The glory of St. Neot's Church is its collection of stained glass. It dates from 1528, and though not quite the oldest in the county, it is said that none comparable with it for beauty and richness exist either in Cornwall or Devon.
The old road from Bodmin to Plymouth, that interesting prehistoric highway by which the early Cornish probably sent their tin for shipment abroad, runs through the village. Long before Alfred came to hob-nob with his cousin, before the Romans so much as knew that Britain existed, and while the mammoth in the valley of the Thames was still shaking his great hairy sides over the littleness of man, the rough stuggy ponies, whose descendants still feed on Goonhilly Downs, were carrying their heavy packs along this track, over the old clapper bridges, past heath, morass, forest, and settlement, at the call of need.
Dozmaré
On the high land north of St. Neot and a little beyond Brown Gilly (1058 ft.) lies Dozmaré, the only inland lake of Cornwall. This tarn, which by old writers was called the Dead Sea from the lifeless appearance of its waters, lies on an elevated plateau in a dreary sad-coloured region. It is nearly square and in circumference about a mile. Tennyson told Mr. J. J. Rogers that the Loe Pool was where he pictured the throwing away of the sword Excalibur. His description suits that and does not suit Dozmaré, while the moormen talk only of "Jan Tergeagle," that unjust steward who does penance for his evil deeds in so many parts of Cornwall. It is said that he has been set to bale Dozmaré—supposed to be bottomless—dry, and has been given to aid him in his task a limpet shell pierced with a hole through which the water drips as he lifts it.
It is perhaps "flogging a dead horse" to mention that in the hot summer of 1869 Dozmaré dried up, thus proving that it was far from bottomless. By disclosing a number of unfortunate trout and eels, it also showed it was by no means "dead." To a moorman the suggestion that Tregeagle has evidently accomplished his task, however, has but little weight. His imagination overleaps the trifling fact of the dry summer and its consequences, and only looks before and after. The pool seems mysterious, it has a healthy legend, and to that legend any one hearing the wind howl over these wastes on a December night may well give credence.
What was the origin of the moated grange? In Dozmaré is a subaqueous pile of stones on which once stood a crannog or lake dwelling, while many arrow heads and worked flints have been found in the neighbourhood. Did the folk who built their homes over a pool find the water so great a protection that their children going east and west, and being unable to discover any more convenient lakes, built a stockaded house, and for its greater safety must by their personal labour surround it with the element in which they had always trusted? Is the moated grange then only the direct descendant of the lake dwelling?