• HOME
  • Introduction
  • Contact details
    • Yorkshire
FABULOUS FOLLIES
...and Landscape Curiosities

Cornwall

BODMIN                                                              SX 067 663

Picture
Gilbert's Monument

The Obelisk on Bodmin Hill is 144 feet tall and one of the tallest in England. It was built in 1856-7 to commemorate Walter Raleigh Gilbert, Lieutenant-General in the Bengal Army at the time of the Mutiny in India, 'at the earnest request of his fellow town's men of BODMIN'.



















Postcard c.1909

BUDE-STRATTON                                            SS 227 070

Picture
  Memorial to the Battle of Stamford Hill

  The Memorial to the Battle of Stamford Hill was erected for   Lord Lansdown in 1713, using a 15th century pinnacle from   a church tower. 

  The battle was fought in May 1643 between the Royalist   Cornish Army of about 3,000 men who defeated a   Parliamentary force of 5,600. 

CALSTOCK                                                               SX 423 686

Picture
Cotehele Dovecot

The dovecot at Cotehele dates from about 1600 and was restored in the 20th century.









Date taken: 14/08/2014

Picture
Picture

CALSTOCK                                                               SX 423 686

Picture
Rustic Summerhouse, Cotehele












​Date taken: 14/08/2014

CALSTOCK                                                                SX 421 689

Picture
The Prospect Tower

The Prospect Tower at Cotehele may have been built for the visit of King George III and Queen Caroline in 1789.

The 60 feet high triangular tower has concave walls to give an optical illusion of greater size. Also from a distance it looks like a church.

From the top, Maker Church near Mount Edgecombe, can be seen eleven miles away, and it is thought that servants could signal when the owners were about to travel from one property to another.

​Date taken: 14/08/2014


Picture
Picture

CARN BREA                                                           SW 686 408

Picture
  Carn Brea Castle

 
The Gothick style hunting tower was built for the Basset    family of Tehidy in the18th and 19th centuries                  incorporating some medieval masonry.

CARN BREA                                                            SW 683 407

Picture
Dunstanville Memorial

The massive granite octagonal obelisk has the inscription:

THE
COUNTY OF CORNWALL
IN MEMORY OF
LORD DUNSTANVILLE
AND BASSET
AD 1836

It may also have been deigned as a navigation aid for ships off the north coast.

FALMOUTH                                                             SW 800 330

Picture
Killigrew Monument

The pyramid in The Grove at Falmouth was built in 1737 for Martin Lister Killigrew. It is 40 feet high with a base that is 14 feet square, and cost £455 1s 11½d.

Sir Peter Killigrew obtained a licence for the village of Smithwick to become a market town and changed its name to Pennycomequick. King Charles II changed the name to Falmouth.


Picture

HELSTON                                                               SW 656 274

Picture
  Grylls Monument

  The Grylls Monument was built in 1834 by George   Wightwick as a memorial to Humphry Millett Grylls.   Grylls was a local banker who, in 1830, secured funding   to keep the Wheal Vor copper mine open, thereby saving   more than 1,200 jobs.
​
  He died aged 45 in 1834 and the funeral procession was   two miles long. Over two thousand grateful people   subscribed towards the cost of £384 for the memorial. 

LANHYDROCK                                                        SX 086 636

Picture
Gatehouse

The gatehouse to Lanhydrock, dated ILR 1651, was built for John and Lucy Roberts. The east range and forecourt walls were demolished in about 1780, but George Gilbert Scott designed a garden wall in 1857 to attach the gatehouse to the house again.

Picture
Picture
Picture
Date taken: 14/08/2014

LUDGVAN                                                             SW 485 349

Picture
 Rogers Tower

 
Rogers Tower was built for the Rogers family of Penzance,   on Castle-an-Dinas, an Iron Age fort. It has stunning   views to St Michael's Mount.

NEWQUAY                                                               SW 806 623

Picture
Huer's House

The original building is said to have been a 14th century hermitage, but the Huer's House probably dates from about 1800. It is a look-out on Towan Head so that the huer could spot shoals of pilchards and direct the fishing boats by shouting 'Heva! Heva!'

It was owned by Colonel Treffry, the Lord of the Manor, and leased to the council in 1906 for 983 years. The Council converted it into a shelter but it is now closed.

Picture
Picture
Picture
Date taken: 12/08/2014

PADSTOW                                                                 SW 913 755

Picture
Prideaux Temple

The small tetrastyle Ionic temple at Prideaux Place was built for Edmund Prideaux in 1738-9.








Date taken: 12/08/1014


Picture
Prideaux Entrance Gate












Date taken: 12/08/21014

Picture
Prideaux Mock Fortification

The crenulations and miniature forts were added by either Edmund Prideaux in 1728-45 or his son, Humphrey, before 1758.








Date taken: 12/08/2014

Picture
Grotto

The Grotto at Prideaux is the rear wall of the dairy.










