Great ships may easily pass under the giant building, and old wooden men-o'-war lie near at hand, giving scale to it, including the Mount Edgcumbe training-ship, the Implacable, and an old French hulk.
This way came the Romans into Cornwall, their post, Statio Tamara, established on the Devonshire side at what is now King's Tamerton. And this way came the Normans, building a strong fortress nearly two miles west of Saltash, at Trematon, on a creek of the Lynher river. They are "proper rough roads" and steep that lead to Trematon Castle. You come to it by way of the hamlet of Burraton Combe and the village of St. Stephen's-by-Saltash. At Burraton some old cottages are seen with a half-defaced tablet on them, once covered over with plaster. Most of the plaster has now fallen off, revealing this inscription, which some one, long ago, was evidently at some pains to conceal:
"This almshouse is the gift of James Buller of Shillingham, Esq., deceased, whose glorious memory as well as illustrious honours ought not to be forgotten but kept, as 'tis to be hoped they will, in euerlasting remembrance, decemr. ye 6 in ye yeare of our Lord 1726."
A shield, displaying four spread eagles, surmounts these praises to the illustrious Buller, whose honours and glorious memory are indeed clean forgot.
Trematon Castle stands on the summit of a mighty steep hill, rising from a creek branching out of a creek. At the head of this remote tongue of water, where the salt tide idly laps, stands the hamlet of Forder. Turner painted Trematon Castle, and in his day the crenellated walls of that amazing strong place could easily be seen from the creek. In these latter days the trees of the Castle hill have grown so tall and dense that little of the ancient stronghold can be glimpsed. A carriage-road winds up the hill, for a residence—not in the least pretending to be a castle, one is happy to say—stands in midst of the fortress precincts.
TREMATON CASTLE.
It is a peculiar castle, the "keep" crowning a lofty mound, difficult of access, heaped upon the highest point of the hill, resembling that of Totnes and some two or three others in the West country, which exhibit vast circular battlemented walls, evidently never roofed nor intended to be roofed. Below this keep is a wide grassy space now occupied by the mansion and its beautiful rose and other gardens. Entrance to this court was formerly obtained by a strong gateway tower still remaining, but not now forming the approach; and around this court ran another massive battlemented wall, most of it existing to this day, and enclosed the castle. Such was the ancient hold of the Valletorts, afterwards the property of the Duchy of Cornwall. Carew finely describes the "ivy-tapissed walls"—it is a pretty expression, thus likening the ivy to tapestry—and tells us how the Cornish rebels of 1549, standing out for the old religion, treacherously invited the governor, Sir Richard Grenville, outside, on pretence of a parley, and then captured the castle and plundered at will. Then "the seely gentlewomen, without regard of sex or shame, were stripped from their apparel to their very smocks, and some of their fingers broken, to pluck away their rings."
Just below Trematon Castle, passing under a viaduct of the Great Western Railway, the creek opens out upon the broad and placid Lynher river, exactly resembling a lake, as its name implies. Here are the four or five cottages of Antony Passage, including a primitive inn. Antony is nearly half a mile across the ferry, but the Lynher, or "St. Germans River," as it is sometimes called, should certainly be explored by boat for its length of four miles to St. Germans, the prettily situated village where the ancient bishopric of Cornwall was seated from its beginning in A.D. 909 until its transference to Exeter in 1046; and where Port Eliot, the park and mansion of the Earl of St. Germans, is placed. Ince Castle, a curious brick-built sixteenth-century building, peers from the wooded shores on the way. An Earl of Devon built it, and the Killigrews held it for a time. The house has a tower at each of its four corners, and according to legend, one of the Killigrews, a kind of double-barrelled bigamist, kept a wife in each tower, ignorant of the others' existence.
