The Cornwall Coast

by Arthur L. Salmon

CHAPTER IV

ST. AUSTELL TO ST. MAWES

The town of St. Austell is not exactly upon the coast, but it is only about two miles inland, and visitors may be attracted by the reputation of its fine church. It is a busy and self-respecting little town, and is the commercial centre of a district that, for Cornwall, is quite thickly populated; it is, indeed, one of the few Cornish districts in which population has really shown an increase of recent years. Much of its growing activity is due to the china-clay business; St. Austell claims to be the china-clay metropolis of the world. Most of the shipment is done from Fowey, Par, and Charlestown. The industry is becoming a recognised lucrative field for investment. Yet the immediate presence of the mines and yards is not a thing of beauty or of comfort. St. Austell Church, dedicated to a companion of the famous St. Samson, has a lofty Perpendicular granite tower, whose niches contain statues of Christ, the Virgin, and many other saintly figures. The implements and emblems of the Crucifixion are carved in the southern buttresses. Older than the tower is the chancel; and there is a Cornish inscription, Ry Du ("give to God") above the porch. In the churchyard is one of the sacred stones whose names at least we find scattered in different parts of the kingdom, such as the stan (or Steyne) of Brighton, and the "folk's-stone" of a popular Kentish watering-place. This St. Austell stone, the Menagew, is said to have once stood at the junction of three manors, but its veneration doubtless dates from a far earlier period. The historian Lake tells us, "It is certain that on this stone all declarations of war and proclamations of peace were read; and although at present it is partially disregarded, a strong degree of veneration still attaches to its name. All cattle that had been impounded for a given time, and for which no owner could be found, were brought to this stone and exposed for a certain number of market days, after which, if they remained unclaimed, their sale became legal." But many visitors will probably take greater interest in the famed Carclaze Mine, situated more than 600 feet above sea-level; the pit is about 150 feet deep, and nearly a mile round. Once notable for its tin, this mine now supplies an immense quantity of china-clay and stone. Charlestown may claim to be the port of St. Austell, and is becoming also a popular residential suburb. But St. Austell has another watering-place in Porthpean, a mile or two westward, which, though it can boast of no shipping, has features that may some day bring it a wide reputation. With good sands, good bathing, a mild climate, Porthpean might easily develop into a holiday resort of the conventional but highly prosperous type. As yet its fame is hardly more than local.

South of Black Head, an eminence of about 150 feet, is the little port of Pentewan, noted for its elvan building stone, which is shipped, together with some china-clay, from its excellent small harbour. Pentewan stone has a good name for hardness and durability; its qualities are well shown in the tower of St. Austell Church. In the tin works here, carried on at some depth below sea-level, were found horns of the Irish elk, not petrified, but completely metallised by the tin ore; also definite traces of buried forest. It is said also that some curious oaken canoes were discovered in the soil, but were, unfortunately, destroyed for firewood by the tinners. It is hard to estimate how many valuable antiquities have been similarly destroyed by carelessness and ignorance; but such ruin has been more often suffered by stone monuments, longstones, kistvaens, snatched for use as gate-posts and walls by heedless farmers and builders.

About two miles inland from Pentewan is Heligan, a very fine estate, whose gardens display rare subtropical vegetation. Such vegetation is rather a boasted feature in southern and western Cornwall, and is, of course, interesting as a kind of tour-de-force, showing what the British climate at its best can do. Apart from this use, however, it may seem to some of us that such efforts are easily overdone; the native beauty of an English garden or woodland has infinitely more appeal, more freshness, more loveliness, than any grandeurs of the exotic. The glories of Kew Gardens have their charm, their utility, their educational value; but tropical growths are really as much out of place in an English landscape as a Moorish palace or a Buddhist temple would be. All who know anything of landscape gardening know that it has been a fertile field for the growth and exemplification of false taste. Yet the plea of botanical interest, educational use, may be added to the attraction of rarity as a defence of all such cultivations as we find not only at Heligan and Mount Edgcumbe, but at Morrab Gardens and Tresco. Those of us who dislike them can keep away. But Heligan has a reputation also for genuine English beauty. The old mill here has been a favourite with many artists, and has become familiar in many an exhibition-room. At Lanshadron, close by, is a mutilated cross, which is perhaps unique in having an inscription around its base; the inscription being Latin. Heligan is in the parish of St. Ewe, which is usually supposed to be a dedication to St. Eustachius; but non-Celtic saints are almost as much out of place in Cornwall as exotic plants are, and St. Ewe was probably some forgotten British or Welsh missionary. A former clergyman of this parish appears to have been notable as a healer of bodies as well of souls. We read of him that "Martin Atwell, parson of St. Ewe about 1600, was a physician of body as well as soul: now and then he used blood-letting or bleeding, and administered Marius Christi and other like cordials, yet mostly for all diseases he prescribed milk, and very often milk and apples, and recovered sundry out of desperate and forlorn extremities: his liberality was very great, his affection for religion sound, and he turned out with both hands in pios usus." Certainly a most enlightened man for his time, and if we could only add that he recommended the milk to be sour we should have brought his modernity to the highest point.

