Antiquaries once thought the Cheesewring a memorial to the dead, from which in the course of centuries the covering earth had been washed away. In this neighbourhood there are many such cairns and monuments. A barrow near by was opened in 1818 and in it an extended skeleton and a gold cup were found. This cup was of Scandinavian type, 3½ in. high, and weighed nearly three ounces, which suggests that some sea rover found his last resting-place in these heathy solitudes.
St. Cleer
From near the Cheesewring a moorland road leads down to St. Cleer, which is divided from St. Neot by the lovely valley of the River Fowey. This parish contains a number of antiquities of varying ages, in fact, as has been said, "dead faiths and dead beliefs lie about this countryside like withered leaves in autumn." At Trewartha Marsh is a prehistoric settlement which probably belongs to the early iron age. Some of the oblong huts are small, but others are fully 50 ft. long, while in the group is what was possibly a public hall with stone benches along its sides, and at the end a chair with arms. A few hut circles and an ancient circular pound are also to be seen.
Doniert's stone, supposed to have been raised in memory of King Alfred's friend, Dungarth of Cornwall, is near Redgate; and in the village of St. Cleer is a Latin cross which stands beside a holy well reputed to have been used like that at Altarnun for the "bowsening" or cure of maniacs. This well has a beautiful little chapel built over the clear spring.
"Tell me the street to Heaven.
This? Or that? Oh, which?
What webs of streets!"
Noguchi.
The fifteenth-century tower of St. Cleer is unusually fine, and the church contains a Norman north doorway, and an early English font of great beauty.
St. Neot
To the north of both St. Cleer and St. Neot lie the wild and uncultivated moors, and the saints must have been brave men who sought the solitude of this granite strewn district. It is little wonder that strange, and to our thinking, absurd legends, should have grown up about them. St. Neot, as has been already said, was a cousin of King Alfred, and it appears that in those days even minor royalties worked for their living. The saint's oxen were stolen—he evidently farmed the land—so the stags of the neighbouring forest performed all the necessary labour, and for this good deed were endowed with a white mark wherever the yoke of labour had touched their brown hides! This and similar stories are depicted on one of the beautiful stained glass windows of the church.
This parish, like so many others in Cornwall, is rich in ancient crosses, there being no less than three, all having incised crosses on them, in the vicarage garden. In the churchyard is one on which is quite the finest interlaced work on granite in the county. It has been mounted on the stone, on which legend says St. Neot, who was a small man, stood in order to unlock the church door. From which story it appears that in those days the churches were kept locked!
Little St. Neot must have been glad to welcome his great kinsman, when as the Book of Hyde (1200 a.d.) says: "Alfred went to Cornwall and repaired to the Church of St. Gueryr, where St. Neot reposes, for the purpose of alleviating his illness." Let us hope Neot was not too saintly to feel a cousinly interest in the King's health and that the two compared their widely differing lives and asked after old friends and what had been the history of this one and that; and that they ate in peace of the wheaten bread which St. Neot, after his farming operations, would be able to offer, and the fish with which another legend daily provided him, and so parted, the one to his burden of life, the other staying on, content with uneventful peace.