Only little more than 150 years ago, Launceston (locally pronounced ‘Lanson’) was the county town of Cornwall and the location of the assize court, where the Cornish ‘gentry’ had their town houses and consulted their lawyers. Until the Reform Act of 1832, Lanson sent four MPs to Westminster - two for Dunheved; today’s Launceston on the hill that supports the remains of the Norman Castle: And two for Newport, down in the valley of the Kensey, only a mile or so from where the little river meets the Tamar at Polson.

Cut into the slatey rock like a gorge, St Stephens Hill climbs up from the river at Newport Square. There, from the “Roundhouse,” the MPs of the ‘rotten borough’ were announced, probably after the few voters - ‘potwallopers’ ( Newport men who boiled their own pot) had been satisfied in the White Horse Inn. The Hill leads up to St Stephens, (“when Dunheved was a furzey down, St Stephens was a market town,” local children used to learn by heart) the ancient Saxon royal estate of Werrington and northwards to Egloskerry, Tregeare, North Pertherwin and on eventually to Bude. As well as holding the Werrington estate acquired from the Morice family in the 1770s, the Duke of Northumberland apparently owned nearly all the houses in Newport.

Literally, less than a stone throw from Newport Square, stands a terrace of six homes on St Stephens Hill. A Devon architect said she crosses the Tamar with her students because of the range of architecture and the terrace is an example. Number 13 is the newest, being Victorian, number 9 is entered through a pointed (medieval?) arched granite doorway, number 5 was a public house and number 3 has an intriguing early wall painting.

Like Launceston itself, with every style of architecture, number 11 shows a domestic evolution from very early times, having avoided irrevocable post Second World War destruction in the name of modernisation. The existing deeds begin with the will of John Edgcumbe of Newport dated 4 November 1777.

 

The 1906 booklet opens by mentioning Athelstan, the Saxon conqueror of Cornwall and grandson Alfred the Great, founding seven Collegiate Churches in Cornwall - one being at St Stephens. Missionary outposts converting local people from paganism or opposing and undermining the ways of Celtic Christianity? These educational centres where women as well as men were enrolled and allowed to marry. One of the clear problems of twentieth century Cornwall has been the lack of a university to retain young people with ability where they can reach potential, maturity and achievement: not so it seems one thousand years ago. Within 25 years after the death of Athelstan, Edgar and Aelfrida were on the throne of not only Wessex, but the ‘united kingdom’ of England.

Marital alliances, uniting the old Celtic realms to the expanding Saxon kingdom of Angalond, were repeated again and again through the later centuries of the first millennium. Therefore, there surly was as much a political factor in Edgar and Aelfrida’s marriage as her fabled beauty. Likewise the political influence of the Church’s mission of conversion, when royalty were often leading churchmen, intimately linked the evangelising work of the church with government.

Trading developed in and around the churchyards, establishing fairs and markets and offering an opportunity of revenue for the Crown. St Stephens paid a royal toll of 20s a year. Local government was in the hands of the Canons, who would hear disputes between tenants, hold courts, judge and even possibly hang offenders. In the Domesday Book the Canons of St Stephens were recorded as holding the manor free of taxes and that Earl Mortain, half brother of William the Conqueror, took their Sunday market across the Kensey valley to within the walled town of Dunheved. “Both the borough of Dunheved and the borough of Newport were governed, from a very early time, by separate corporations elected by people who dwelt therein............... It was the ancient custom in such free boroughs for the freemen to annually assemble in October and elect bailiffs or provosts......... The original manor hall was probably within ‘a certain tower’ taken down by Mortain for which he paid 40s to the Prior and Canons of St Stephens.” In the half century following the Norman Conquest the focus was shifted from St Stephens to Dunheved.

William de Warlewash became Bishop of Exeter in 1104 and started the building of Exeter Cathedral, ....... “after some fruitless disputing as to whether there should be a separate cathedral for Cornwall in Launceston.” The Bishop favoured the stricter discipline and celibacy of “Canons Regular” from France. He was permitted by King Henry I to dissolve the community of Secular Canons at St Stephens. “Let the present age know that Ralph, deacon of the church of St Stephens, gave up the deanery to me, William the Bishop, and I have given the whole to the Regular Canons, whom I have set over that church.”