Mevagissey, about six miles south-west of St. Austell, was once one of the most flourishing fishing-ports on the Cornish coast, and though it has not quite maintained its relative position, it is not done with yet. The town can also boast some fame as the Aberalva of Kingsley's Two Years Ago, a book once far more popular than it is to-day. The same claim has been made for Clovelly; but though some features in the novelist's description may be applied equally to both, there are other points that can only be attributed to Mevagissey. Kingsley, who wrote the book fifty years since, says: "Between two ridges of high pebble bank some twenty yards apart, comes Alva River rushing to the sea. On the opposite ridge, a low white house, with three or four white canvas-covered boats and a flagstaff with sloping crossyard, betokens the coastguard station. Beyond it rise black jagged cliffs; mile after mile of iron-bound wall: and here and there, at the glens' mouths, great banks and denes of shifting sand.... Above, a green down stretches up to bright yellow furze-crofts far aloft. Behind, a reedy marsh, covered with red cattle, paves the valley till it closes in; the steep sides of the hill are clothed in oak and ash covert.... Pleasant little glimpses there are, too, of gray stone farmhouses, nestling among sycamore and beech; bright green meadows, alder-fringed; squares of rich fallow-field, parted by lines of golden furze; all cut out with a peculiar blackness and clearness, soft and tender withal, which betokens a climate surcharged with rain. Only, in the very bosom of the valley, a soft mist hangs, increasing the sense of distance, and softening back one hill and wood behind another, till the great brown moor which backs it all seems to rise out of the empty air. For a thousand feet it ranges up, in huge sheets of brown heather, in gray cairns and screes of granite, all sharp and black-edged against the pale blue sky." The description of the town itself that follows might apply tolerably well to a number of such fishing-ports in the West Country; but Kingsley is most clearly not speaking of Clovelly, and he introduces Cornish names. That corner of North Devon must be content with figuring in Westward-Ho! and not claim Two Years Ago. There was the cholera also, which was a very terrible reality at Mevagissey in 1849, and which did its good work as well as its evil, by causing the place to be thoroughly cleansed. The truly Cornish name of the town derives from a double dedication to the Saints Meven (or Mewan) and Issey; St. Mewan being a Welsh saint, and St. Issey probably an Irishman. The place has won, and deserved, the nickname of Fishygissey, but there is none the less a real charm about it; its distance from the railway, however inconvenient for visitors, brings compensations that many can appreciate. The pier dates from 1770, but the harbour is much more recent. A fine and costly harbour constructed about 1890 was destroyed in the following year by the great blizzard, which is distinctly "the storm" in the West of England; the present quays were built in 1897. At one time more pilchards were taken here than at any other spot, but the pilchard is a fickle fish, and has no consideration beyond the choice of feeding-grounds; if better satisfied elsewhere, no sentiment interferes with its migrations. But there are still a good many pilchards taken off Mevagissey, and these are largely cured here—many under their own name, but a large number find their way to the factory of the Cornish Sardine Company established in the town. It has often been debated whether pilchards and sardines are one and the same; Mr. Aflalo says they are identical. It is certain that many so-called sardines are pilchards—and some are sprats. Differences in size may be accounted for by the fact that Cornish nets have often a rather large mesh, and the smaller fish are not taken. Many such nets are made at Mevagissey. The seine, or sean-net, was that commonly used here when the pilchard schools came nearer, but is now almost abandoned for the drift-net; we shall find seines still common further west. The seine may be described as a wall of netting, buoyed at the surface and weighted below; this is dipped in the thick of the shoal, its ends drawn together, and the fish taken out with a tuck-net. The leaded bottom of the net must touch the ground or the fish will escape; thus seine-fishing is only practicable in shallow waters. With it is associated the occupation of the "huers," who are stationed on the look-out above the shore, and who signal the arrival of the schools, easily seen in the daylight. But this method is now abandoned at Mevagissey, where the fishermen go farther from port, sailing to meet the schools in open sea instead of waiting close to shore for them. In many details their drift-fishing differs from the seine. The nets are long and deep, with a fairly large mesh: the object being for the fish to become entangled as in a trap, into which they swim blindly. A dark night is the most favourable; the drift-fishers start from port about sunset, and are often back with their catch long before dawn. The fish, indeed, are frequently caught, brought ashore, and sold before daybreak; some are taken off by hawkers to be sold at farms and cottages about the country-side, while others go at once to the curers, or are pressed for export. Of course, mackerel and other fish are caught, often in considerable quantity, but the distinctive Cornish fish is the pilchard, and the pilchard has had most to do with the prosperity of Cornish fishing-ports. Unless cooked by the initiated, however, who get rid of the superfluous oil, the fresh pilchard is a very bilious article of diet, and the visitor must be wary.

