The ancient building in the church-yard, adjoining to the vicarage-house, was, it is believed, a chantry chapel dedicated to St. Thomas. The interior, 44 feet 9 inches by 19 feet, was used till lately for the free grammar-school. It is now converted to a national school for girls. Under is a crypt or bone-house.
The isolated tower at Berry, on the north of the town, belonged to the chapel of the Holy Rood. The building of this tower was commenced on the 12th of September, 17th of King Henry VII. 1501.
Since the year 1814, both the church and church-yard, which were in a very ruinous and neglected state, have been greatly altered and improved.
Over the porch are the remains of two small rooms, each about eleven feet square, formerly the record and the council rooms of the corporation. The floor of the higher one, the record room, gave way about eighty
years ago, as some gentlemen were inspecting the documents. In the lower room some valuable records had remained for a long time neglected, till in the year 1807 or 1808 they were removed to the guild-hall, and there examined and arranged. They contain many curious particulars relative to the history of the parish, and incidentally of the county, during a period of five hundred years, the oldest document bearing date in the 14th Edward II. (1320). Among them is a charter of the 36th Edward III. (1362); another, in good preservation, of the 3d year of Richard II. (1380), having reference to the reigns of Henry the First and Second. A minute of the receipts and payments for the rebuilding of the church, in the years 1469, 1470, and 1471; and also for the erection of Berry Tower, in 1501; the contract with Matthy More, carpenter, for making the pulpit and open seats throughout the church in 1491, the carved remains of which are at present much admired; Resolutions of the Corporation on the destruction of the spire in 1699; also a Petition to King Henry the Eighth, on the eve of the Reformation, conveying some ludicrous charges against the Prior; with various others.
In the north chancel is the altar-tomb of Prior Vivian, the inscription on which has been inserted in page 76. The tomb was repaired, and placed between two pillars of the chancel, in 1819, by the late Sir Vyell Vyvyan, of Trelowarren.
The very splendid organ was given, in the year 1775, by Mr. James Laroche and Mr. George Hunt, at that time Members for the town.
Mr. Wallis enters into a very minute detail of particulars highly interesting to the immediate neighbourhood, but which would occupy too much space in a general parochial history of Cornwall.
The carving in the church is indeed greatly admired, but a large part of that admiration is excited by the appropriate and judicious manner in which it has been rendered ornamental by the present vicar.
The inscriptions on various monuments are noticed by Lysons, and other writers.