In the morning against 9:30 am we drove approx. half an hour with the boat after St. Mawes.
From the port we strolled at along the coast to the St. Mawes Castle and inspected this.
There then was a picnic in the garden od St. Mawes.

St. Mawes Castle

St Mawes Castle is a unique combination of Tudor technological prowess and a celebration of the power of the monarch. It is a purpose-built artillery fort, yet great care was lavished on the qualitiy of the masonry and the details of gun loops, windows and heraldic carvings. The ditch would originally have encircled the entire castle, but was largely infilled when the outer defences were improved during the reign of Elizabeth I.The castle comprises a circular central tower with three lower bastions, or "lunettes", arranged on the seaward faces like the leaves of a clover. The main entrance is on the landward side, protected by a rock-cut ditch.

Guardhouse (entrance)

The ticket office occupies the outer lodge or guardroom. This was originally octagonal, but was cut back in the eigteenth century when the yard behind it was roofed over to form stables for the castle.
A stone bridge spans the ditch. Over the main door is a fine carving Tudor royal coat of arms. Above this is the first of a series of carved inscriptions composed for the castle by the king's antiquary, John Leland, when he was a guest of Thomas Treffryduring the castle's construction. These verses praise Henry, and his son Prince Edward (later Edward VI), who as heir to the throne also held the title of Duke of Cornwall. The latin inscription above the door reads:

SEMPER HONOS HENRICE TUUS
LAUDASQUE MANEBUNT

Hernry, thy honour and praises
will remain forever.


Inside the castle

The entrance door leads into the second floor of the central tower. There is one floor above this, and two below, all connected by a spiral staircase. Immediately on the right is a glass panel in the floor. This covers a deep shaft down to a small punishment cell known as an "oubliette".
The area inside is divided into three rooms by original Tudor partitions: two smaller ones on either side of the central corridor with a larger room at the far end. Each of the small rooms has its own fireplace, and the left-hand one has a window to light the main stairs linking the floors.
At the end of the corridor is a door frame, eleaborately carved with the heads of two figures and inscriptions on scrolls saying "God save King Henry VIII" and "God save Prince Edward". This door leads to a large room running across the width of the building. The room has a fireplace, with a recess above it, probably for the royal or the governor's coat of arms. There are two openings either side of it. One was probably used for storing salt (salt was often kept near a fire to keep it dry) while the other could have been used for warming plates or reheating food brought up from the basement kitchen. This floor, with its fine decoration and private rooms, was probably the private quarters for the captain or his lieutnant.


Forward gun platform

At the far end of the large room, through the doorway with the series of arches above, and down four steps, is a forward gun platform or west bastion.
Four cannon would have been sited here, firing through the gun ports or "embraures". From here you can see that the position has a good command of the Black Rock channel and the safe anchorage between St Mawes and Pendennis Headland. You can see the Black Rock in the sea between St Mawes and Pendennis.

If you look back above the door there is more ornamentation, with a carved panel in low relief of King Henry's coat-of-arms, most of which is worn away, but originally may have been painted. On either side are two figures, perhaps "tritons" or sea gods, holding scrolls with more of Leland's verses.

SEMPER VIVET ANIMA REGIS
HENRICI OCTAVI ANNO 34 SUI
REGNI HOC FECIT FIERI

May the spirit of King Henry VIII,
who had this castle built in the 34th year
of his reign. live forever.


Wall-walks

This leads to the wall-walk around one of the side bastions. Just inside the door you can see a latrine in the inner wall. The slots in the stonework are for fitting a wooden seat.
The embrasures in the wall-walk wall are for hand-guns. In each you can see the hole in the centre to support the swivel-pin of the gun and at the top of the parapet the sockets fo a wooden shutter that could be raised or lowered as necessary. The recesses in the wall held supplies of shot.


Upper gun room

The top internal floor was a combined gun and barrack room but, like the side bastions, it was designed for hand-guns only. We know from the lists of weapons in Henry's castles that all the castles were well provided for in terms of bows and arrows, and early muskets(or arquebusses), as well as short-range breech-loading cannon such as the one on display.
From this room the garrison could defend the castle from an infantry assault. Each of the medieval-style windows has a vent to allow gunsmoke to disperse.
The stairs lead up to the roof, and then on up to the turret. In Tudor times, the roof was used as a gun platform. The turret was used as a look-out point.


