Stow, who wrote his History of England about the year 1580, notices the great tide of 1099, when he says, The sea brake in over the banks of the Thames and other ryvers, drowning many towns, and much people, with innumerable numbers of oxen and sheepe; at which time the lands in Kent, that sometime belonged to Duke Godwyne, Earle of Kent, were covered with sandes and drowned, which are to this day called Godwyne Sandes. On the slender foundation of these alluvial catastrophies, Florence of Worcester either invented, or with more than monkish credulity, received the tale of a whole district being ingulphed; not at some remote geological period, but in what may be considered as the recent times of authentic history, after the existence of systematic registers and records; a district, covered as he states, by a city, and by a hundred and forty churches, with their accompanying villages, farms, &c. an event that must have shaken the whole of Europe: and, to increase the wonder, a gentleman accidentally on horseback, is carried by this animal to the neighbouring shore of Whitsend Bay, or twenty miles further off, to Perran, through a sea which had swallowed an entire country, and from which the largest of modern vessels could not by possibility have escaped. This idle tale, related by one writer after another, has almost reached our own times. The editor remembers a female relation of a former vicar of St. Erth, who, instructed by a dream, prepared decoctions of various herbs, and repairing to the Land’s End, poured them into the sea, with certain incantations, expecting to see the Lionesse country rise immediately out of the water, having all its inhabitants alive, notwithstanding their long submersion. But
Perchance some form was unobserved,
Perchance in prayer or faith she swerved;
—no country appeared, and, although the love of marvellous
events and of tales exciting the passions, seems not to have diminished in recent times, yet the editor is unaware of any subsequent attempt having been made to rescue those unfortunate people from their protracted state of suspended animation.
Perran Uthnow has to boast of but one modern addition to its residences. About the year 1775, the late Mr. John Shakspeare of Pendarves, built a house similar to the one previously erected by Mr. Stephens at Tregorne, and gave it the name of the family with which he was connected by his marriage.
About half a mile beyond this house, called Acton Castle, Cudden Point projects into the sea, entirely covered with rock, and affording, in many respects, the most pleasing view of any spot in the whole Bay. From St. Michael’s Mount itself, the feature transcendent above all others is lost; but from Cudden all the western objects are seen, without including the long flat land of the Lizard.
Children from all the neighbourhood are in the habit of going to Cudden Point at the low water of spring tides, with the hope of finding a silver table, although they know not why. It appears, however, that a Spanish vessel, having much bullion on board, was wrecked there in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
The addition of Uthno made to this saint’s name, designates a manor within the parish; there is also a manor called Lan Uthno, in St. Erth, distinguished in former times as the parish of Lan Uthno; but the editor has never been able to form any conjecture respecting the meaning or the etymology of this word.
The parish feast is celebrated on the nearest Sunday to the fifth of March, St. Perran’s Day.