The church of Lanteglos, consisting as it does of the work of so many periods, is exceptionally interesting to the student of architecture. The tower opens into the church by three massive arches, the western corner of the piers being Norman; the nave arcades are of the fourteenth century, the northern slightly earlier than the southern. The four deeply recessed windows in the north with their elaborate tracery are recognised by architects as resembling those of Somerset, which is probably accounted for by the fact that this church was appropriated in 1284 to St. John's Hospital at Bridgwater. Between Lansallos Church, with its lofty tower (514 ft. above the sea), a well-known seamark, and Talland Church, which is full of rich and beautiful work lies Polperro (Pool of Peter) in a cove at the foot of two high hills. This little place is the southern duplicate of Port Isaac, but its air is milder—less bracing—than that of the grey northern town. The houses cluster thickly at the mouth of a cleft between the hills and the storms are so terrible that although three piers protect the little harbour, heavy baulks of timber have often to be let down into grooves, to break the force of the waves. The Couch family have lived at Polperro during several generations, the father and grandfather of the novelist having been doctors there.
It is said that the first station of the Coastguard Preventive Service was at Polperro, a statement which "gives furiously to think." The welcome Cornwall gave to the Parliamentarian generals must have been genial compared with that extended to the preventive officers. Coastguards in Cornwall, the home of wreckers and smugglers! No doubt they had an exhilarating time!
Talland, Killigarth and Trelawne
There are three houses in this neighbourhood about which stories are told. The manor of Talland formerly belonged to the Morths, and one of this family employed a French servant. Mr. Morth does not seem to have given his servant satisfaction, for the man returned home, and when war broke out "returneth back again with a French crew, surprizeth suddenly his master and his guests at a Xmas supper, and forceth the gentleman to redeem his enlargement with the sale of a great part of his revenues" (Carew). It is not often that the tables can be so neatly turned.
Killigarth belonged to the Bevilles, and in the sixteenth century, one Sir William going forth from his own house on a winter's day, found under a hedge a certain John Size nearly dead with cold. He took him into his service and found that he had gotten a remarkable sort of servant, for Size "would eat nettles and thistles, coals and candles, birds with their feathers, and fish with their scales. He could handle, unhurt, blazing wood and hot iron, and used to lie asleep with his head curled under his body" (Carew).
The Trelawnys of Trelawne originally came from another place of the same name, further inland. Among the pictures at this house—parts of which are old—is an early one of Elizabeth, interesting on account of the queen's youth.
John Trelawny, father of the celebrated Jonathan, Bishop of Bristol, was committed to the Tower in 1627 by the House of Commons. As he was popular in the county the Cornish were greatly exercised, and it is said that the old ballad sung riotously by his compatriots:
"And shall Trelawny die?
Here's twenty thousand Cornishmen
Will know the reason why—"
was instrumental in procuring his release. Be that as it may, he was set free by order of the King and shortly after made a baronet. The ballad composed for the misfortunes of the father survived to be made of use when his son, one of the seven bishops who presented the petition to James II., was imprisoned and tried for seditious libel by that most worthless of the Stuarts. The verses were subsequently lost, the Rev. Robert Hawker, always ready to make good any little deficiency of the kind having composed the present version.