Rame Church

RAME CHURCH 

CAROL SERVICE

Sunday December 17th 2000

The Church of St. Germanus, Parish of Maker with Rame

  

The postcard at above right was bought by me in 1969, upon my first visit, it is Still on sale now!! The test below is culled from a very interesting leaflet that is on sale in the Church. Like the postcard above it dates from the 1960`s - at least, well that's when I first bought it! but of recent year has been updated and broadened in it's coverage. The pencil sketch is taken from this leaflet. I have not got permission to use this material but I hope that the author/s will approve as I feel sure we both have the same non-commercial aim of keeping our history at Rame.

RAME CHURCH

The name means 'the high protruding cliff, the ram's head', from which the hamlet and parish take their name. The little chapel of St. Michael on the summit of Rame Head, licensed for Mass in 1397, is probably on the site of a much earlier, Celtic, hermitage. Earl Ordulf, owner of vast estates in the West Country and uncle of King Ethelred, gave Rame to Tavistock Abbey (which he had founded) in AD 981. Over the centuries the manor passed to the Dawneys, the Durnfords and finally the Edgcumbes.

 

As early as 1486 Plymouth was paying a watchman at Rame to maintain a beacon there to warn shipping and to bring news to Plymouth of important ships, such as the return of the Newfoundland fishing fleet in 1543.

 

THE CHURCH is dedicated to St. Germanus, the fighting German bishop who is supposed to have landed in the neighbourhood when he came to England to suppress the Pelagian heresy in about AD 400. It is all built of rough slate. The first stone building was consecrated in 1259. The slender, unbuttressed tower with its broached spire (an unusual feature in a Cornish church), the north wall, north aisle and the chancel are all probably of this date, when the church was cruciform in shape. The south transept went in a 15th century extension with a south aisle and arcade added and some new windows. The south aisle wagon roof is original, and some pews survive from the 16th century, with Devon-style tracery on the bends‑ends. There were restorations in 1848 and 1886, when slates replaced the stone‑shingled roof. The church still has no electricity, and is lit by candles.

 

Cawsand was in Rame parish (while Kingsand was in Maker) and the moves to establish a church nearer the people eventually led to the building in the village of St. Andrew's Church in 1878. Since the two parishes were united in 1943, St. Andrew's has continued to serve as the church in the village.

 

KINGSAND AND CAWSAND

 

A few fisherman were settled here in 1483 when Henry Tudor, later Henry VII, landed here briefly as part of an abortive attempt to overthrow Richard Ill. The real influx of people began when Plymouth merchants built pilchard cellars along the beach (still here) in Elizabeth I's reign and in the next two centuries smuggling flourished, the goods obtained both from cross‑Channel trips and incoming merchantmen.

 

The villages were the headquarters of West Country free trade, finally suppressed by 1850. Kingsand was still in Devon until 1844 and the boundary stone between the two counties is still opposite the Halfway Hotel, separating Turk Town (Cawsand) and the North Rockers (Kingsand). Intense rivalry between the two villages continued well into this century.

 

MAKER and RAME IN WAR

 

In March 1587 a Spanish pinnace landed a raiding Party at Cawsand which tried to bum down the village, but one man with a musket put them to flight. In the Civil War Maker Church tower was fortified by the Royalist garrison of Mount Edgcumbe and was captured by the Plymouth Parliamentary forces in May 1644. For the next two centuries the Bay was a major anchorage for the British Navy - Nelson for instance in 1801. In the 18th century Maker Church tower was an Admiralty signal station with its own crew, passing messages by semaphore to Devonport Dockyard. Massive Fortifications of many centuries still dot the peninsula.

 

MOUNT EDGCUMBE

 

The Edgecumbes, yeoman farmers high up the Devon banks of the Tamar, married first the heiress of Cotehele and then the Durnford heiress, who brought them Maker and Rame. Richard Edgcumbe, in exile with Henry Tudor, was richly rewarded for his loyalty and the family created the park and started the castle in Henry VIII's reign. The family was ennobled and took the title of Earl of Mount Edgcumbe in the 18th century and are still at the house, which was burnt out by German firebombs in 1941 and later rebuilt. The park was bought by Plymouth Corporation and Cornwall County Council and became a country park in 1975.

 

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