DEMOLITION, DISSOLUTION OR DESOLATION?

As with so many other great monasteries, the end of Launceston Priory came in 1539. In 1536 a pliant Prior Shere made grants of Priory property to agents of the Crown. Most of the manors went to the Duke of Cornwall or people that had assisted in the Dissolution, or were soon sold by the Crown. In a deed dated 2 April 1550 the king (Edward VI) conveyed to Giles Keylwey and William Leonard:

“All that our rectory and Church of St Thomas, near Launceston, in our County of Cornwall, with all its appurtenances, to the Priory of Launceston, now dissolved, sometime belonging and part of the possessions thereof, and all houses, tithe-barn, glebe-lands, meadows, tithes of garbs, grain and blades, and tithes of wool and lambs, and all other small tithes of ours whatsoever, situate and growing or renewing in the parish aforesaid, or elsewhere in our said County of Cornwall appertaining.........”

More miserable work than tanning was also undertaken beside the Kensey. “In the year 1558 both the Lent and Lammas Assizes for Cornwall were held in Dunheved, and the victims of the savage laws of the time were hanged ...... on the Castle Green. The dead bodies were borne to St Thomas churchyard, either in carts or on biers - frames of wood known as ‘ladders’ .......There a pit was dug for them, the bodies were washed, and apparently in shrouds of cleansed skins, they were cast into their ‘earthen bed’ and ‘there they lie, heaps upon heaps!’

The religious pendulum was swinging violently through the third quarter of the century. Under Elizabeth I the old Catholic rituals were outlawed driving scholars, such as Barnstaple born Cuthbert Mayne, across the Channel to Douai to pursue the unreformed Roman priesthood. In secret they returned to maintain the Mass in certain old family houses - in Cuthbert Mayne’s case at Golden and Lanherne. In 1577 he was hung and drawn in Launceston. In 1970 he was canonised as a Catholic martyr.

On 16 January 1556 eight men of Newport were granted the right to hold a fair on the vigil, feast and morrow of the exultation of the Holy Cross (13, 14, 15 September) as well as a weekly Wednesday market with tolls charged for “support, relief and reparation of the borough, the inhabitants and the parish church.” These ‘eight men’ later took charge of the property of the parish and this property included the farm of Cargentle, which became the home of members of the Edgcumbe family. Holy Cross or Holy Rood fair continued to be held until 14 September 1878. Lawsuit after lawsuit was fought for many decades over claims to the old Priory property. In 1627 in the reign of Charles I, the Crown sold property and from then on Newport became increasingly in the control of the ownership of Werrington.

“The thoroughfare through Launceston must have been a very lively street during the Civil War of the 1640s, with frequent passing to and fro of the ‘trained bands’ from Werrington to Dunheved....... After the War sundry gifts were made to the parishioners of St Stephens.......... ‘Land and houses in Newport borough described as ‘a decayed market house and a chapel with the hill adjoining it’ situated on the western side of the church. (The chapel was subsequently used as a parish poor house.) An orchard containing about half an acre, called Holyrood; six cottages with gardens attached; and Shoulder’s Well and orchard. These properties were sold to the late Mr Deakin in 1880 for the sum of £800.” John Tuke Treleaven sold Hopecote to Mr Deakin in 1876.

The Priory property granted to Keylwey and Leonard in 1550 dispersed over time. (Some, if not most of it acquired by the owners of Werrington.) Nevertheless, Peter recorded a deed conveying property from John Carpenter to John Ruddle on 25 June 1678, which was in the possession of Mr Treleaven in the late nineteenth century!
“........ and all other tithes, both great and small, and all offerings and profits arising from the Rectory of the parish of St Thomas out of all those meadows called Landreen (Landreyne) late in the possession of Solomon Keswell.......”

“From 1774 ‘voting influence’ was in the hands of only two people - the Duke of Northumberland, new owner of Werrington, and Sir Jonathan Phillips, who lived at Newport House on the site of the present St Joseph’s School. Sir Jonathan was MP for Camelford, but outgunned by the Duke, Sir Jonathan soon sold up to the peer and moved to Landue. As a donor to St Stephens parish, he was commemorated on a board on the north wall of the chancel which read: “Whereas Sir Jonathan Phillips, late of Newport House in this parish, did in his last illness request his sister and adminstratrix Mrs Christian Carpenter* to lay out a sum of One Hundred Pounds sterling for the benefit of such poor families of this parish as she or her representatives should think entitled to assistance, And whereas the said Christian Carpenter in pursuance of such request hath agreed with Thomas Phillips Esq, her son-in-law, that he and his successors shall henceforth pay the sun of Six Pounds a year, clear of all outgoings, to be distributed annually at Christmas to such poor families as she, during her life, and after her death the occupier of Newport House, shall think proper. This board is therefore erected to perpetuate the donation, and to show how it arose. December 1799.” The last Christmas payment was made by Thomas Phillips in 1854. He died in 1855 and his executor was Col Paul Phillips of Paignton.”

(*Carpenters won a £10,000 lottery and built the Eagle House:1760s)

Community spirit continues and to mark the Millennium in 2000, a small group huddled under umbrellas to hear a Celtic blessing for the avenue of oak trees.

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