St. Austell is your nearest railway station, an interesting old town, the centre of Cornwall’s china clay industry. It is on the main line and may be reached easily from any part of south or west Cornwall, and from there country omnibuses will take you within a few miles of the remote Dodman, the scene of that village doctor’s wonderful “cure,” so many centuries ago.
Mevagissey.
THE CHARMER OF PENGERSICK.
The Pengersick Castle that you find to-day, built by the coast between Parran Uthnoe and Porthleven near Helston, is a mere upstart building, little, if any of it, more than four centuries old. This story is about the older castle built on the same site nobody knows how long ago.
It was a grim fortress inhabited by grim and eerie folk, about whom many wild and creepy tales are told. The old Pengersicks were a strange family who trafficked with the powers of evil. One went to far eastern climes and learned the black arts of sorcery, and brought back with him as his bride an “outlandish Saracen” woman of surprising beauty.
Nobody knew actually where she came from, but she arrived unexpectedly at the castle, one winter day, with her Lord and two eastern attendants, all mounted on priceless Arab horses. They spoke in an unknown tongue and disappeared behind the frowning gates, seldom to be seen abroad again.
Some say that this strange party arrived before the castle was built, and that it was this saturnine Lord of Pengersick who, by supernatural aid, erected the first grim fortress; but all agree that the beautiful Eastern lady possessed the most wonderful voice that had ever been heard.