As is the case with many towns and villages in this country, there have been several different spellings of the name over the years whereas its pronunciation has changed remarkably little. However1 in this case, the local pronunciation, luck-si1ly~un, seems to owe more to the very earliest written form so far found, Luxylyan as long ago as 1162, rather than to the current spelling or to most of the intermediate variants.
Also a little unusual is that the current spelling did not become universal until as late as after the turn of the 20th century, immediately before which time at least two other forms were also in concurrent use: Luxulian throughout an l894 guide book to Cornwall as well as on Bartholemew's maps, Luxulion in an 18901s Kelly's Directory, whilst the Great Western Railway used Luxulyan in its timetables to qualify the name Bridges by which the nearby railway station was then officially known.
Earlier in the nineteenth century, the Cornish parish historian, Davies Gilbert1 quoted two alternative forms: Luxulian again and Luxilian, one of the intermediate forms which was closer than most to the local pronunciation. Luxulian was also favoured slightly earlier by the topographers the Lysons brothers but, earlier still, the somewhat extended~ spelling Luxullian has been found in legal deeds of 1745 while, centures before that, in 1412 to be exact, the form Losulyan was recorded.
Luxulyan and its Saints
Since the early fifteenth century form of Lossulyan is so near to the Breton place name Lossulian, it has been suggested that the church was founded by St Sulian, one of the party of Welsh missionary monks who accompanied St Sampson to Brittany in the sixth century. Legends grew up around his name. Like many other Celtic saints, he was said to have been the son of a Welsh King - Brucemail, King of Powys - who had abandoned his heritage for the religious life despite violent parental opposition. The group who travelled with St Sampson to Brittany crossed Cornwall between the estuaries of the Camel and the Fowey. It was a missionary journey and, like missionaries of a much.. later. age, the group and individual members of it held their rites and services on sites with pre-Christian religious associations.
Here in Luxulyan there were, in fact, two such sites. The church was later to be built in a round which in all probability coincided with the original churchyard which was enlarged in 1884 Such circular elevated sites, possibly ancient communal or even individual burial places, had been used for religious assemblages long centuries before the times of the migratory Welsh saints.
The second site is that of the nearby holy well, situated in the side of the steep hill on the left of the road to Lanlivery. This was dedicated to St Cyors in Celtic Christian times, hence the name of the adjacent house. Little, if anything, is known of this saint save his name and an attribution of his origins to Ireland. The well itself has been restored in recent years but, late in the nineteenth century, the construction of the railway cutting beyond the other side of the road was reputed to have "for ever drained" its source. All traditions of particular virtues attributed to this well have long since vanished, lost in an antiquity going back long before the Christian era.
Irish and Welsh missionary saints were comparatively late arrivals in the Luxulyan area. "Men of the Dawn", as they might rather fancifully be called, appeared and left their traces on the high moors at the northern extremities of the parish. The earthworks and nearby burrows at Castilly were, in fact, never a real castle as the name had suggested to some older etymologists.
The area has been described by recent archaeologists as being basically "a large enclosure with entrance to a flat central area" and classified by them as a 'henge' which can be dated back more than four thousand years, sometime between 2500 and 2200 BC.
Reckoned to be a regional focal point rather than a normal settlement, the site was possibly a centre for trade along the east to west high ground routeway through the length of Cornwall. Furthermore, it presents only a slight detour from tracks between the Camel estuary and the south coast havens of the western peninsula.
Prideaux
With stronger claims to be considered a castle, near the southern limit of the parish, is the iron age fort of Prideaux. Technically described as a "multivallate hill fort", three ramparts survive together with incomplete remains of a fourth surrounding a level circular area of about two acres. Magnificently situated on a 400 foot high conical hill, romantic speculation can colour architectural fact with the realisation that, before trees were planted and grew to the east and south, King Mark's 'palace' at Castle Dore was visible less than three miles distant as the crow flies.
The name Prideaux has a Norman-French, 1066, echo to it, suggesting in the early 18th century to the Cornish historian Thomas Tonkin that it derived from:
"Pres d'eaux, near the waters, for the sea formerly flowed up as high as this place, till the (tin) stream works choked up its entrance, any one that views the high cliffs under this place, and those on the opposite side of the valley in Tywardreath, must needs be convinced of."
