History Pages

DIRTY DEEDS

On 4 November 1777, at about the time the first Duke of Northumberland acquired Werrington from the Morice family, the probate of John Edgcumbe of Newport’s will included the property on the terrace. It was his signature on which the case of Thomas Edgcumbe v John Tuke hinged. Less than two years later, on 3 May 1779, it again appeared in the will of his sister, Elizabeth Tuke. As an ageing spinster, Elizabeth Edgcumbe had married Vincent Tuke and on the 22 January 1789 a ‘conveyance’ took place for the property from Elizabeth to her step-son, John Tuke. She died that same year, before Tuke’s shady dealings in Plymouth with the young sailor, Thomas, her Uncle Parmenas’ grandson.

Five years later, on 28 October 1794 there is a record of a 1000 year lease between the Duke of Northumberland and John Tuke. There is then a gap of 50 years in the deeds. However, the Georgian front of the house has a date of 1800 carved in a timber and this appears to be the time when it was up-graded - provided for by Tuke’s defrauding of Thomas Edgcumbe maybe? Recorded as a carpenter, one can picture Tuke overseeing the work.

The headstone close to St Stephens Church reads, “In Memory of Susannah Tuke Treleaven, born 1780 died 1847, and her three sons, John Tuke Treleaven died 1877, his wife Elizabeth, died 1901, James died 1886 & Francis died 1897.” This Susannah appears to be John Tuke’s daughter, who clearly married a Treleaven. Was Susannah Edgcumbe her namesake?

The marriage of Suannah Tuke to Treleaven had kept the property within the family. The Treleavens were known to be hat makers in Launceston towards the end of the eighteenth century. Millinery was a significant industry in the town. They appeared to have prospered in the nineteenth century, owning a lot of property, as well as the drapers shop, still known as Treleavens Corner. The shop survived into the 1980s where the Halifax Building Society now operates, while the portrait of Mayor James Treleaven still hangs in the Guildhall.

With the coming of the railway in 1865, the decline if mining and agriculture, people were on the move, primarily out of the county if not the country.

In 1882 there was also the transfer of 6 acres, 3 roods and 28 perches at Cleaver Field; the tenant being William Henry Hender: plus a right of way through Grass Field and little Skillys Park.

At the house, restoration work in 1989 meant taking down and rebuilding of the balcony. One discovery was a date of 1 October 1800, cut into the main beam. Therefore the hall and reception rooms appear to date from the time of John Tuke.

In the dining room there was a light blue, post Second World War tiled fire place, that was quite obviously out of keeping. Replacing it meant renewing the floorboards and digging down. This exposed a compacted earth floor scattered with oyster shells, some broken clays pipes, plus a silver buckle, a used slate pencil and two coins. Could one of the coins might have come from the Saxon mint at St Stephens, founded in the reign of Ethelred the Unready, at the end of the tenth century? It continued into the mid twelfth century when the priory moved from St Stephens to Newport. The County Museum in Truro were not able to identify the coin but over the phone the British Museum stated that if it were a coin from St Stephens mint found on St Stephens Hill, it would be an extremely important find. However in London it was identified as a Henry VIII silver penny. Because of the level of corrosion, Miss Archibald (the coin expert at the British Museum) immediately dated it in the reign of Henry VIII, as he devalued the coinage by using less silver.

The packed earth floor ended with the remains of a stone wall across the bay of the window. This wall appeared to be in line with the pointed arch doorway next door at No.9, “The Sign of the Bell.” On the floor there were a number of circular marks of darker soil, post-holes that had supported a very early structure indeed.