Lyeth joining to the east, with Penkaranowe and Reen Wartha between them, and the church lands of St. Piran, from whom it takes its name.
This is now wholly destroyed by the sands, but was once the seat of a family of the same name: by a daughter of one of which it came to the Rendalls of Pelint; and by Elizabeth, the only daughter and heir of Walter Rendall of Lostwithiel, to her husband, Henry Vincent of Tresimple, whose son Walter Vincent, esq. claimed a free warren here under the Duke of Cornwall. It hath some good tin works in it, but so chargeable, by reason of the depth of sand, that they do not turn to much account, and are gone with the rest of the estate as above. This manor is in Carew, fol. 46, rated at three acres Cornish, 12 Edward I.
At the back side of this manor, to the south, is a large down or wastrell.
[N. B. here a page 460 e. is lost; and since I saw it last, I think. But from the marginal note, “Piran Round,” it contained a description of that Cornish amphitheatre.]
THE EDITOR.
It is rather a curious circumstance that the word Zabuloe added to Perran, for the distinction of this parish, is not derived from the Celtic, but through the French sable from sabulum, a word frequently used by Pliny as indicative of sand or gravel.
Unfortunately, some leaves are wanting from Mr. Tonkin’s manuscript of this parish, so that no account is found in it, either of the amphitheatre, or of the consecrated well which belongs to Perran Zabuloe; although, by a singular anomaly, the Perran in Kerrier bears the name as an
addition, at least in common parlance. Doctor Borlase has given a description and a plan of this curious Round, as it is usually called, in his work on the Natural History of Cornwall, printed at Oxford in 1758, where, at p. 298, he says:—“The area of the amphitheatre is perfectly level, and about one hundred and thirty feet in diameter. The benches, seven in number, rise eight feet from the area. The top of the rampart is seven feet wide; it slopes externally into a foss, which rises by another slope to the level of the country. There is a circular pit nearly in the centre, thirteen feet in diameter, and three feet deep, the sides also sloping. Half way down is a bench of turf, so formed as to reduce the bottom to an ellipsis; and a shallow trench four feet six inches wide, and one foot deep, runs in an easterly direction to the nearest part of the circle, where it terminates in a semi-oval cavity extending eleven feet from north to south, and nine feet from east to west, making a breach in the benches.”
This and other similar works in Cornwall, are believed to have accommodated great numbers of spectators when the Guary Mir, or miracle plays, were performed. One of them, mentioned by Doctor Borlase, “The Creation of the World,” with Mr. Keigwyn’s Translation, the editor of this work has given to the public, and also the Metrical History of the Passion of our Saviour on Mount Calvary.
The well consecrated by St. Perran is not understood to possess any peculiar qualities, but up to the present time its waters, accompanied by the ceremony of passing children through the cleft of a rock on the sea shore, are believed to cure various diseases, and particularly the rickets.