Kitchen

In the basement of the tower is the kitchen. Like the other floors it was originally subdivided. The larger room contains a fireplace, with a brick-lined bread-oven built into it. The granite pedestal table, by the entrance, may have been fo a jug and beakers of drinking water dawn from the drip well which can be seen beneath the drawbridge. There may have been a well in this room originally, as under the castle there is a virtual lake of fresh water from streams that drain into the sea. In times of emergency, the kitchen would have to supply regular meals not only to the regular garrison but also the local men who had mustered to defend the castle.

Mess Room

The floor above the kitchen was probably the garrison's mess room. This was the main living area for the regular gunners for most of the castle's life. Like the other floors of the castle, the area was formally partitioned up into smaller rooms. During the late nineteenth century the castle was used as married quarters for the gunners.
The largest room on this floor had a fireplace. In once corner are a small fireplace and cupboard that may possible have originally been used by the castle armourer as space to carry out weapon repairs and bullet-mouilding.


Forward gun room

This, and the platform above, was where the main offensive armament of the castle was situated. Each alcove, or "casemate", has a smoke vent and sockets for a beam that would have held a wooden shutter, Most of the guns on display are ship's cannon from about 1800, but in the centre is an impressive bronze saker of about 1560 cast by the famous Venetian gunmaster Alberghetti. This was recovered from the sea off Teignmouthin Devon. This is just the sort of gun with which the castle was first armed. Documents reveal that the castle had three of these bronze sakers.


Side bastions

Once through the passageway, two small rooms appear. These were the garrison latrines and probably discharged into the the sea. You are now below the wall-walk you passed along earlier. Here there are three more casemates for heavy guns.

You are now in the north bastion. Here again there are three casemates for heavy guns. In the centre is a water pump installed in 1849, together with the reservoir beneath your feet.




The Shore Battery

From the outside of the castle you can see that each bastion has a blank shield with a further quotation from Leland's verses. That on the south bastion reads:

GAUDET EDWARDO NUNC DUGE
CORNUBIA FELIX
Rejoice Happy Cornwall now that
Edward is Duke;

that on the west reads:

HONORA HENRICUM OCTAVUM
ANGLIE FRANCIE
ET HIBERNIE REGUM
EXCELLENTTISSUM
Honour Henry VIII, most excellent king of
England, France and Ireland;

while that on the north side reads:

EDWARDUS FAMA REFERAT
FACTISQUE PARENTUM
May Edward resemble his father in fame
and deeds

Grand Sea Battery

As at Pendennis, the favoured position for mounting guns at St Mawes became not Henry VIII's artillery fort, but the shoreline in front of it. During the Napoleonic Wars this area was remodelled to form what became known as the "Grand Sea Battery", with up to twelve cannon. The castle was used for accomodation for the gunners.
As at Pendennis, the guns in this battery were updated several times to meet changing needs and developing technology. In the mid-nineteenth century the battery was remodelled to mount 12 "shell guns". At the end of the century, theses were replaced by four 64-pounder rifled muzzle-loading guns on traversing carriages. You can see the rails for some of theses carriages, and a reproduction of one of them with a 12-pounder cannon. By 1890 these in turn had been replaced by two 5-inch breech-loading guns, used in conjunction with a new minefield.
Tot he right of the gun you can see the concrete plinth for a quick-fire 6-pounder gun, also introduced in the late nineteenth century. This too was replaced by a pair of 6-pounder of which one platform remains further to the right. This seem to have been a stop-gap measure because they were later removed and a battery of four 12-pounder quick-fire guns placed in the field above the castle, with a better command and fields of fire, together with its own underground stores and defence works.


Gunpowder magazine

This building and the steep stairs behind it were built in 1854 to serve new battery of shell-firing guns on the improved battery below. The magazine was divided into two unequal spaces, the larger of which held the cartridges for the explosive shells fired by the guns. The smaller room was originally fitted with shelving to store the shells themselves.
The walls have ventilation slits to help maintain a level temperature and humidity inside. Timber lining throughout helped reduce the danger of sparks igniting the powder. Soil and turf on the roof helped reduce the impact of a direct hit.


The Tudor blockhouse

Just as the blockhouse built on the shoreline below Pendennis Headland provided offensive firepower , so a matching blockhouse was built at St Mawes. Like its twin, it was built before the main castle. Slightly larger than the blockhouse on Pendennis Point, it had three gun-ports, and there is evidence of a small fireplace and oven, and a water cistern. Originally it would have been roofed, with guns mounted on the roof itself, but was reduced in height during the nineteenth century to form part of the sea-level battery.
On the shoreline are the remains of concrete emplacements for searchlights, once camouflaged to look like the rocky foreshore. Theses were built at the beginning of the Second World War to provide illumination for the newly built quick-fire gun battery at St. Mawes.


