I take this to be the same with that called by Mr. Carew Landegy. I find this parish called Ecclesia de Landigay.
This manor was forfeited by Francis Tregion, Esq. with the rest of his estate, as may be seen in Probus.
About the 8th or 9th Charles I. this manor was given or sold for a small sum by the King to William Coryton, of Newton, Esq. in whose family it hath remained ever since. On the commons belonging to Guddern is a large barrow called Guddern Barrow, near which are several large moorstones; and also at no great distance is another barrow, called Craig Vrause, or the large barrow, remarkable for giving name to some good mines of tin and copper near it.
THE EDITOR.
All the legends of this parish concur in claiming for their patron Saint Kea, one of the great company of missionaries, and as the ludicrous, almost from a species of fatality, appears to have blended itself with these ancient tales, a large block of granite, hollow on one side, which happened to lie near the bank of the river, was for centuries pointed out as the boat used by St. Kea to waft himself from Ireland to the Cornish shore; and so currently was this story repeated, that, if persons went to sea in a vessel not adequate to the service, it was observed they might as well have made a voyage with St. Kea in his moorstone trough.
Mr. Hals having used a strange orthography for Nansavallan, and given as fanciful a derivation of the word; both are omitted, since Nans or Nance is known to be a vale; and Avallan may be proved to be the Celtic name of an apple, by referring to the History of Glastonbury. This seat of the Albalandas presented within fifty years one of the most venerable specimens in all that neighbourhood of the dwellings used by gentlemen of consideration in former times.
It was entirely surrounded and sheltered by large trees,
and at some little distance stood a wood more extensive than any one west of it; and both were conspicuous and pleasing objects from the whole district round Truro; but the auri sacri fames has swept away the whole, and the place is now become very little preferable to an open down. The Editor expresses himself with some feeling on this subject, having passed at Nanceavallan many happy weeks of his childhood; and fancied the wood an exact counterpart of that in which the favourite objects of infantine compassion perished from want of food, and were painfully covered over with leaves by the little bird, doubly consecrated by this effort of his kindness.
In the hands of the proprietor, the farm of Nanceavallan is however now improving, by extensive drainages, and by a system of husbandry, that cannot fail of extending the benefit derived from example to all the neighbourhood.
Killiow is now the seat of Mr. Robert Lovell Gwatkin, where he has built an almost entirely new house with extensive gardens and plantations, improved the land, and made the whole into a handsome modern residence.