Around St Just in Penwith Part Three

A Virtual Walk Around The St Just Area.

By Sandra and George Pritchard

To Tregeseal and down the Nancherrow Valley:

One of the oldest families in the district was that of Lethen: John Lethen lived at Busvargus in the Tregeseal valley and c1560 assumed the name of the estate This area is a short walk across the fields to the north of St Just Church where the path passes alongside the new graveyard and down to the
bottom of the valley

The family arms of Bosvargus were, argent, on a fess azure, between two chevronels, gules, three bezants; Crest, a Cornish chough, proper. Roughly translated : A silver shield with a thick blue bar across the middle which has three gold disks or bezants on it (the same as the 15 that surround the
shield of Cornwall) Above and below the thick bar is one upside down lance corporals stripe which is red (like this ^ but it reaches both sides of the shield so is a bit flatter) The Cornish Chough is in its proper colours.

The crest of a Cornish Chough would have been associated with their former name of Lethen. The place name Bosvargus translates from Cornish Bos Bargos = home of the buzzard and they are at home there still. The last male Bosvargus died in 1755 and the estate passed into the female line of Nicholas.

There is a record of the Bosvargus family granting a lease to build a stamping mill in the Nancherrow valley at Tregaseal in 1728, at a cost of £27:12s: 6p. The water that flushed down the stream to the sea at Porth Ledden under Castle Kenidjack was red for miles out into the bay. A tale is told that many years ago a ship was quite lost in the fog and the master, calling a Cornishman on deck, asked him if he had any idea where they were. He took one look at the water and said, "In all this red water there is only one place we can be, go astern at once" The Nancherrow valley leads up through Tregaseal to Balleswidden Mine. Here by turns they mined for tin, china clay; tin and then clay again The water was also by turns red, white, red, then white again. Today the Tregeseal valley is silent, it's industrial past forgotten. The hammer of the stamping mills; the gushing of the various water courses passing over leats and through wooden launders as it turned the machinery; all is hushed. A huge beam engine worked the first power hammers and the earth tremors could be felt in the neighbouring houses as each blow fell. There followed a steam hammer and then one worked by hydraulics, none of which were of silent operation. There were 7 water wheels and 21 stamp heads in a village of springs, streams, rivers, chutes and wells. Foundry Row was described as having 'a river at the back and a river at the front' Further down from the Croft, Dick Nicholas worked Blackberry Stamps and later at the foot of Tregeseal Hill, Mr George Rowe built a flour mill in 1920 and used the original wheel pit.The millstreams continued under the road and then over the main river in an iron launder which ran behind the houses at the bottom of Bosvargus Hill. Here it joined a stream from Bosvargus and continued behind Tregeseal Square and went on to work Bosvargus Mill, mentioned in the Easter book 1590. [Now a B&B] This was all the property of the Bosvargus family. Their old home still stands on the hill above. Here the roads from St Just and Botallack meet the old early Toll Road across the moor An idiosyncratic sign-post by Foss points the way.

A fine home, Alma Villa, was built at this junction in the early Victorian period for the family of Stephen Harvey James. It would have been very convenient for their mining interests in Botallack Although the fine entrance onto the main road is no longer in use, the granite retaining wall that surrounds the garden and grounds is surmounted by railings which bear the Holman trademark. Today it is occupied by one of the more recent generations of the Holman family and called Penrose House

Here within site of the bridge was the meeting point for the village. The men and youngsters would gather here and sit on stones against the walls. They would smoke, spin yarns and sometimes make music. Two boys would turn a clothes line whilst the girls skipped over, accompanied by a tune on the old melodeom. These were the days when people made their own amusements and where news from men working abroad was swapped. Today there is still a seat under the wall of Alma Villa / Penrose House where walkers sometimes may sit to eat their lunch or maybe watch the last rays of the evening sun.