The family that took their name from it was certainly prominent in Plantagenet times, but the name does not appear as a manor in the Domesday survey. Oddly, too, the Norman introduction of rabbits into England may be responsible for the hilltop remains in later times being known as Prideaux 'Warren' rather than 'Castle'.
Domesday Manors
The compilers of the Domesday Survey in 1086 recorded two manors in Luxulyan, 'Bodigga' and 'Trevillyn; the former three or four times the extent of the latter which now appears on most maps as Trevellion. The place names had the Celtic prefixes of 'Bod' and 'Tre', meaning abode and homestead, but 'iggo' seems less assuredly Celtic than 'villyn'. Pre Norman Conquest, the holder of Bodiggo, Aelfric, was undoubtedly Saxon; his family may well have settled there four or five generations earlier, after the Wessex invasion of the far western county by Athelstan. However, the name Bretel, holder of Trevillyn, seems Celtic.
In 1088, the two manors together were occupied by some three dozen families, but only four of them at Trevillyn. In addition, there were nine 'slaves' at Bodiggo but it is doubtful if these were serfs or landless labourers. The two manors probably had a total population of 150 when the Domesday record was compiled, possibly a score more or possibly less, with Bodiggo far and away the most populous district within the bounds of the later parish.
Ancient Chapels and Holy Crosses
Parishes as ecclesiastical units go back well into Saxon times, but the first mention of Luxulyan as such occurs in a reference in an ecclesiastical document of 1162 to 'Lanlivere cum Cappella de Luxylyan de Bocardel'. That chapel was probably on the site of the chancel and nave of the present church which was enlarged during the fifteenth century spate of church restoration and rebuilding in Cornwall by the addition of the north and south aisles. The oldest feature within the church is the Norman font, the carved animals on which symbolise evil driven out by regeneration through baptism.
Together with the mother church of Lanlivery, the chapel at Luxulyan was linked with the Benedictine priory at Tywardreath, whose monks continued the tradition of religious pastoral care which had been the characteristic of older Cornish Celtic Christianity. Before such chapels had been built1 members of monastic communities had quite regularly set forth from their religious houses to minister to the laity in places where standing stone memorials of an older pagan faith or wayside route markers stood. Transformed into crosses by Christians, there were at least four of these within Luxulyan's bounds.
The theory that these marked the way linking Tywardreath Priory ~ St Benet's Abbey in Lanivet is credible, although the tradition of a haunted monk's way fn the woodlands above Pont's Mill on the Lanlivery side of the Luxulyan Valley and going by the monastic grange of Gredow suggests another route.
There are vast gaps in the history of the parish. These gaps are strikingly shown by the list of vicars giving only three names before Henry VIII's matrimonial imbroglios led to the breach with the Papacy. Sir Ralph de Restyn was 'chaplain' in 1304, it is rather tempting to associate him with the place name Resprin, though that location had more links with St Petroc's Priory in Bodmin than with Tywardreath.
Nearly thirty years later1 in 1333, one Roger was 'parish priest of the chapel'. The next recorded incumbent was Luke Philip in 1497 and, after him, in 1538 when the Henrican Reformation was well under way, Richard Wayte. Hardly anything is known of these men, save their names.
It is unlikely that the parish escaped the ravages of the Black Death or the other epidemics which were so rife in those times, not to mention periods of dearth and famine. There is little doubt that some tin streaming went on together with subsistence agriculture.
However, the most intriguing insight into local life and human shortcomings is provided by the Diocesan Register of Bishop Stafford of Exeter where it records the issue of two commissions on 1st June 1417 affecting the "Sanstorum Ciricil et Juletta de Lossulyan", the first being
'for the absolution of Robert and William Sakkaiewy, William Trewbys and Richard Kendale, excommunicated for committing a violent assault on William Cowlyn in the Cemetery of the said Church'
and the second:
'for the Reconciliation of the Cemetery'.
The surnames mentioned can stir speculation but what is obvious from this is that the
Church had already been dedicated, or perhaps even rededicated, to the eastern
Mediterranean saints and martyrs, Cyrus and his mother, Julitta.
The parish church itself has been enlarged, in fact almost entirely rebuilt, in the century preceding the Reformation by the addition of north and south aisles to the nave and chancel plus the erection of the three-stage western tower. It was a great period of church building and rebuilding, similar to the amount of like activity during the Victorian era. There had doubtless been an economic revival after the catastrophic succession of Black Death and other plagues during the previous century, while previous high levels of population were gradually recovered.
