Godolphin, which gives its name to a high hill about half-a-mile to the south-west of the house, is situated in the parish now called Breage; and in the parish church, so named after the Irish St. Breaca, as well as in numerous other churches and churchyards of western Cornwall,[147] lie the bones of many a Godolphin, while their helmets--one of them surmounted by the 'canting' crest of a _dolphin_--hang rusting 'in monumental mockery' over some of the tombs. The remains of the mansion (now occupied as a spacious and comfortable farmhouse), the many roads of approach to it, the antique gardens, and the broad, terraced hedges, still testify to its ancient importance. For a place of much consideration it evidently was, even down to the time of Sidney Godolphin, and later. Those were days when the only newspaper which came to so remote a corner of England--and which was procured weekly, together with his despatches (whilst he was in Cornwall), by the Lord Treasurer's own special messenger to Exeter--lay on the table in the hall at Godolphin, now called the King's Room, for the benefit of the neighbouring clergy and gentry. Dr. Borlase gives a more or less conjectural view of the house in its glory, surrounded by its park and groves; and what is supposed to have been a view of it was found on a panel in Pengerswick Castle; but its glories have long departed. Yet, although Godolphin has not vanished from off the face of the earth, like Killigrew, the early abode of the Killigrews in St. Erme, and the two Stows, the residence of the Grenvilles of Kilkhampton, sufficient remains to indicate to the passerby that here may once have lived a family as distinguished as that to whom Hals so proudly refers. The surface of the surrounding landscape is now scarred by mines and clay-works; and the little stream, crossed just below the house by Godolphin Bridge, is discoloured by mine-refuse, disfiguring instead of beautifying the scene. 'No greater Tynne Workes yn al Cornwal then be on Sir Wylliam Godolcan's ground,' wrote Leland, and his statement long held true. It was remarked by the late W. J. Henwood in 1843, that in eighteen years Wheal Vor, an adjacent mine, had raised tin to the value of a million and a quarter sterling, of which £100,000 was profit to the adventurers. To be a steward of the Godolphins was held to be a sure method of attaining wealth and influence; indeed, there is a humorous story told of one of the Godolphin ladies' excusing her late appearance at the dinner-table one day by saying that she had been down to the smelting-house 'to see the cat eat the dolphin;' the allusion being to the respective marks on the Godolphin tin and that smelted at the same time by Coke, the steward, who bore _cats_ on his coat-of-arms. The Godolphin of the period thereupon introduced some much-needed reforms in the management of his tin business.