St.Pinnock?

On the 19^th January 1643, war came to the parish when a skirmish party of Royalist dragoons discovered a Parliamentary force deployed and waiting to the west of East Taphouse. The Parliamentary forces under Scottish General Ruthin had come from Plymouth to head off the Royalist advance from Cornwall. General Ruthin, not wanting to wait for reinforcements which were to rendezvous with him at Liskeard, had set out early to try and claim a victory for himself: a mistake which was to have far reaching consequences.
The Royalists had been fairing badly in the county, Sir Ralph Hopton had been trying to raise a force in Devon, but was outnumbered and had retreated back into Cornwall. Fortunately for him, three Parliamentary ships had had to seek shelter in Falmouth where they were seized. The guns and ammunition on board replenished the Royalist army and they had set off again for Devon.
At St.Pinnock the two forces, both some 5000 strong, watched each other from either side of the valley, neither wishing to leave their position of strength. After two hours, probably knowing that Parliamentary reinforcements were on the way, Sir Hopton ordered the attack, revealing his two cannon. Sir Bevil Grenvile and his Cornish Regiment of foot led the charge and the Parliament forces turned and ran. Some 200 were killed and 1500 taken prisoner as they were hunted back towards Liskeard, right across the band car park. Only two died on the Royalist side. The remnants fled back to Liskeard where the residents decided that they were now Royalists and kicked them out.
The site of the battle of Braddock down is unknown, but officially runs from the Pelynt road out of East Taphouse to Middle Taphouse however, local legend places it closer to Boconnoc Estate where the Royalists spent the night. Members of the band’s percussion section are rumoured to have played for both sides in the true Brass Band tradition.

A welsh missionary saint, with his official Saint Day being 6^th November. However, despite being one of the twelve Cornish Saints appearing in the great Cornish engineer Trevithick’s memorial window in Westminster Abbey, nothing is known of this Saint. It may even be an alternative name for St. Winnow a Parish a little further down the road towards Lostwithiel. However St.Winnow may be St.Winnoc or St. Winwaloe! A ring of Celtic Saints set up their religious settlements around the ancient Royal court of Lyscarret (Liskeard), St. Cleer, St. Neot, St.Ive, St. Pinnock, and St.Keyne. whether for protection or to try and influence the local King, we will never know, but they all made a lasting impression on Cornwall.
The Dark ages were a busy time in Cornwall, and this area was no exception. Just south of St.Pinnock is the hill fort of Bury Down and the impressive Giants Hedge, an iron age Boundary marker in places measuring over sixteen feet high and as many wide even today, faced in stone and with a northern ditch, running for miles from Castle Dore to Looe and fabled to be the boundary Kingdom of King Mark and so we become involved in the tales of King Arthur. King Mark by the way, had Isolde his wife, put to death for being the lover of Tristam, his nephew. King Mark is said to have had horses ears, only visible when he had a haircut, and so the reason for him murdering all of his barbers!

The Cornish name for these religious settlements, founded by our local Saints, is Lann; hence the reason for so many place names with Lan at the start of the name such as Lanreath, Lanlivery, lanhydrock, Lanivet etc. The Lann of St. Pinnock has recently been identified and runs from the church down to the river and back. The church itself is set in an ancient Henge ring, as the saints often set up shop on the site of current places of pagan worship.The Henge can be seen clearly in the satellite image viewable on the google map above. The area is rich in prehistoric remains, with large Barrow fields at West Taphouse and Pelynt and most promontories around the area having a Barrow to mark them, especially along the ancient routes to Pelynt. The close by village of Duloe boasts a small but rather fine stone circle made from giant quartz stones, which must have taken a bit of shifting as they had to be moved several miles.

The Church has stood in this spot since the dark ages, although obviously not in its current form. It has over the years suffered from the parish being rather poor with no lordly patronage. The turn of the 18^th century saw the church in a sorry state of repair which continues almost until the next. In 1882 the Cornish times wrote:
“No church in the diocese was probably in a worse state than this a year or two ago: the floor uneven and damp was encumbered with a number of irregular modern deal pews or pens of all shapes and sizes. The original chancel roof had been blown away in a great storm and had been replaced by some rough timbers and a lath and plaster ceiling; by this same storm the timbers of the nave roof had all been displaced and put in a slanting position; whilst the broken windows and ill fitting doors admitted the wind and rain from all quarters. The church has been shamefully served and dreadfully neglected until it has become at last a wretched and almost ruinous building.
Remedial work was undertaken and the church was sympathetically restored, however today the church has only irregular services in an age of falling belief with still only a small population.

Down the hill from St. Pinnock is the hamlet of Herodsfoot, Mining for Lead and Silver had taken place for possibly hundreds of years, mainly by use of adits. Horizontal shafts driven into the side of the hill. However in the 1840’s the mining industry boomed, four deep mines opened in Herodsfoot, with 150 miners employed. The rise in population enabled the vicar of Duloe to build a church at Herodsfoot, however before the turn of the century the mines had all closed and the area settled down again, leaving an attractive village referred to by John Betjeman as an inland Polperro.