FOWEY HARBOUR
LOSTWITHIEL BRIDGE
The river takes its rise on High Moor under Buttern Hill on the Bodmin moors, a mile north-west of Fowey Well that is under Brown Willy, which probably takes its name from being supposed to ebb and flow with the tide, which, however, it does not. The river has a fall of nine hundred feet before it reaches the sea. It does not present anything remarkable till it comes in sight of the highway from Liskeard to Bodmin, as also of the railway, when at once it turns sharply to the west, at right angles to its previous course, and runs through a well-wooded and picturesque valley under the camp of Largin. Then, after flowing side by side with road and rail till it reaches Bodmin Road Station, it turns abruptly south, attending the railway to Lostwithiel, slipping under Restormel Castle.
Lostwithiel is not Lost-wi’in-a-hill as is the popular derivation, but Les-Gwythiel, the palace in the wood, as Liskeard is that on the rock. It is charmingly situated.
It is an old rotten borough, once in the hands of the Earls of Mount Edgcumbe. But before that it was a seat of the Stannary Court for Cornwall, and here the Dukes of Cornwall had their palace. Of this considerable remains exist, but it has been meddled with, and vulgarised by the insertion of quite unsuitable windows.
The church is interesting; it possesses a fine lantern of a character nowhere else met with in the West. Anciently the tide came up as far as the town, and the portreeve had rights over the river, for which reason the town arms are represented with an oar.
Below the town the river to Fowey is full of beauty. It passes S. Winnow, with fine fifteenth-century glass; the church is beautifully situated. Here is a chapel of S. Nectan, of Hartland, to which was attached a college of secular priests endowed by Gytha, wife of Godwin, Earl of Kent. The priests of this college were married and allowed to marry, as all Celtic clergy were.
S. Winnow was son of Gildas the historian. Gildas and Finian were together for some time at S. David’s monastery, and became close friends. Then Gildas entrusted his son Winnoc, or Winnow, to Finian to be educated, and Finian took the boy with him to Clonard and educated him. When Winnoc thought that it was time for him to leave, he returned to Britain and settled in Cornwall. As he was allied to the royal family, he received large grants of land, and certainly chose a lovely spot for his establishment. S. Veep, or Wennapa, was his aunt, and he served as her spiritual adviser. After a while, for some reason unknown, but probably on account of a breeze with his kinsman King Constantine, whom Winnow’s father, Gildas, has abused in the most uncompromising terms, and Constantine’s mother as well, Winnow left Cornwall and settled in Brittany. He was accompanied by his brother Madoc and his sister, whom the Welsh call Dolgar and the Bretons Tugdonia. He landed in the neighbourhood of Brest, where he was found by Conmor, Count of Vannes, the usurper, who was killed in 500. Conmor granted him as much land as he could enclose in a day. The story goes that Madoc, or Madan, as the Bretons call him,[18] took a pitchfork and drew it behind him, and it formed a ditch and a bank that enclosed a bit of land. The fosse and embankment exist to the present day, and the story means no more than that under Madoc’s supervision the lis or rath was thrown up to enclose the monastic settlement.