The Parochial History of Cornwall, Volume 1 (of 4)
History
The Parochial History of Cornwall, Volume 1 (of 4)
Cornwall (England : County) -- History; Geology -- England -- Cornwall (County)
[The remainder of Mr. Tonkin’s narrative agrees so nearly with that of
Mr. Hals as not to require its insertion.]
WHITAKER.
“The paroch chirch standith at the est end of the town, and is a fair
large thyng,” says Leland, an author with whom Mr. Hals had no
acquaintance (though the Itinerary of that author was published in
1710, and in some years immediately following; and the Collectanea in
1715); “there is a cantuarie chapel at th’est ende of it.” This is the
present school, situated a few yards east of the eastern end, raised
upon vaults, ascended by steps, entered by an arched door of stone
peaked, having a large arched window peaked; at the east two windows
in the arch, two on the south, arched and peaked; with three stalls of
stone on the south, near the eastern end. The space below, lately a
bone-house to the church, now atttached to the school, must formerly
have been a walk under the vault.
“Bodmyn hath a market on every Saturday, lyke a fair for the
confluence of people.” (Itin. ii. 114.) Bodmin was then at the height
of its glory: it began soon afterwards to sink. The many decayed
houses, says Carew, 120 years afterwards, prove the town to have been
once very populous. What occasioned this decay was the Reformation,
probably, throwing the revenues of the priory, and of the house of
friars, into the hands of men laical and distant.
“There was a good place of Gray Freres in the south syde of Bodmin
town. One John of London, a merchaunt, was the beginner of this house.
Edmund Erle of Cornewaul augmentid it. There lay buried in the Gray
Freres Sir Hugh and Sir Thomas Peverel, Knightes, and benefactors to
the house.”――(Leland.) The remains of this form the south side of an
open space, which must have been the quadrangle or court of the
Friars, and have been surrounded by its buildings, on the east, the
north, and the west. On the west end, near the grand door in these
remains, was the church-yard, or burying-place, which Mr. Hals says
was made a fair for cattle; and here were very lately found, by
sinking a saw-pit, bones in a considerable quantity.
The remains themselves are, a long and lofty room, once a church, but
since used as Mr. Hals describes. It has a fine window at the east
end, peaked in the arch; the only part of it that is not blocked up
being very pleasingly broken into small parts by mullions of stone.
It has another arch for a window to the west, but not so fine; and
four arches on the north and south sides, all peaked, but those most
easterly more sharply than the others. What Mr. Hals calls a font is
still there; and a font it assuredly is, the Friars having just as
much right to a font as to a burying-place; but the inscription upon
it is on two or three squares of the hexagon in which the font is
shaped, and is too modern to mean any thing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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