A book of the west. Volume 2, Cornwall : $b being an introduction to Devon and CornwallBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
A book of the west. Volume 2, Cornwall : $b being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Cornwall (England : County)
There are inscribed stones and oghams in the churchyard. The village
carpenter, an unusually intelligent man, has been zealous in search
after, and the discovery of, these stones. In the porch, under the
stone bench, a hare-hunt is carved on polyphant stone. The quarry of
this beautiful stone is near by. There are several crosses and holy
wells in the parish, one of S. Blaunder, which is a corruption of
Branwalader, who is identical with S. Brendan, the great navigator and
explorer in the sixth century. He is even supposed to have reached
America, but actually, it may be suspected, visited only the Canary
Isles and Madeira.
In Northill Church is a curious monument to a chrisom child.
Trecarrel is the old house of Sir Henry, who erected Launceston Church.
The hall is specially fine. He never completed the mansion. The chapel
remains, and when I saw it a goose was sitting on her eggs on the site
of the altar. But it was never consecrated. About the yard lie the
richly-carved stones intended for the gateway to the court, but the
gatehouse was not set up. There are several old houses which may be
visited from Launceston. Bradstone, on the Devon side of the Tamar, has
a most picturesque gatehouse. The venerable mansion formerly belonged
to the Cloberry family, whose cognisance was bats; it is quite intact.
Bradstone takes its name from a broad stone, in fact, a cromlech that
has been thrown down, but the cap remains, and is used as a stile.
Kelly Church has some fine old glass. Sydenham is an untouched
seventeenth-century mansion; so is Wortham, in Lifton parish. A
magnificent relic is Penheale, with its granite entrance and panelled
rooms. It is in Egloskerry parish, and formerly belonged to the Earl of
Huntingdon. It passed by sale from one hand to another, and is now the
property of Mr. Simcoe.
In Egloskerry Church is a remarkably good helmet. The church contains
an alabaster figure of an Italian flower-girl. Treguddick, once a seat
of a family of that name, has been so mutilated in alteration that it
presents little of interest. The same may be said of Basil.
Botathen, once the seat of the Bligh family, has not in it anything
of interest, but is associated with one of the best ghost stories on
record, written by the Rev. John Ruddle, vicar of Launceston, who laid
a ghost in a field that appeared to and tormented a boy of the name of
Bligh.
Ruddle was parson of Launceston between 1663 and 1698. Defoe got hold
of Ruddle’s MS. account of the transaction, and published it in 1720.
It has been often surmised that Defoe had touched up the original, or
had invented the whole story; but Mr. A. Robins has carefully entered
into an examination of the circumstances, and has proved that the
account was by Ruddle, and all those persons mentioned in it actually
lived at the period.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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