Here are five cannon dating from the reign of George III (1760 - 1820). You can see his cypher of "GR" and the figure 3 interwined on the barrels.
Underneath the entrance bridge you can see the spring-fed drip well cut into the rock on your left. Reclimbing the steps will bring you back to the entrance lodge and exit.

Way back to the harbour of St Mawes we changed into a smaller boat there and drove St. Anthony in Roseland to the peninsula approx. 15 minutes.
We strolled along to the lighthouse of St. Anthony Head there at the coast.
We went to the little church St. Anthony .
The complete walk lasted approx. 3 and a half hours.

St Anthony's Church

History

There may well have been a little chapel founded here by the Celtic missionaries who arrived from Brittany, and from Ireland, in the 7th century; and it is very probably that soon after the Saxon King Athelstan's invasion of Cornwall, in the year AD 933, a small church had been built, for the Saxon diocese of Credition to Exeter, and thereafter th Bishop of Exeter rule Cornwall, which became one of the diocese's several archdeaconries. The Bishop held a large estate in the Roseland peninsula, based at Tregeare north of Gerrans, and a church may, as the Cornish historian Hals asserts, have been built at St Anthony by Bishop William Warelwart, c.1124. However, the first written record of the church's existence occurs in a charter of King Henry II which records that, at some date between 1138 und 1155, Bishop Robert Chichester gace the parish of St Anthony (both its land and its rithes) to the Augustinian Priory of St Mary at Plympton in Devon, which stood at the head of the estuary of the River Plym. The church appears to have been dedicated to St Antoninus, King and Myrtyr, and the Prior of Plympton established a "cell" there, a small daughter church of his Priory, initially with two "black" canons.
A century passed with no further record until Bishop Walter Bronescombe, one of the greatest Bishops of Exeter, visiting his manor of Tregeare nearby in October 1259, came thence to St Anthony-in-Roseland, Plympton Priory being recorded as patron of the living. From his modest start the little monastery appears to have grown slowly, being valued at £ 3 per annum in 1291; but 400 years later it suffered a setback when French pirates, landing at St Mawes, attacked the church and its domestic buildings. Bishop John Grandison authorised their full repair in 1338. What one sees today is essentually a cruciform church of the 13th century, with a stumpy central tower instead of the usual tall tower at the west end of the nave.

For the next two hundred years St Anthony continued as a daughter house to Plympton Priory, a rich foundation which owned much land in both Devon and Cornwall. St Anthony church only had a serve a small population, and remained small in size, but it seems that the number of canons increased to a handful. Accordingly there grew up a modest group of monastic buildings, providing accomodation for the priests, one of whom was denoted Prior, for their lay workers, and for the giving of help and hospitility to seamen who had been paid off at St Mawes and were awaiting a new passage.
St Anthony also succoured pilgrims, perhaps on their way to St Michael's Mount. In 1435 Bishop Edmund Lacey granted an indulgence, at 40 days' freedom from penance, for pilgrims who visited St Anthony and contributed to its maintenance. But a century later, with the Dissolution of the Monasteries, all this came to an end. In 1538 the surrender of the great priory at Plympton meant the end of its daughter house at St Anthony. The land and its rithes were vested in the Crown and the priests pensioned off.
The demense lands were leased to a yeoman farmer in 1540, and part of the church and much of the domestic buildings pulled down and the materials removed. The stone helped to build King Henry's new castle at first Place House, to the north of the church, marked on a map of 1597 as "Mr Davies House". Nicholas Davies being the then lesee. It was this house, with its successive alternations and additions, which has ever since masked the church from view.


The Church

But the parishioners of St Anthony still loved - and needed - their church. They succeded in claiming the nave and the transepts, but the chanel, having belonged wholly to the priests, was seized first by the Crown, then by those to whom the Crown granted the land, and pulled down. The monks' refectory survived, however, being needed to support the north wall; and it still exists as part of the house, being connected directly to the church by a door which opend into the nave. The church, reduced in size to its nave and transepts, thus became T-shaped, hence the local verse:

"St Anthony church in the form of a T
The parson doth preach in the belfree."

It remained in this reduced stae until 1850, gradually falling into disrepair; indeed part of the tower appears to have fallen down about 1700, when the single bell, recorded as being in the tower in the reign of Edward VI, was destroyed.
The restoration of the church was due to two people, both of them men of drive and vision. After the Dissolution the property passed through several families, Godwin, Fortescue, Vyvyan, and from 1649 the family of Spry. The Sprys, already prosperous, became substantial landowners by marriage, gained riches by business ventures and rose in the social scale as naval officers, producing two admirals in succession. When Admiral Thomas Sprydied in 1828 his eldest son Samuel, then aged 24 , inherited Place. He enterd Parliament as MP for Bodmin in 1832, was knighted and became a county magnate. In the 1840s he rebuilt Place House, much as it stands today, and then turned his attention to the church, which he felt should match the standard of the new house.

