The Story of an Ancient Parish: Breage with Germoe / With Some Account of Its Armigers, Worthies and Unworthies, Smugglers and Wreckers, Its Traditions and Superstitions

by H. R. Coulthard

Leland, when he visited the parish, found large mining works along the coast from Trewarvas Head to Praa Sands. Sir Francis Godolphin a generation later developed the ancient mines of Great Work and Wheal Vor upon scientific principles and a scale of vastness hitherto undreamt of.

The mines, it is evident, brought riches and prosperity to the owners of the soil, but not to the people who dwelt upon it; to them, as Carew makes clear, they meant too often degradation and oppression. The harvest of this evil sowing is still being reaped at the present day. It is but too true that with the Reformation the people lost a powerful protector in the Church. With all her faults—and they were many—until the Reformation the Church had been consistently the friend of the poor; her clergy until that period, had been the members of a great corporation, and as such stood in no dread of "the petty tyrant of the fields." With the coming of the Reformation all was changed, and the Parish Priest became too often the creature and parasite of the wealthy, moved but too frequently by fear and policy to neglect the claims of his flock, with for three centuries, disastrous results alike for Church and people. The people at the Reformation were ready to rise and to die for the Church, as we have seen in our own neighbourhood; three centuries later they regarded her with utter suspicion and disfavour. Few with any acquaintance with the facts of the case will deny that the material and moral condition of the people, under much cruel injustice and exploitation, grew worse for some generations after the Reformation, because there were none to hold the balance of justice between class and class and stay the hand of the oppressor, at any rate in the remote places of the country.

In the western part of the County the mines tended to produce an utter neglect of agriculture, the effects of which were bad in every way. They also led to the reckless destruction of much valuable timber for the purpose of making mine props. Western Cornwall, now so denuded and bare of trees, in ancient days was thickly wooded; round Ashton now not a tree is to be seen, yet the name perpetuates the memory of the time when Ashton was the Down where the ash trees grew.

Carew tells us that there were few sheep in Cornwall in his days, and that those there were had little bodies and fleeces so coarse that their wool went by the name of Cornish hair. The horses, he says, were small and hardy and "quick travellers over rough and hilly country," but he goes on to say that by hard treatment and overwork they were soon worn out and rendered unfit for service. Owing to the practical absence of roads till long after Carew's time, vehicular traffic was practically impossible; horses were therefore used as pack animals, and a regular system of transit of goods prevailed through the County by means of pack horses. The tracks that passed by the name of roads[37] for the six rainy months of the year, were practically impassable quagmires of mud, making intercourse, save of the most urgent character, practically impossible. It was on account of the extreme difficulty of communication through the long winter months that the gentry of the district established for themselves town houses in Helston, in which they might exchange the isolation of the country for some measure of friendly and agreeable intercourse.

The land used for tillage seems to have been chiefly manured with sea sand and sea weed; the little ploughing there was would, of course, be done by oxen, a method which at any rate had the merit of producing a strong and vigorous breed of cattle, which in size would perhaps more than favourably compare with some of the animals to be seen at the present time.

We gather from Carew "that some gentlemen allowed their cattle to go wild in their woods and waste ground, where they were hunted and killed with crossbows and pieces after the manner of deer." At this time the Deer Park attached to Godolphin House took in a large part of the present parish of Godolphin; the remains of the high walls of this ancient park may still be seen on the south-western slopes of Godolphin Hill.

In Carew's time the women and children of the West of Cornwall carried on the industry of mat-making to a large extent. These mats were made of coarse grass, and were exported to London in great numbers for the purpose of floor and wall coverings.

Carew informs us that the Cornish had no oaths and never swore, but that they made up for it by a plentiful indulgence in curses, maledictions and the giving of spiteful nicknames.