This nunnery is believed to have been a cell to some foreign convent; and it is not certainly known whether it was entirely suppressed by Henry the Fifth, or whether, as some have conjectured, it became attached to the priory of Bodmin, and remained a parcel of that house till the general dissolution.
It belonged for a considerable period to the Courtenays
of Tremere, and in a state of repair, for there is a tradition of its having made some defence in the great Civil War, till cannon were used against it.
It was sold in the year 1710; and about ten years afterwards became the property of Mr. Grose, a farmer of the parish. His son or grandson, about the year 1775, built a new house on the farm, when some remains of a beautiful cloister, which the Editor faintly remembers, afforded a ready supply of materials. It is said, that Mr. George Hunt, of Lanhidrock, more impressed by the elegance of these ruins than by the splendour of his own house, interfered to the extent of remonstrance for their preservation; but when the proprietor replied that he would willingly spare them, if the difference of expense for getting stone from a neighbouring quarry were paid him, nothing further was done.
The mere site of the building has been purchased within twenty years by the Rev. Francis Vyvyan Jago Arundell, Rector of Landulph; and in the present year this sequestered spot—scarcely visible in any direction at the distance of half a mile, inclosed in a deep vale, and surrounded by trees more lofty than its half-ruined tower; the appropriate retreat of those who choose their lot—
The world forgetting, by the world forgot,
Where round some mould’ring tow’r pale ivy creeps,
And low-brow’d rocks hang nodding o’er the deeps;
—is by the progress of recent improvement laid open to public view, and above all to the inspection of strangers. A hill so steep as to be dangerous for carriages, and extending to a mile in length, has been avoided, by conducting the London road through this valley, which, after an interval, perhaps, of a thousand years from the time when it was devoted to superstitious observances, directly opposed to the benevolence inseparable from the Author of all Good, and congenial only to the demon of evil, has at last become subservient to general utility.
This parish is possessed of certain lands, some within its