The Parochial History of Cornwall/Volume 1/St Denis
ST. DENIS.
HALS.
Is situate in the hundred of Powdre, and hath upon the north, St Columb; east, Roach; south, St. Stephen's, in Brannell; west, St. Enedor. As for the name, it is derived from the tutelar guardian and patron of this Church, St. Denis or Dionysius the Areopagite, President of Athens, in Greece, whose name Dionisius in Latin, hath a Greek original, viz. from διονυσος Dionusos, Bucchus, Vini Inventor; quod excitet mentem.
This place I take to be that Landines, or Landineri, taxed in Domesday Roll 20 William I. 1087, that is to say, Denis's church, temple, or chapel; though, indeed, I meet not with the name thereof in any other authentic record till Wolsey's Inquisition into the value of benefices in Cornwall 1521; at which time it was wholly appropriated, or impropriated, together with St. Stephen's, to the Rector of Carhayes, and consolidated into it; and this parish rated to the 4s. per pound Land Tax, 1696, 62l. 4s. The patronage in (Tanner[1]) Pitt. The incumbent (Tanner[1]) Sutton.
St. Denis was born in the city of Athens in Greece at the time of Tiberius's reign over the empire; a place re nowned for wisdom, learning, arts and sciences. He was descended of a rich and honourable family, morally just, courteous, and loving to strangers. From his youth he was bred up and addicted to learning, and became so eminent therein, that he had a chief place amongst the magistrates and rulers of the academy and city of Athens. He was most elegant in the Attic tongue, as being the dialect of his native country, and consequently a good rhetorician. But that which made him more eminent was his skill in the doctrine of the Stoics, Epicureans, and other philosophers.
Mr. Hals continues through several pages the history of St. Denis, but as the facts want altogether the support of historical authority, and do not include the most interesting of all, that of his walking from Montmartre, where the sentence of decapitation was executed, to the place since denominated from him, with his head under his arm, I shall omit the whole; as also an account of blood having fallen in this remote and sequestered churchyard, as the best and most authentic mode of apprising the whole nation that their fleet would be defeated by the Dutch, and that a plague would break out in London notwithstanding that some of the stones, having blood upon them, were seen by the author himself.
TONKIN.
Mr. Tonkin has not a single observation different from Hals on this parish.
THE EDITOR.
The church of St. Denis is placed on the top of a hill, without any appearance of habitations, and very little of cultivation; and the flat country round it is destroyed in the most efficacious manner, having been turned over and over again down to the solid rock, in what is termed streaming for tin.
The only village of any size in the parish is called Hendra. The late Mr. Thomas Rawlings, of Padstow, had some property in the parish, but much the greater part belongs to Lord Falmouth.
This parish, united in the same presentation with St. Michael Carhayes and St. Stephen in Branwell, may claim a share in the honour of Robert Dunkin, who was ejected in the interregnum and restored with the monarchy, and who has acquired celebrity by entering the field as a controversialist with the great John Milton.
This parish contains 2789 statute acres.
| Annual value of the Real Property, as returned to Parliament in 1815 | £. 1524 |
s. 0 |
d. 0 |
| Poor Rate in 1831 | 318 | 1 | 0 |
| Population,— | in 1801, 318 |
in 1811, 478 |
in 1821, 592 |
in 1831, 721 |
giving an increase of 126 per cent, in 30 years.
The southern part, situated on granite, amounts to more than half the parish. Near Restowrick the granite is large-grained and crystalline, like that of the range of Roughtor and Brown Willy; but it is associated with porcelainous granite, similar to that of Breage and of St. Stephen's (which will be noticed under the latter parish), and also with shorl and shorl rocks, as in Roach where the rocks are better displayed.