In Mevagissey Church there is a curious old font, probably Norman in date as it is in appearance. The tower of this church was removed for some reason, perhaps because it was out of repair; and it was slyly reported in the neighbourhood that the townsfolk had sold their bells to pay for the removal of their tower. Cornish parishes are fond of these jibes against each other. Penwarne, the seat of "One-handed Carew," is in this parish; he lost his hand at the siege of Ostend in 1601, and returning after the fight, he presented the amputated limb to his hostess, remarking "This is the hand that cut the pudding to-day." A little south is the fishing hamlet of Portmellin; and just beyond Chapel and Turbot Points reach out into the Channel. There are remains of entrenchment on the headlands, and a little inland the farm of Bodrigan perpetuates the name of an old Cornish family, once of power and reputation. The waste known as Woful Moor, and the rock on the coast named Bodrigan's Leap, both have a tale to tell in relation with the ruin of this ancient family. It seems that in the days of Richard III. Sir Henry Bodrigan was engaged in a fierce feud with the leaders of the Edgcumbe and Trevanion families, and in the hour of his prosperity he pressed them hardly. When the day of adversity came and he was attainted by the newly crowned Henry Tudor, Bodrigan's enemies turned on him with vindictive zeal. Driven to bay, the desperate Bodrigan met them in a last conflict on Woful Moor, so named to commemorate his sorrow, and was so hotly pressed that he was compelled to leap from the shore, at the spot still known as his "leap." The drop was of a hundred feet, but he escaped without injury and was picked up by a vessel that lay beneath. His later story is not told; but Gilbert says that "he seems to have perished in exile. His property was divided between the two families opposed to him, and, after the lapse of three hundred and fifty years, continues to form a large portion of their respective possessions." But much water has passed by Black Head since Gilbert wrote.

There is a recollection of Bodrigan at Gorran Haven, where he is said to have built the old pier; this was rebuilt in 1888. Gorran Haven is a most attractive little fishing-village, and may have a future before it as a watering-place; at present it only draws the quietest of visitors. The beach is excellent, pleasantly diversified with crags; and there is a small outlying mass of rock known as the Guineas or Gwinges, round which a rough sea breaks finely. There is a daughter chapel here, late Tudor, dating from about 1450 and restored in 1885; while the mother-church of St. Gorran at the church-town has a pinnacled tower of 110 feet in height (late Perpendicular) with six bells. This was renovated in 1896. There are some good initialled bench-ends in the church. It is a district of grain culture. Gorran men were rather made a butt of by their neighbours in the old days; they "tried to throw the moon over the cliffs," and they "built a hedge to keep in the moonlight." Such parochial witticisms may be laughed at to-day, but they often provided a stinging grievance in the past and were a handy weapon in neighbourly feuds. They were by no means limited to Cornwall, though the Duchy was very plentifully supplied. The typical instance in England is that of the unfortunate men of Gotham, whom it is amusing to find old Ray seriously defending in his Proverbs, where he says that "as for Gotham, it doth breed as wise people as any which causelessly laugh at their simplicity. Sure I am, Mr. William de Goteham, fifth Master of Michael House in Cambridge, 1336, and twice Chancellor of the University, was as grave a governour as that age did afford." All which may be very true; and doubtless the men of Gorran were no more simple than their decriers. Doubtless also they had a payment for all compliments. The local dedication seems to be to the Gorran or Goron who surrendered his cell at Bodmin to St. Petrock, perhaps because he recognised a better man.

The coast around Gorran is very grand, and reaches its culmination in Dodman Point, sometimes called the Deadman, which rises to about 370 feet. The cliff has a sheer drop to the water, which is here deep, so that large vessels can pass close inshore. The local saying linking Dodman with Rame Head has already been quoted; and it is asserted that Dodman and Rame really did meet when they both came into possession of Sir Piers Edgcumbe. This bare, gaunt headland has proved disastrous to shipping, and some will recollect that two torpedo-destroyers, the Thresher and the Lynx collided with the rock here in a fog, several lives being lost through the resultant explosion. This point is the eastern gateway of Veryan Bay; in the heart of which bay lies the very small parish of St. Michael Caerhayes, or Carhays. The parish is inseparably connected with the old Cornish family of Trevanion, one of which family, Sir John, fell at the siege of Bristol in the Civil War, and left his name to the sad commemorative couplet in which Cornwall recorded those by whose lives she had to pay for their glory:—

"The four wheels of Charles's Wain,
Grenville, Godolphin, Trevanion, Slanning, slain."