“The hallmark (of the Augustinians) was diversity. Their rule allowed all sorts of variations in their routine of community life, and differing spiritual and pastoral priorities from house to house.” (The Conversion Of Europe by Richard Fletcher, 1997)

The first Prior of the Canons Regular of St Augustine was Theoricus, a native of Normandy. With him came the decision to move the foundation to beside the Kensey, midway between St Stephens and Dunheved, “within a bowshot of the Earl’s Castle.” The Augustinians held all the rights of the previous secular Canons and proceeded to acquire vast tracts of land in over forty parishes. “‘None,’ says Brewer,’were more greedy in adding farm to farm; none less scrupulous in obtaining grants of land from their patrons ......’”

The following passage is from the work of Charles Henderson, who wrote an essay in 1929 with the heading, “Twelve Men’s Moor.”

There are few more beautiful stretches of wild country in Britain than the eastern part of the Cornish highlands between the upper reaches of the Fowey and the Lynher. In the heart of this region lies Twelve Men’s Moor, cradled among mighty rock-strewn tors. The moor itself stands high, on the thousand foot line, .......On the eastern side are wooded slopes descending to the Lynher, which afford some of the grandest scenery of the Alpine sort in Cornwall........In every direction we see the rocky battlements of the Cornish Tors and on the slopes below them the ruins of primitive settlements dating from prehistoric times to derelict ‘intakes’ which learnt to grow corn during the Napoleanic Wars and forgot the art when Peel revoked the Corn Laws. The whole region teems with the mystery of the past, and one feels grateful to any documents, however slight, that throw some light upon its history.

In the fifteenth century Cartulary of Launceston Priory (MS in Lambeth Library) are transcripts of some extremely interesting charters of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries relating to the Manor of Carnedon Prior (now Caradon) which Reginald, Earl of Cornwall, a natural son of King Henry I, carved out of his great Manor of Rillaton on the Lynher and gave to the Austin canons of his new foundation of Launceston Priory. This gift was made between 1161 and 1175, on condition that perpetual prayers and masses were said in the Priory for the souls of the grantor, King Henry his father, the Empress Matilda (his half-sister) and her son, the reigning king, Henry II. The canons were to enjoy this land of ‘Carnedun, a member of the Manor of Rillatune, with all its meadows and pastures, its ways and paths, its waters and ponds, its mills, moors, turbaries and turf grounds, its tin-mines and all other liberties whatsoever.’........... These boundaries are thus described (in Latin) and are interesting as showing how far the use of Anglo-Saxon words for place-names had spread in this region...................................

Thus the Prior and canons of Launceston gained the over-lordship of Twelve Men’s Moor, and more than a century later we find (in the Cartulary) a very interesting agreement reached between them and twelve tenants of the moor, which goes far to explain the meaning of the moor’s name.........It is dated on Wednesday, the Vigil of St Peter-in-Cathedra, in the thirteenth year of King Edward I (1284). The parties were Henry, Prior of Launceston,and his Convent on one side; and Thomas of Kelnystok (Castick), David of the same, William Foth, Robert Faber (ie the smith), Jordan Cada, Robert Broda, Walter of la Lak, Robert Le Legha, Roger Boglawoda, John Can, William Trewortha and Nicholas Cada on the other side.

By this agreement a tract of land was granted by the Priory to the Twelve Men in return for their homage and service, to be held for ever at a rent of four silver shillings yearly, payable at Michaelmas. The Priory reserved for its other tenants, at Caradon, leaseholders as well as villeins, the right to pasture their cattle on the moor in summer-time, but each one availing himself of the privilege was to pay 1d at Michaelmas to the Twelve Men. In addition, the Earl of Cornwall’s tenants on his Manor at Rillaton were to enjoy their ancient right of pasture and fuel (peat) without any payment.

For their part, the prior and canons promised that if the Twelve Men or any one of them should be condemned by verdict of their peers in the Prior’s Court of Caradon, they should not be mulcted of more than 6d on any one day.Moreover, the ‘relief’, or succession-duty, which was due to the priory on the death of each of the Twelve Men, and their successors was not to exceed four silver shillings. The agreement was sealed in the presence of two knights, as well as William de Tregrilla of Menheniot.

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