He turned for advice to his cousin. The Revd Clement Winstanley Carlyon, Rector since 1836 of the "plum" living of St Just - which included the township of St Mawes - who was also the incumbent of St Anthony. Carlyon was typical of the enthusiastic amateur church restorer of the day and had done much work ad St Just, not all of it aesthetically successful. He liked to do things with his own hands, principally in carving rather clumsy pews in both churches. But he recognised at least that there was a rare survival of a 13th century church, very different from most Cornish churches which were wholly rebuilt in the latter part of the 15th century. Only a handful of drawings by Carlyon have survived, including a charming view of the interior of the Chruch before restoration, cluttered with simple box pews. His work was deemed unscholarly at the time but it is largely true to the character of the monastic church.
The principal task was to rebuild the chancel, which had become the site of a chicken run. Workmen removed nearly six feet (1.8 m) of earth which had accumulated here and round the walls of the nave, and the original footings of the chancel walls were uncovered. Nor was this all, for before the spot where altar had been were found two skeletons, their feet pointing to the east, with two coffin-shaped slabs of slate, each incised with a cross, and two massive granite coffins. The skeletons were reverently reburied, each covered by one of the slate slabs; but the coffins were put out into the churchyard, where one survives, the other having been built into an adjoining wall. The skeletons are believed to be those of two monks of St Anthony, whose office merited burial before the altar. The earlier was Peter de Antonio, who became Prior of the mother house of Plympton, and died soon after 1273. He had spent his early days at St Anthony and asked to be buried there. The second was much later in date, David Bercley, who also became Prior of Plympton and died about 1507. He had probably "got past it" for he was authorised to retire to one of the Priory's daughter churches, until arrangements could be made to put right the finances of the Priory, plunged into debt by the expensive habits of its members.
Once reburial had been accomplished work began. In 1849 a relative, Miss Carlyon of Tregrehan near St Austell, laid the foundation stone. The eastern arch, giving access from the crossing, was unblocked, the chnacel rebuilt and the church restored to its original from, using freestone and granite carefully chosen to match that used in the body of the church. This work was well done, as was that to the tower, which was raised by about two feet and then surmounted by a broach spire, similar in design to, though larger than, that on the central tower of the house. A new single bell was cast at Francis Dingeys' foundry in Truro and hung in place of the former bell. The whole church was re-roofed in Delabole slate, the trusses and wall-plates, with chevron and dog-tooth patterns, being of softwood and tin-plate cleverly stained to imitate oak. The old paving of the floor was replaced with Minton tiles, the windows were filled with stained glass, and - in particular - the Spry family's memorials were brought together in the north transept, adjoining the family pew, and romantically lit by glazed panels in the roof.
The nave is entered by the south door, and this impressive entrance is the principal decorative feature of the building. The grand Romanesque doorway, built of Caen stone from Normandy, was almost certainly brought from Plympton Priory when the church was built, since the Priory Church was then being rebuilt in the Early English style. The transport of the stone would have been comparatively simple since both churches stood close to tidal water.

There are three orders in the arch, the outermost with zig-zag outlined by a plain hood-mould supported by carved heads at its base. The middle order is cusped, each cusp carved with a leaf. The inner is a plain arch with wedge-shaped voussoirs. One of these, slightly off centre, is carved in relief with the Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God. The stones which make up this inner order appear slightly different to the Caen stone of the rest, and were probably brought from the greenstone quarry of Pentewan, on the coast west of St Austell, at the 1850 restoration, to embellish the already handsome doorway. A drawaing by Carlyon shows the doorways as he intended it to be, but the Agnus Dei stone turned out to be smaller than the rest of the voussoirs. To save recarving it the masions made up the arch by cutting one voussoirs larger than the rest, so there is no central keystone and the carved stone is off-centre.

A coal beacon burned here for centuries until the present lighthouse was built in 1834, It marks the entrance to Carrick Roads, and keeps ships clear of the infamous Manacle Rocks. Atthough automated, the lighthouse is often open for visitors during the summer.

We arrived in our cottage in Falmouth toward 6 pm again.
It was a marvellous walking day.

Temperature: circa 22°C - marevllous walking weather

Driven miles: 6 = 10 km