Lewanick (Llan-Winoc) was an interesting church with good bench-ends, but an unfortunate fire destroyed the interior, and almost everything of interest has disappeared. There is, however, in the church a cresset-stone. This is a structure like a font, but with the surface scooped out into five little bowls for containing oil and floating wicks. Formerly, in the days when there existed a difficulty in kindling a fire, it was important that a light should be kept perpetually burning in the church, to which the parishioners might have resort in the event of their fires going out. But such cresset-stones are now extremely rare. There is one at Calder Abbey with sixteen bowls, one at Furness with five. At Ballagawne, in the Isle of Man, is one with one large bowl and nine small ones. A cresset-stone exists in the court before San Ambrogio, Milan, and I saw one set up before a very early church at Civeaux, in Vienne, upon which the schoolboys amused themselves with jumping and dancing.
There are inscribed stones and oghams in the churchyard. The village carpenter, an unusually intelligent man, has been zealous in search after, and the discovery of, these stones. In the porch, under the stone bench, a hare-hunt is carved on polyphant stone. The quarry of this beautiful stone is near by. There are several crosses and holy wells in the parish, one of S. Blaunder, which is a corruption of Branwalader, who is identical with S. Brendan, the great navigator and explorer in the sixth century. He is even supposed to have reached America, but actually, it may be suspected, visited only the Canary Isles and Madeira.
In Northill Church is a curious monument to a chrisom child.
Trecarrel is the old house of Sir Henry, who erected Launceston Church. The hall is specially fine. He never completed the mansion. The chapel remains, and when I saw it a goose was sitting on her eggs on the site of the altar. But it was never consecrated. About the yard lie the richly-carved stones intended for the gateway to the court, but the gatehouse was not set up. There are several old houses which may be visited from Launceston. Bradstone, on the Devon side of the Tamar, has a most picturesque gatehouse. The venerable mansion formerly belonged to the Cloberry family, whose cognisance was bats; it is quite intact. Bradstone takes its name from a broad stone, in fact, a cromlech that has been thrown down, but the cap remains, and is used as a stile.
Kelly Church has some fine old glass. Sydenham is an untouched seventeenth-century mansion; so is Wortham, in Lifton parish. A magnificent relic is Penheale, with its granite entrance and panelled rooms. It is in Egloskerry parish, and formerly belonged to the Earl of Huntingdon. It passed by sale from one hand to another, and is now the property of Mr. Simcoe.
In Egloskerry Church is a remarkably good helmet. The church contains an alabaster figure of an Italian flower-girl. Treguddick, once a seat of a family of that name, has been so mutilated in alteration that it presents little of interest. The same may be said of Basil.
Botathen, once the seat of the Bligh family, has not in it anything of interest, but is associated with one of the best ghost stories on record, written by the Rev. John Ruddle, vicar of Launceston, who laid a ghost in a field that appeared to and tormented a boy of the name of Bligh.
Ruddle was parson of Launceston between 1663 and 1698. Defoe got hold of Ruddle’s MS. account of the transaction, and published it in 1720. It has been often surmised that Defoe had touched up the original, or had invented the whole story; but Mr. A. Robins has carefully entered into an examination of the circumstances, and has proved that the account was by Ruddle, and all those persons mentioned in it actually lived at the period.
In 1665 John Ruddle was schoolmaster in Launceston as well as vicar, and one of his pupils died. He preached a sermon at the funeral on June 20th, and after leaving church he was addressed by an old gentleman, who informed him that his own son was sadly troubled by having several times met a ghost, or, at all events, the boy pretended that he had. The gentleman, Mr. Bligh, of Botathen, invited Ruddle to his house to see the lad.
After conferences with the boy Ruddle gained his confidence, and, says he, “he told me with all naked freedom and a flood of tears that his friends were unjust and unkind to him, neither to believe nor pity him, and that if any man would go with him to the place he might be convinced that the thing was real.” The rest of the story shall be told from a MS. now in the possession of a lady in Launceston, copied by William Ruddle, the son, from his father’s original MS.:—