Caerhays, the seat of John Bettesworth Trevanion, Esq. Lieutenant Colonel in the Cornish Militia, is another beautiful mansion of a castellated form, lately rebuilt at a very considerable expense from designs of that eminent architect Nash.

About four miles from hence is Tregony, a very antient Borough-town, and in former times a place of some consequence. It formerly had two Churches, a Castle, and Priory; but one of the former has long since gone entirely to decay, and the one now remaining at the head of the town, though very small, has a respectable and venerable appearance. Scarcely a vestige remains of the Castle, which stood at the lower end of the town. This is said to have been built by Henry de Pomeroy, on behalf of John, Earl of Cornwall, at the time that King Richard I. was in the Holy Land: it was standing, and was the seat of the Pomeroys, in the reign of Edward VI.

In the year 1696,[[10]] Hugh Boscawen, Esq., founded an Hospital for decayed housekeepers, and endowed it with lands, now let at 30£. per annum, but capable of being soon raised (at the expiration of the present lease) to about three times that sum.

Tregony returned members to Parliament in the reign of Edward I., and the right of election is vested in the principal housekeepers paying scot and lot. According to the late census, the inhabitants amount to 1035, being an increase of only 112 since the year 1811. Tregony has a market weekly, and five fairs annually.

On the north side of the town stood what is called Old Tregony, where was a church dedicated to St. James, the walls of which were standing when Tomkin made his collections about the year 1736: part of the tower remained many years later. This church was a rectory, the advowson of which belonged to the Abbey de Valle, in Normandy, and was given by that convent, in the year 1267, to the prior and convent of Merton, in Surrey, in exchange, together with the Priory of Tregony, a small cell to that alien monastery. Mr. Whitaker says, that the site of the Priory of Tregony was opposite the old mount of the castle, and speaks of a doorway belonging to a stable, as having been the gateway of the Priory. The rectory of St. James is held with the vicarage of St. Cuby.

There was also in the Borough of Tregony, a chapel of St. Anne, which was a chapel-of-ease to the church of St. James.

Trewarthenick, about two miles from this place, the seat of the late Francis Gregor, Esq., formerly M.P. for the county, is a pleasant and comfortable residence, with a good library and a few portraits; one, of Oliver Cromwell, is very fine.

Ruan Lanyhorne, a small village two miles south-west of Tregony, is remarkable as having been for upwards of 30 years, the residence of the Rev. John Whitaker, the learned author of the Ecclesiastical History of the Cathredral of Cornwall, who died in the year 1808, aged 73 years.—A few days after his decease, the following lines appeared in the Cornwall Gazette, and are supposed to have been written by the late Fortescue Hitchins, Esq. author of the poem called “Tears of Cornubia,” founded on the melancholy loss of the St. George, in which Admiral Reynolds and many Officers perished.

“Ah Whitaker, Cornubia’s proudest boast,

Thou brightest gem that ever genius lost