Ertach Kernow - The 18th century Cornish travels of Dr Pococke
Touring Cornwall over one hundred years ago may not have had the benefits of the far improved roads we have now or even just fifty years past. However, I have no doubt Cornwall was much more picturesque and although travel along even the main Cornish roads was more winding and bumpier they carried far less traffic. The quality and type of information about their Cornish travels varied depending on the traveller, but some produced many interesting snippets of information. We continue the theme of journeys by earlier visitors to Cornwall even further back in time to 1750 with Dr Richard Pococke. He was a great traveller and writer who had travelled through Europe and the near east as well as throughout Great Britain and Ireland.
Prior to entering Cornwall Dr Pococke visited Plymouth and mentions the five docks there and St Nicholas Island, better known to us today as Drakes Island. He writes ‘ I had the pleasure to be shown Mount Edgcumbe by the lord of it and his sons. It is by far the finest situation I ever saw, exceeding everything in the beauty of the near prospects.’ Pococke describes the view that could be seen from Mount Edgcumbe including what was the second Eddystone Lighthouse. The first had been swept away by a storm in 1703 and the second would succumb to fire just five years after Dr Pocock’s visit. It was replaced in 1759 by Smeaton’s Tower which stood until it too was replaced in 1882 and then rebuilt on Plymouth Hoe where it can be seen today. Lord Edgcumbe also showed Dr Pococke a portable camera obscura housed in a sentry hut, which he was very taken with. Camera obscura’s, similar to a pinhole camera, became popular with artists allowing views to be projected via a small hole onto the back of the box, lens were later added for better effect. The gardens at Mount Edgcumbe were also very highly regarded and described within Dr Pocock’s records. Today the house and gardens at Mount Edgcumbe are open to the public and owned jointly by Plymouth City Council and Cornwall Council. We can only assume that he must have crossed on the Cremyll ferry as he doesn’t mention Saltash in his writings, going directly from Plymouth to Mount Edgcumbe.
As always click the images for larger view
Travelling with Lord Edgcumbe the doctor dined with him at Orost Hole before parting, Edgcumbe travelling to Lostwithiel and Dr Pocock to St Germans. At St Germans he visited the church with a brief description of the towers and the door, describing them as very old. He also mentions Mr Elliots house, Port Elliot, and goes into the history of the ecclesiastical see of Cornwall in some detail. The party then travelled to Duloe mentioning only the vicarage and rectory before setting out for Fowey ‘and passed by Trelawn, the estate of the late Bishop of Winchester, Sir Jonathan Trelawney and now his son Sir John Trelawney. It is an old building with a chapel to it and fine woods near it.’ Arriving at Fowey Dr Pococke comments ‘Fowey is a very good harbour, and the town is pleasantly situated on the west side of the river.’ He also mentions the ‘fine terrace walk over the cliff on the river’ owned by Mr Keke. This was originally created by the Mohun family who had owned the manor of Hall from the 14th century, the Mohun line being extinguished in 1712. It is now known as Hall Walk and owned by the National Trust.
From Fowey Dr Pococke's Cornish travels continued by boat across Par Bay (St Austell Bay) to the small harbour at Par describing it as near St Blazey. Here they first saw a ‘stream work of tin, that is, of tin stone and tin grains wash'd down to the bottom from the lodes or veins. They find it at different depths, in what they call loose ground, supposed to be wash'd down at and since the Deluge.’ The deluge he refers to is Noah’s biblical flood as during the 1750’s the age of the earth was still believed to be some 6,000 years, based on biblical calculations. Geological science was still in its infancy, its theories generally unaccepted. It seems from Dr Pocock’s description of tin mining here that this was still fairly basic, whilst elsewhere in Cornwall more intensive mining seems to have been well underway with greater industrialisation using steam engines and deeper mines.