Plantagenets, Lancastrians, Yorkists might squander their resources on French wars and dynastic feuds, but funds which an earlier age had been devoted by faithful Christians to crusading activities were, it may be suggested, increasingly being used for ecclesiastical building. If the tradition be true that the turret at the north-east corner of the church tower housed the local stannary records, it is natural to infer that, at the time it was being built, the tinners of the Luxulyan area were prosperously active.
Besides the aisles and tower, the fifteenth century builders added the embattled, stone-roofed porch which is vaulted with Pentewan stone, the sculptured Gothic panelling and tracery showing the erosion scars of age. The original font was moved back to its present position in the extended western end. Behind it, the tower arch is now open to the church; a singing gallery which once hid it was removed in 1863.
The removal of the Singing Gallery is only one of many changes which have taken place within the church during the ensuing five centuries. Old records reveal that the singers were accompanied by a number and variety of string and wind instruments before the Victorian introduction of a harmonium. This in turn was replaced in 1911 by the magnificent organ deservedly reputed to be one of the finest in the county. The dedication service on June 1st 1911 was followed by a 'public teal in the Vicarage garden and the school was closed for the afternoon to allow everyone to attend.
The arches of granite supported by monolith pillars of the same material on the inner sides of the aisles remain as they were built, enduring testimony to the skill and aesthetic taste of the craftsmen who erected them. The nave roof timbers were removed in 1880 whereas those of the aisles remain, though they might become a major source of concern in the future. The Chancel Screen was taken down in 1825 but the site of the stairway to the Roof Loft on the north side can still be seen.
Only in the west windows of the Tower are there remains of fifteenth and sixteenth century stained glass. These were collected and placed there when the Chancel window was renewed as a memorial to Sylvanus Trevail who died in November 1903. The old glass had had representations of the arms of Prideaux, Hearles and other locally prominent families and its colours are particularly fine and clear, especially when seen against a westering sun.
Twice removed was glass depicting the arms of Robert de Cardinham, one of the reputed founders of Tywardreath Priory, which had originally been in the east window of the south Aisle. Another modern window in the south aisle, between the tablet memorials to Luxulyan's dead of the two twentieth century World Wars1 was erected in memory of Richard and Laura Rundle of St Winnow; Laura Rundle was the sister of Sylvanus Trevail who erected the previously mentioned Chancel window in his memory.
It can be surmised that in pre-Reformation or pre-Cromwellian times the church interior was more richly decorated than in later days. To the illiterate who comprised the greater part of the congregations in those earlier eras, a picture was the most graphic and telling expression of sacred and secular messages which the more learned wished to communicate to them.
A later vicar had the inspiration to bring and position against the north wall a copy of the Ghent altar-piece which was completed by Jan van Eyck in 1432. There is some supposition that the work, which depicts the Adoration of the Lamb, was begun by his brother, Hubert, who died in l426. What is certain is that the Eyck brothers developed and perfected techniques for painting in oils, thereby achieving masterpieces of colour and light bedside which the twentieth century's self-styled 'glorious technicolour' seems anaemically pallid. Such colours were to be seen in many churches in those times - they were expressions of faith rather than, as so many later 'Reformers' and 'Puritans' feared, a distraction from true religious worship.
The Rashleighs, who acquired Prideaux in 1808, are prominently commemorated by the marble memorial in the south aisle. The lower part was erected by John Colman Rashleigh, later Sir John, in memory not only of his first wife, Harriett, who died in 1832 at the age of 55, but also to three of their four children who pre-deceased her. The upper part was erected in memory of Sir John himself following his death in 1847 by the sole surviving son and heir, Colman.
The oldest of these memorials, now placed on the west wall, is that to Walter Hicks, who died in July 1636. He had lived in Lower Menedew, later to be written lienadue and to become the home of the Trevails, which at that time was a residence of almost quasi-manorial status since the decline of the old Domesday manors.
Trevillion, one of those manors, in the latter part of the eighteenth century was the home of the Eudy or Udy family. The memorial to the Eudys on the north wall lists the two parents, four sons and a daughter who all died between December 1761 and July 1788 while that to the three Udys (Henry, Ann, and their son, Hart) records the fact, which seems to stress a superstitious belief rather than a mere coincidence, that they all died on a Friday within less than a year of one another between May 1789 and March 1790.
