the rubble of such workes.” So, in the stream-work now prosecuted at Carne between Truro and Penrin, were found two stems of deer-horns, which I inspected at Tregothnan in Nov. 1792, and which had been plainly shaped into pickaxes. One of them was even tinged strongly at the picking end, with the stain of some metallic matter on which it has been employed.
Not far from them was found a brass instrument, that had clearly, from the shade still remaining upon the covered part, once had a handle clipping it round the middle, and leaving out the two ends for striking. July 19, 1794, was promised by Lady Falmouth a sketch of all three, done by the hand of the Rev. Mr. Hennah, Rector of St. Austle; but, as he had pronounced the brass instrument to be no celt, and as I proved it to be one, he never sent the sketch.
“There are also taken up in such works,” adds Carew, “certaine little tooles’ heads of brasse, which some terme thunder axes; but they make small show of any profitable use. Neither were the Romaines ignorant of this trade, as may appeare by a brasse coyne of Domitian’s, found in one of these workes,” stream or load, “and fallen into my hands.”
Fol. 56. “Most of the inhabitants can [speak] no word of Cornish, but very few are ignorant of the English; and yet some so affect their owne, as to a stranger they will not speake it: for, if meeting them by chance, you inquire the way or any such matter, your answer shal be, Meea navidua cowzasawsneck, I can speake no Saxonage.” W.]