St. Agnes’ Beacon was chosen as one of the principal western stations in the great Trigonometrical Survey of England. The position of the summit was then determined with extreme accuracy: Latitude 50° 18′ 27″, Longitude 5° 11′ 55″.7. In time 20 m. 47″.7. Height above low water 621 feet. See the Philosophical Transactions for 1800, pp. 636 and 714.
[5] It appears, however, by Mr. Tonkin’s notes, that St. Agnes was deemed a distinct parish, and had a parochial chapel in it, so early as the year 1396. A licence to build a new chapel was dated Oct. 1, 1482. Lysons.
[6] This gentleman was the lessee of the great mine before described. Borlase says, “It is judged that the late Mr. Donnithorne, who had the whole adventure, and worked it at his own expense, in a few years last past got at least 40,000l. clear by this mine, and much more he might have raised yearly if he pleased.”
[7] For the latter name Hitchins substitutes Thomas Warren, Esq. and Mr. John Tregellas, of St. Agnes.
ST. ALLEN.
HALS.
St. Allen is situate in the hundred of Pow-dre-ham, id est, the hundred of the old ancient county or province town (viz. Lestwithell), for so it is called in the first Duke of Cornwall’s charter 1336—now contracted and corrupted to Powder Cantred.
At the time of the Norman Conquest this district of St. Allen was taxed under the jurisdiction of Laner or Lanher, i. e. templer; so called, for that long before that time was extant upon that place a chapel or temple dedicated to God in the name of St. Martin of Tours, the memory of which is still preserved in the names of St. Martin’s fields and woods, heretofore perhaps the indowments of that chapel or temple; this Laner is still the voke lands or capital messuage of the Bishop of Exeter’s manor of Cargoll, whereunto it was annexed; in which place of Lanher (formerly a wood or forest of trees) the Bishops of Cornwall, and afterwards the Bishops of Exon, had one of their mansion or dwelling-houses for many ages,[8] till Bishop Voysey, tempore Henry VIII. leased those manors to Clement
Throckmorton, Esq. cup-bearer to Queen Katherine Parr, from whom it passed by sale to Williams, and so from Williams to Borlase, by whom this mansion or barton of Laner was left to run to utter ruin and dilapidation, having now nothing extant of houses but old walls, stones, and rubbish. Out of this manor of Lanher the Bishop of Exon endowed the church of St. Allen with the glebe lands thereof now in being, and the sheaf of two tenements, viz. Laner and Tretheris,[9] so that the said church is a vicarage endowed, and was valued by Oliver Sutton, Bishop of Lincoln, and John de Pontefexia, Bishop of Winchester, to the Pope’s taxation of benefices, in order to take his first-fruits, 20 Edward I. 1294, Ecclesiam de Sancto Alune, in Decanatu de Powdre;—vi s. & viii d. The patronage of this church is still in the Bishop of Exon for the time being, the incumbent Richards. The rectory or sheaf formerly in Cook, now Boscawen [Viscount Falmouth]; and the parish as aforesaid rated to 4s. per pound Land Tax, in 1696, 157l. 14s. 10d.