The Parochial History of Cornwall, Volume 3 (of 4)
History
The Parochial History of Cornwall, Volume 3 (of 4)
Cornwall (England : County) -- History; Geology -- England -- Cornwall (County)
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.
The encroachments of the sand have caused no less than three churches
to be built after considerable intervals of time in this parish. The
last was commenced in 1804; and in this year (1835) a building has
been discovered more ancient than the first of the churches, and not
improbably the oratory of St. Perran himself.
The length of this chapel within the walls is 25 feet, without 30
feet; the breadth within 12½ feet, and the height of the walls the
same.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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