The famous Holman's Foundry opened in Tregeseal valley in 1834 on the north bank of the stream.
The first boiler manufactured was sent off to the Portsmouth and Farrington Water Works that same year. It cost £129:7s: 6p; was twenty foot long and weighed ten tons. Some weighed over ten tons and were transported up the hills surrounding the works on a specially constructed cart base, pulled by
up to twenty or thirty horses, the teamsters shouting and cracking their whips to keep up the momentum. To provide lighting at the Foundry they ran acoal- gas plant on the site. St Just benefited from the produced gaslighting when the town was connected to the supply, the first town west of
Penzance to have gas lighting [I know St Just is THE only town west of Penzance but Newlyn, Mousehole, St Buryan and Sennen considered they were towns equal to St Just]

The firm diversified further into bicycles and velocipedes, the first one seen in St Just made by a Holman employee, Edwin Trembath. He had competition in the form of one Mr Tippet. Tippet being a carpenter made the woodwork while a Mr James, a blacksmith from Kelynack, made the ironwork. Holmans later also made motor cars and had several garages one in the centre of Penzance. The foundry in St Just continued until 1967 still owned and run by Holman family members . Today modern houses have been built on the site and little evidence remains of a once thriving heavy industry although here and there are traces of wrought ironwork and metal mill wheel parts.

Earlier this century at the end of Foundry Row lived Mary Jane Harvey also known as Mary Jane Moonlight. She worked for various local farmers and "wore a man's poke cap; a towser [rough sacking apron] and hob nailed boots and dearly loved a bit of a smoke on the quiet". She was a bit deaf and had a dog called Pop who would bark when anyone came to the door. Mary would put out her pipe for dear life before she would answer. When she came home from the fields tired after a hard days work she found that it was" best to lie down 'pon the planchen'" [floor] rather than get into bed. On Sundays she "went Army". An elderly resident in 1970's remembered Mary Jane telling her a tale of how she always went " lancin' at Gwenver Sunday evenings" [catching sand eels with a hook at Gwenver beach, Sennen] Once the whole cliff lit up with a bright light and she took it as a warning of her wrong doing. From then on she attended the Salvation Army services on a Sunday.

At the top end of the village on a piece of ground given by Henry Hattam of Tregeseal Lodge was the Wesleyan Sunday School built in 1864. The Sunday School tea treat was held on the Sunday after Midsummer Day. Led by the band they walked all the way to St Just by the church path mentioned above. They joined up with the Dowran Sunday School and a united service was held in the Plen an Gwary. In the early days there was an outing in August to Carn Kenidjack Later the scholars and parents travelled to Sennen in farm wagons with Willie Harry's pony and cart bringing up the rear loaded with saffron buns, and the tea urn

If we retrace our footsteps back via the church path we pass the new church yard with its dry stone wall. This is quite a novelty in this district where the usual construction method was to build two facing walls and fill the internal cavity with earth as in the fashion of a Cornish hedge. Opposite
the ancient walls of the church Lan are probably the oldest houses in St Just, Church Square In one of these little cottages, each with their outside privy, lived Stephen Harvey ancestor of the Stephen Harvey James of Tregeseal. He was a friend of John Wesley, who often stayed with him on his
early visits to St Just. Stephen Harvey died in 1792 and his tombstone reads " Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his Saints".

These cottages are tucked away in behind the Kings Arms and visitors rarely take time to pass by, Walking has it's own rewards. This time we will take a turn through Market Square and on to Bank Square where Edwin Trembath had his photographic studios. He was often called upon to take photos of the relatives of miners working overseas. Printed on postcards they found their way with good wishes and words of love to the minefields of the Upper Peninsula, the factories of Detroit and all points west. The photos were impressed on the face with the name of Lafrowda Studios. If anyone ever finds one of these I would appreciate a copy.His daughter Adeline married one of my Vingoes and they left for Australia c1903 never to return.

His other daughter Harriet, an accomplished photographer in her own right, continued the business but she died in the 1950's with no one to carry on. Reportedly many glass negatives went down the mineshafts with the rest of St Just's rubbish.
We will continue on down Nancherrow Road passing "The Miner" whose publandlord in 1881 was Samuel Guy. Opposite today is a derelict miners home of the 1850's fast crumbling into decay. This is in a row of 3 dwellings, back to back. Sometime soon it will go for re-development. Who can guess the
price ?

There are several mine stacks around and on the right is what looks like an engine house. It was in fact a barn which has been used in turns as a blacksmiths shop and as a school. On the left a wall surrounds the Nancherrow Farmhouse land. Reputedly this was once the site of an old graveyard. There is a lovely old arched doorway. However this is not original to this wall but came from the very earliest church at St Just built prior to 1450. As in later renovations it was 'cast out' and as so much else was, taken to be used elsewhere.