TREWORTHA MARSH-TRURO long building was occupied by two or three families, divided off from each other by an upright slab of granite, making so many horse- boxes ; but each family had its own hearth. The pottery found there was all wheel-turned ; and as many hones were found, no doubt could exist that the occupants belonged to the iron age. No other village of the kind has as yet been noticed on the moors, except another somewhat higher up the stream that feeds Trewortha Marsh, and this has been much mutilated of late years. Independent of these singular quadrangular buildings are hut-circles belonging to a far earlier age, before steel and iron were known." TRURO is undoubtedly rf'^ _/tff/o the capital of Cornwall, though Bodmin is the assize town. The social, intellectual, and most certainly the ecclesiastic life of the duchy beats here at its fullest. Yet Truro is a very small town, smaller even than Camborne, Penzance, or Falmouth ; its population at the last census was only 11,562, being an increase of 431 on the previous figures. But interest and historic importance are not always a matter of popula- tion. As a genuine capital town, however, Truro must be considered something of a parvenu ; the hopes and struggles and toils of the duchy have not clustered around it for centuries. Strange as it seems to say it, we must regard Exeter as the true capital of Corn- wall in the past, not only in that far past when Cornwall and Devon were one land 249
