There is a vault belonging to the family of Hawkins; and Mr. Christopher Hawkins, in 1767, and his widow, Mrs. Mary Hawkins, in 1780, are laid in it, I believe with some of their children; but there is not any inscription.
Perthcolumb presents some appearance of antiquity. There is a tradition of its once having given a sheriff to the county. The place now belongs to Mr. Andrew Hoskin, descended from a very ancient family in the adjoining parish of Lelant.
Gear has a good house, once the seat of another branch of the Davieses, but bought by the Editor’s father.
Tregethes belonged for several descents to the Penroses. It is now the property of Mr. Ellis, who resides in it.
About the year 1782, a mill was constructed on a part of Trewinnard, for rolling copper and iron, by a company established at Hayle thirty years before, on the supposed patriotic principle of smelting our own copper ore; but, after many years of competition against the smelting-works in Wales, it was discovered that one shipload of copper ore required three shiploads of coal, and that by importing coal from Swansea to work the steam-engine, and by exporting the ores to be smelted there, vessels were enabled to obtain cargoes in both directions; and, in consequence, the works at Trewinnard and at Hayle are no longer employed for their original purposes.
The rage for importing coals to reduce our own ores at home, which was epidemic about the middle of the last century, seems to have originated from a confusion of ideas in the application of analogies, the most abundant source of error. It would be absurd to send our food across the seas to be roasted or boiled; therefore the same principle was extended to copper ore.
These establishments were, however, maintained for some considerable time by the genius and the abilities of one man. Mr. John Edwards had been taken as a clerk for general business by Mr. Hawkins, just at the time when he
and other Cornish gentlemen set on the copper-works. Mr. Edwards soon forced himself into the chief management, became a partner, and continued the works during the whole of his life; not being distinguished merely as a merchant or manufacturer, but as a scholar and a gentleman.
Gurlyn is said by Mr. Lysons to have been the residence of various considerable families. It has, for perhaps a century, been the joint property of Messrs. Gregor and Harris. About the year 1760, Mr. John Millett, possessing a lease of this place for lives, built an entirely new house there; but the lease has been bought in by the gentleman seised of the freehold, and the house taken down.
Treloweth is a manor heretofore the property of the Tredreas. On a part of this manor stands a tin-smelting house. Tin, by the laws of the Stannaries, must be reduced to the metallic state in Cornwall; and much less quantities of coal are required than in the case of copper. Till about the commencement of the last century, all the tin ores of Cornwall were smelted in small blast furnaces, by means of charcoal or of peat. At that period some Germans introduced the reverberatory furnace, and with it the use of coal. Several smelting-houses were immediately constructed by the gentlemen of the county, and although not among the first, that at Treloweth. I have ascertained the exact period of its building, from this circumstance, that the workmen were interrupted by the total eclipse of the sun, which happened about 15 minutes before nine on the 22d of April, 1715, O. S.