I take the Lord Bray of Hampshire to be descended from this family. This place is now in the possession of that well-known quaker, John Ellis, Esq.
On the south side of this parish, upon a lofty hill, stands Chapel Carne Bray, that is to say Bray’s spar-stone Chapel, and suitable to its name it is situate upon the top of the most astonishing burrow or tumulus of Carnes, or spar stones, that ever my eyes beheld; artificially laid together perhaps upon the bodies of human creatures, interred upon the mountain before the fifth century; on the top of which burrow of stones, which is about fifteen feet high from the ground, stands the chapel itself; which riseth about ten feet higher, well built with moor-stone and lime, with a window in the east, and a durns, or door, on the south of the same stones; the roof all well covered or arched over with large flat moor-stones, wrought with the hammer and strongly fastened together. The chapel being about ten feet broad and about fourteen feet long (as that on Roach Rock) on the outside; and round this chapel may be seen, the downfalls of many sparstone-stairs and walks, by which heretofore the people ascended to this chapel, and diverted themselves with a full prospect of the contiguous country by sea and land—St. George’s Channel, the British Ocean, and the Atlantic Sea towards the Scilly Islands, of which from hence in fair weather you may have a full view; which lands of Scilly seem to stand in equal height with this chapel, though the ground towards the Land’s End, in St. Leucan and St. Lennan, on the sea-shore towards it, are at least eighty fathoms lower, or under it, as is the sea itself, betwixt that and the Scilly Islands. Such another chapel as this, though not built upon a burrow of stones, is to be seen on Mountague Hill, in Somersetshire, and dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel, for half a mile ascended up the hill upon stone stairs, embowed or arched over head right artificially. (See also Camden in Somerset.) Thus it appears that this tribe of Bray were heretofore men of great wealth, fame, and renown in those parts; since their name adheres not only to two local places in this parish, but divers others, as Castle Carne Bray in Luggan, Bray in Morvall, and many other places.
In this parish also was formerly St. Ewny’s Chapel, now dilapidated; see Redruth and Lelant for more of this St. Ewny.
Those spar-stone monuments of Carne Bray Castle, and Chapel Carne Bray aforesaid, will I suppose perpetuate the name and memory of those Brays till the final consummation of all things, as aforesaid. Bray, in Battle Abbey Roll, is recorded to have come into England with William the Conqueror; but by the names of those local places and the fabrics aforesaid, it is probable they were here long before.
In this parish is a large flat stone, on which, as tradition says, seven Saxon Kings at one time and day, dined thereon, at such time as they came into Cornwall to see the Land’s End thereof, and of Great Britain; which Kings are said to have been: 1. Ethelbert, 5th King of Kent; 2. Cissa, 2nd King of the South Saxons; 3. Kingills, 6th King of the West Saxons; 4. Sebert, 3d. King of the East Saxons; 5. Ethelfred, 7th King of the Northumbers; 6. Penda, 5th King of the Mercians; and 7. Sigebert, 5th King of the East Angles; who all flourished about the year 600, and were all crowned heads, as Samuel Daniell in his Chronicle tells us.[7]
TONKIN
Has not any thing in addition to what is stated by Mr. Hals, except a description of Mayne Scriffer, or the “inscribed stone,” which he ends by saying is really not in this parish, but in Madders, where he purposes to give a more full account of it.
THE EDITOR.
Pendeen claims the first attention of any place in this parish. It was for some ages the residences of the Borlases,
since removed to Castle Horneck, near Penzance. At Pendeen resided in the early part of his life Mr. John Borlase, sometime member for St. Ives. Here were born his two sons the Rev. Walter Borlase, LL.D. Vice Warden of the Stannaries; and the Rev. William Borlase, LL.D. by diploma from the university of Oxford, the justly celebrated writer of the Antiquities and of the Natural History of Cornwall.