Also on the north wall is a memorial to Joseph Carveth, vicar of the parish, who died in 1728, the only vicar to be so honoured.
A tablet on the south wall is to Elizabeth Rosevere who died on the 21st of September 1765 at the age of 61. Widowed twenty years earlier, the inventory of the estate left to her to administer by her husband, William, who had lived at Chytan, is an indication of the material possessions of a substantial local 'yeoman', the status of folk like the Udys at that time. How prices and currency have changed since the mideighteenth century is shown by sone of the 1745 valuations of William Rosevere 's possessions -
Calves were valued at ten shillings each, a cow at £3, a group of seven cows and a bull at £24, whilst sheep were between six and seven shillings each. In all, the live farm stock was valued at £119/16/- . Very minimal valuations were put down for the various household goods and small hand tools, while the only item in a category equivalent to farm machinery went down as £3 for 'a Butt Wain and Wheels and all other Implements of Husbandry'.
The total value of the estate was estimated as being not less than £l,134/l3/31/2. However, Rosevere had no less than £99/10/- in 'cash found in his Custody at the time of his Death'; four 'Chattle Estates' let out on lives in Chytan, Higher Bodiggo, and Tredinnick reckoned to be worth £242; shares in tin bounds and 'adventures' valued at £38/7/-, and no less than £80 in 'white' tin lying to his credit in Truro. He had left his widow reasonably affluent, despite the fact that over forty percent of his estate had been put down by the appraisers in the inventory as 'Debts Separate and Disperate the Particulars of which are ready to be produced if Required'.
Parish houses for the poor
The fate of the original vicarage1 in which Truebody and the older Cole had lived in cramped discomfort, tempts the speculation that, since it obviously appertained to the parish, it was turned over upon completion of the new building to the local parochial authorities to provide a second 'parish house'. In the early 1840's there were two of these, a little way from and on both sides of the main church gate.
The mound opposite the Post Office within the churchyard walls is definitely the site of one of these houses. During its demolition in April 1864, the surprising discovery was made in the cavity of a wall of about eighty silver coins which dated back to the time of Elizabeth 1 and the first two Stuarts.
Were they hidden there in the 1640's when rival Royalist and Parliamentarian forces were cavorting about south-east Cornwall and ordinary folk felt the need to safeguard their possessions from the freebooting proclivities of both of them?
If they were, then it seems certain that the old parish house would have provided a safer deposit than Lostwithiel for the Stannary Records reputed to have been moved thence from the turret of Luxulyan church tower for safer keeping.
Unaware of the wealth hidden so close at hand, many generations over the years of impoverished Luxulyan parishioners spent their last days in this almshouse or others in the village like it. Certainly coming into the categories of Cromwell's guiltless of their countrymen's blood and of mute, inglorious Miltons, incapacitated by accident, sickness, debility or the infirmities of old age, they were brought there to end their days and then to find, nearby, an unmarked pauper's grave.
Luxulyan Church and the Stannaries
The tin industry in Cornwall was an important source of employment from earliest times. As the importance of the tin trade grew, the need to protect those persons engaged in it became apparent. In 1197 Hubert, Archbishop of Canterbury, despatched William de Wrotham to be Warden of the Stannaries and to Protect the King's Revenue. In 1201 a charter was conferred which confirmed the already ancient rights of the tinners. The mining districts of C;ornwall formed four stannaries - Foweymore, Blackmore, Tywornhail and the united Stannaries of Penwith and Kerrier.
Luxulyan Church Tower is said to have been the repositry for the Charter for Blackmore. This Stannary was made up of eight Tithings - Trethevy, Pridis, Boswith, Treverbin, Trenance Austle, Tremedris, Tregarrack, and Miliack. It is thought that this is the oldest of the Stannaries and that the charter, which conferred its own set of ~nique rights and privileges on the tinners, was kept in a coffer with eight locks, each tithing having a key.
It must be remembered that, up to the sixteenth century, most of the 'tinners work' was in streaming and that underground mining played only a minor role. Evidence of streaming can still be seen in the valley near Prideaux and of more recent workings at Red Moor - each reworking of the ground destroying the earlier evidence of working.