Page:The parochial history of Cornwall.djvu/402

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360
ST. EARTH

This portion of the Hearle and Paynter estate has been assigned to Mr. Francis Hearle Rodd.

The place next of importance in this parish was probably Tredrea. The name, perhaps, imports the thoroughfare town, as it lies on the way from Trewinnard to the church.

There was here a large house inhabited by a family of the same name, who appear in the parish register two centuries ago as Esquires, a distinction then sparingly applied. The property is said to have passed, by a mortgage unredeemed, to the St. Aubyns of Crowan, who granted it on a lease for lives, in the year 1685, to Mr. Matthew Phillips. One of his daughters married Mr. John Davies, younger brother of Henry Davies, Esq. of Bosence. Mr. John Davies had a daughter, Catherine Davies, eventually heiresss of her brother Henry Davies, and through him of her father and uncle. Her son is the Editor of this work.

The old house at Tredrea having fallen into a state of decay, Mr. Henry Davies took it down about the year 1750, and built small a neat house on the same spot, where the Editor still occasionally resides.

Bosence, in St. Earth, has belonged time out of mind, (certainly from before the reign of Henry the Seventh,) to the family of Davies. On it there is a very perfect Roman entrenchment; and various articles of Roman workmanship, found on removing the earth, are described and figured by Dr. W. Borlase, in his Antiquities of Cornwall, p.316, edit. 1759; and also in a Paper communicated to the Royal Society in 1759, vol. xi. p.322, of the Abridgment; and the Articles themselves having been presented by Mr. Henry Davies to Dr. Borlase, were by him deposited in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, where they are now preserved. Another Roman intrenchment, but much less perfect, is situated on the summit of the hill on the south side of the road leading eastward, at about half a mile distant from St. Earth bridge: this is mentioned by Leland. The Editor availed himself