The Parochial History of Cornwall/Volume 1/Camborne
CAMBORNE.
HALS.
Camborne is situate in the hundred of Penwith, and hath upon the east Redruth, north Illugan, west Gwynier, south Crowan. For its modern name, Camborne, which was not extant at the time of the Norman Conquest, signifies a crooked or arched burne, or well.
This parish is said to derive its name from a holy well situated within it, to which great numbers of persons resorte from a high opinion of its great medical virtues, in addition to its sanctity.
Ecclesia de Camborne, in Decanatu de Penwid, 1294, was rated to the Pope's annats viiil In Wolsey's Inquisition, 1521, and Valor Beneficiorum, £39. 16s. 9d. The patronage in Basset, the incumbent Newcombe; the parish rated to the 4s. per £. Tax, 1696, £203. 16s.
Pendarves in this parish, I am informed, transnominated a family of gentlemen from Tresona, i.e. the charm town, in St. Enoder, to Pendarves, temp. Eliz. William Pendarves, Esq. Sheriff of Cornwall 30th Cha. II. 1680, married Adiston, daughter of Edmund Prideaux, Esq. but died without issue; whereby his estate descended to his second brother's son; and he dying without issue, it descended to his third brother's son, viz. Sir William Pendarves, knight, now in possession thereof, who married Godolphin, the widow of Hoblyn of Nanswidon. His father, Thomas Pendarves, clerk, rector of St. Colomb Major, and St. Mawgun in Pider, married Hoblyn of Nanswiddon; his grandfather, Arundell of Menadarva; his great-grandfather Humphrys; and giveth for his arms, in a field Sable, a falcon Argent displayed, between three mullets Or.
Menadarva, in this parish, is the dwelling of William Arundell, Esq. descended from the Arundells of Trerice, to whose ancestor, temp. Charles I. it was given by the last will and testament of John Arundell, of Trerice, Esq. (commonly called John of Tilbury, for that with Queen Elizabeth, at that place, he was an officer under her in the standing army posted in that place in expectation of and to oppose the Spanish Armada 1588), in those words amongst other "Item, I give to my naturall son, John Arundell, my mannor and barton of Menadarva in Camburne, and to his heirs lawfully begotten for ever."
The last gentleman of this family dying without issue male, his sisters for a time, married to Tresahar and others, became possessed of this lordship; but it happened that a brother of theirs also, who was a merchant factor in Spain, who married an innkeeper's widow there, in Malaga or Seville, of English extraction, was said to be dead without issue, but it seems before his death had issue by her an infant son, which was bred up in Spain till he came of age, without knowledge of his relations aforesaid; who, being brought into England with his mother, temp. Will. III. delivered ejectments upon the barton and manor of Menadarva, and the occupants thereof, as heir-at-law to Arundell, and brought down a trial upon the same at Lanceston, in this county; where upon the issue it appeared, upon the oaths of Mr. Delliff and other Spanish merchants of London, that the said heir was the legitimate son of Mr. Arundell aforesaid in Spain, and born under coverture or marriage; he obtained a verdict and judgment thereon for the same, and is now in possession thereof. He married Tremanheer of Penzance, and hath issue. The arms of this family are the same as those of the Arundells of Trerice, with due distinction.[1]
Roswarne, in this parish, gave to its owner the name of De Roswarne, one of which tribe sold those lands, temp. James I. to Ezekiel Grosse, gent. attorney-at-law, who made it his dwelling, and in this place got a great estate by the inferior practice of the law; but much more,[2] as tradition saith, by means of a spirit or apparition that haunted him in this place till he spake to it (for it is notable that sort of things called apparitions, are such proud gentry that they never speak first), whereupon it discovered to him where much treasure lay hid in this mansion, which, according to the (honest) ghost's direction he found, to his great enriching; after which this phantasm or spectrum become so troublesome and direful to him day and night, that it forced him to forsake this place (as rich, it seems, as this devil could make him) and to quit his claim thereto by giving or selling it to his clerk John Call; whose son, John Call, gent, sold it again to Robert Hooker, gent, attorney-at-law, now in possession thereof. The arms of Call were, in afield three trumpets, in allusion to the name in English; but in Cornish British, call, cal, signifies any hard, flinty, or obdurate matter or thing, and hirgorne is a trumpet.
Crane, adjoining Roswarne, gave name to its possessor Cit-crane, who gave bustards or cranes for his arms; for as Crana, Krana, is as grus in Latin, so it is a crane in English; garan and cryhyr is in the Welsh. One of which gentlemen sold this tenement also to Gross, who conveyed it to Call, as Call hath to Hooker aforesaid. Treswithan, or Trease-withan, in this parish, compounded of Tres-with-an, was of old the seat of the De Brayes, gentlemen heretofore of great antiquity, good note, and considerable revenues in those parts; though in the time of Charles I. their estate was much impaired, so that the last gentleman of this family dying much indebted, and no heir appearing, occasioned a memorable lawsuit between Sir Francis Basset, knight, lord of the manor of Tyhiddy, of which those lands of Treswithan were held, and the creditors of Mr. Braye, then in possession of the premises: when in fine, upon the issue at law at Lanceston, the jury gave it in escheat, for want of issue, to Sir Francis Basset, in right of his manor aforesaid, the verdict passing against the creditors; whereby the posterity of Sir Francis are possessed of it to this day.
TONKIN
has merely copied from Mr. Hals.
THE EDITOR.