Then ‘We came to a little tinning town called St. Austle, partly built of more stone or grey granite, and partly of a free stone, which they find on a river about three miles to the south-south-west. We went up the hill, and struck out of the way, to the south, to other tin works called Pool-gooth, where they have a fire engine’, wrote Dr Pococke. Hard to imagine the large town of St Austell described as a little tinning town, but in fact it was the mine at Polgooth owned by the Edgcumbe family since the late 16th century which would help transform this settlement. Dr Pococke mentions the fire engine, which was in fact a 50-inch Newcomen steam engine installed there in 1727. This early steam engine, used to pump water from the mine, was later replaced by a more efficient Boulton & Watt engine in 1784. Although Richard Pococke didn’t know it, some fifty years later Polgooth tin mine would become known as the richest tin mine in the United Kingdom and in 1803 hailed as the ‘greatest tin mine in the world’.
Moving on Pococke’s party passed through Grampound, which he describes as a very poor town and formerly famous for the manufacture of gloves. John Wesley visiting Grampound seven years later was more scathing, calling it ‘a mean, inconsiderable, dirty village’. Besides the making gloves it was also renowned for its tanneries and as a centre for leather production into the early 21st century. As they travelled between St Blazey and Grampound, which Dr Pococke described as ‘tin country’ he noted the soil was ‘indifferent and covered with heath’, but beyond Grampound towards Truro that it was very good with no sign of tin or mine workings. Probus next on Pocock’s journey was ‘pleasantly situated on the river’ and that ‘there is a fine tower to the church, beautifully adorned with Gothick ornaments.’ The church tower is the tallest in Cornwall at 129 feet, the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner saying of the church that ‘the glory of the church is its tower’. This church is certainly well worth a visit.
Arriving at Truro Dr Pococke comments that it is ‘a small trading town, in which there are many good houses ; and many wealthy people live here, who have got considerable fortunes by the tin trade, and also several merchants and shop keepers who supply the country, this town being pretty much in the centre of the tin and copper mines; there is also a great trade in supplying the tin works with timber and the fire engines with coal.’ Now sadly mostly gone replaced by the cathedral, apart from St Mary’s Aisle, it is worth repeating Richard Pocock’s thoughts on St Mary’s Church in full. ‘The church is a most elegant building of about Henry the 8th 's time, with some old painted glass in it and curious sculpture on the south and east fronts, and the letter which King Charles the First writ to the people of Cornwall on their loyalty towards him is put up in the church. There is a handsome tomb of the Roberts in the church, the ancestors of Lord Radnor, and the tomb of one Fitz Hibben, aliaa Phibben, who, being made a slave by the Turks, he and about ten more overcame sixty Turks on board a ship, three or four of his companions being killed, and went with the ship into Spain.’ The Roberts tomb can still be seen in the cathedral in all its late medieval glory, but sadly the larger carved monument to Owen Phippen erected by his brother George, the rector of St Mary’s, is hidden away below the Cathedral behind some shelving.
There is no doubt that Dr Pococke had a curious mind, and he was keen to find out more about Cornwall's tin mining during his Cornish travels. Several pages are devoted to recording and describing in some detail the workings of a tin mine and the preparation of the tin from ore to smelting. Although the industrialisation of Cornish tin mining was underway this is a useful guide at a time before mass production of the late 18th and into the 19th centuries takes place. Steam engines were still in their infancy with the early somewhat inefficient Newcomen engines still in use, yet to be replaced by the improvements of the late 18th century Boulton and Watt designs. Still later Richard Trevithick’s first high-pressure engines would help revolutionise the Cornish mining landscape at the turn of the 19thcentury.
We will continue Richard Pocock’s Cornish travels as he travels further west into Cornwall in due course where he provides a good insight into Cornwall over 250 years ago.
Our ongoing Cornish Place Names project promoting knowledge about the Cornish language names of Kernow's towns, villages and places. Downloadable poster and audio pronunciation is available via this link to 'Porth'. Click image to access.
![CPN - Week [010] Porth](https://www.cornwallheritage.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/CPN-Week-010-Porth-Scan-QR-Code-or-via-website-address-300x297.jpg "CPN - Week [010] Porth - Scan QR Code or via website address")