Camborne has risen more rapidly into wealth and importance than any other parish in Cornwall. The church tower is so large and well-built, and it possesses with a market so many appendages of a regular town, that the prefix church may well be omitted.
Pendarves was given by Mrs. Percevall, surviving sister of Sir William Pendarves, to Mr. John Stackhouse, second son of Doctor William Stackhouse, Rector of St. Erme who married Miss Williams, heiress of that branch of the Williamses of Probus, which had settled at Trehane. Mr. John Stackhouse married Miss Acton, with whom he acquired a very large property in Shropshire: his son, Mr. Edward William Wynne Pendarves is now the proprietor. Pendarves has become a very handsome seat in consequence of the successive improvements made by the late Mr. Stackhouse and himself. He has adopted the name of Pendarves in the place of Stackhouse, and added Wynne in gratitude of a large addition made to his fortunes by the late Reverend Luttrell Wynne, LL.D.
Mr. Pendarves has followed the examples of his two immediate predecessors, by marrying a considerable heiress, Miss Triste, from Devonshire. He has been twice elected member for the county, and now (1833) represents the western division of Cornwall.
Menadarva was purchased by the late Mr. Basset, and belongs to his son, Lord Dunstanville.
Rosewarne was the residence of Mr. William Harris, who greatly increased his fortune by skill and success in mining. He served the office of sheriff in 1773. His only daughter and heiress is married to Mr. Winchcombe Hartley, a gentleman of Berkshire.
Crane, with several adjoining farms, became the property of Mr. John Oliver Willyams, of Carnanton, in right of his mother, and the whole, on his demise, was purchased by Lord Dunstanville.
I cannot close my short additions to Camborne without noticing Mr. Richard Trevithick. No one, with the exception of Mr. Watt, has probably contributed in so great a degree to the improvement of steam-engines, the most important and the most philosophical of all mechanical inventions. His enterprise has also equalled the abstract powers of his mind, and for several years he laboured in South America to give the mines of that great continent the advantage of European machinery; but civil wars, and the instability of Governments, defeated his best endeavours, so as to render them, up to the present time, unavailing either to those mines or to himself.
Camborne contains 5933 statute acres.
| Annual value of the Real Property, as returned to Parliament in 1815 | £. 11,783 |
s. 0 |
d. 0 |
| Poor Rates in 1831 | 2,649 | 16 | 0 |
| Population, | in 1801, 4811 |
in 1811, 4714 |
in 1821, 6219 |
in 1831, 7699; |
giving an increase of 60 per cent. in 30 years.
GEOLOGY, BY DR. BOASE.
The eastern and south-western sides of this parish are situate on granite, the greater part consisting of high and barren hills, including Carnbrea and Carnkie. This rock is large-grained, and not very prone to disintegrate; it is occasionally traversed by beds of felspar porphyry.
On the boundaries of this granite, and in the adjacent slate, are numerous tin and copper-mines, the most interesting of which are Delcoath and Cock's Kitchen; the latter extends into the parish of lllogan, but is a continuation of the Camborne lodes. Delcoath has been for many years the deepest mine in Cornwall. It stands at the surface, about fifty fathoms (300 feet) above the level of the sea, and the deepest shaft is about a hundred and eighty fathoms (1080 feet) below the sea level, making on the whole a depth from the surface of nearly 1400 feet.
These mines exhibit the curious geological phenomena of alternating granite and slate; that is, in sinking a perpendicular shaft, the miner passes repeatedly out of one of these rocks into the other. Various theoretical opinions have been entertained on this subject: some geologists supposing that the layers are no more than irregular protuberances from the main mass of the rock; whilst others consider them as large veins dipping towards and communicating with the granite at a great depth. But it is ascertained that these granite layers are sometimes detached or insulated masses, whilst at other times they form large veins or courses, which have regular bearings to a considerable distance, and are then called elvans; to form, however, a correct idea of the features of these phenomena, we must become acquainted, not with the appearance only, but with the nature and composition of these two rocks.
Granite and slate are usually considered, from their exterior character, as very dissimilar, whereas in this situation their real composition is nearly alike.
The granite immediately in contact with the slate, consists of compact felspar, containing particles or crystals of felspar, quartz, and mica, in variable proportions, but the whole generally increasing towards the centre of the mass. So that the granite is changed into a felspar rock or porphyry rock, scarcely ever resembling a well characterised granite; while the slate in contact has received the various names of greywacke, greenstone, clayslate, and killas; but it appears to be a rock sui generis, consisting almost entirely of compact felspar, coloured purple or blue by its intimate union with a dark-coloured micaceous mineral, sometimes seen distinct on the surface of the slate, and from which it appears to derive its lamellar structure. The bases of these two rocks are therefore the same, and at the point of contact it is often difficult to draw a line between them; for the slate passes into white compact felspar by the gradual disappearance of its colouring mineral; and this granite rock, by the more and more additions of felspar, quartz, and mica, reassumes its usual character.
On this view of the subject, it is easy to comprehend why the granite and the slate alternate and mutually pass into each other; and an explanation may also be given of the complicated phenomena of granite veins in slate, when it is assumed that both rocks are not only of contemporaneous origin, but likewise similar in their mineral composition.
Between this mining district and a line drawn east and west across the parish, a little north of the church town, the land is in most places very good; but north of this line, at the extremity of the parish, where it abuts on the sea, the ground is almost entirely uncultivated, affording nothing more than a slight pasturage for sheep. At Godrevy Point there is laid open an interesting section of diluvial deposits: one of the beds, composed of shelly sand and pebbles, is consolidated with sandstone and conglomerate.