Date taken: 12/08/2014

Picture
Prideaux Dairy












Date taken: 12/08/2014

Picture
Grotto

The South Terrace with the grotto niche was remodelled in the early 19th century by the Rev Charles Prideaux-Brune.

The terrace may have been a viewing place for a cockpit in the amphitheatre below. 

For another feature also thought to be a cockpit see:
​HUNTWICK WITH FOULBY AND NOSTELL West Riding


Date taken: 12/08/2014

Picture
Boy with Thorn

The Boy with Thorn sculpture at Prdeaux is a copy of Spinario, a Greco-Roman Hellenistic bronze sculpture now in the Capitoline Museum, Rome. 

​Spinario was a shepherd boy who only stopped to remove a thorn from his foot after he had delivered a message to the Roman Senate. 

​There is a similar statue of Spinario at Castle Howard, HENDERSKELFE, North Riding. 

ROCHE                                                                     SW 991 596

Picture
Chapel of St Michael

The Chapel of St Michael was licensed as a chapel in 1409. It has now become appreciated as a romantic ruin.









​Date taken: 12/08/2014


ST DAY                                                                     SW 171 417

Picture
Gwennap Pit

Gwennap Pit is an open air amphitheatre where John Wesley preached 18 times between 1762 and 1789. He described it as 'a round green hollow' and as 'an amphitheatre'. It may have been a hollow that had subsided because of underground mining.
In 1806 it was remodelled and reduced to 360 feet circumference and 16 feet in depth, with 13 circles of seating. Since 1807 it has been used for annual Whit Monday services.

Picture
Early Methodists also met at Mow Cop,
​KIDSGROVE Staffordshire. 











​Date taken: 13/08/2014

ST GERMANS                                                         SX 358 577

Picture
 Gatehouse

 The lodge to Port Eliot was designed in the Tudor Gothic style by an unknown architect in about 1840.






Postcard: sent 1918

 ST IVES                                                                  SW 516 386

Picture
Knill's Steeple

The 49 feet high granite pyramid was built as a mausoleum for John Knill (1733-1811), who was Mayor of St Ives in 1767. He was buried elsewhere but left instructions in his will for a ceremony to be held at the monument every five years; the next one will be in 2021 on July 25th. 

ST IVES                                                                   SR 542 542

Picture
Wayside Cross

Near to St Uny's Church at Lelant, there are several medieval wayside crosses.























Postcard: posted 1905

ST MICHAEL'S MOUNT                                     SW 514 299

Picture
The Dairy

The dairy at St Michael's Mount was built in the 1870s for Piers St Aubyn and modelled on the Abbot's kitchen at Glastonbury.








Date taken: 13/08/2014

Picture
 This postcard of the 14th century Abbot's Kitchen at   Glastonbury shows similarities to the design of the Dairy   at St Michael's Mount.

  See; 'Abbot's Kitchen' GLASTONBURY Somerset.

ST MICHAEL'S MOUNT

Picture
 Tower

 This small tower is on the mainland, on the harbour wall.










​  Date taken: 13/08/2014

ST MINVER HIGHLANDS                                   SW 967 805

Picture
Doydon Tower

Doydon Tower was probably built by Samuel Symons in about 1830. It may have been built as a memorial to a fishing boat disaster when every man in Port Quin lost their lives.

It is also thought that its original purpose was as a drinking and gambling place.

It is now holiday accommodation belonging to the National Trust.

​Date taken: 06/04/2009

Picture
Picture

TINTAGEL

Picture
  Tintagel Castle battlemented walls

  A monastery was founded in about 500 and abandoned   by 1086. In about 1145, a Norman castle was built on   the site.

  In 1852, a local vicar, Richard Kinsman, romanticised   Tintagel Castle by building walls and arches.




  Date taken: 07/04/2009

Picture
The Sentry Box

The Sentry Box was built in the 17th century on a rocky outcrop of the 15th century defensive wall of St Michael's Mount.
Picture
Picture

TINTAGEL                                                              SX 081 862

Picture
Pixie Cottage

This photo was taken in September 1959 and given to me on my 70th birthday. I am the skinny nerd looking at the map. It was a cycling holiday with the Sheffield C.T.C.

Picture
I took this picture on the 7th April 2009 not realising that I had been there almost 50 years prior.

Thanks to Ian and Margaret, I now know where it is.

The Picturesque house was probably built in the 19th century, allegedly for the piskies. An old woman used to live there but pixies have apparently taken over the building again.

Picture
This picture was taken in August 2014.

VERYAN                                                                 SW 921 400

Picture
Round Houses

The Round Houses at Veryan were built in about 1820 by Hugh Rowe for the Reverend Jeremiah Trist of Lostwithiel, and cost £50 each. They have no corners for the devil to hide in, and crosses on the thatched roofs. There are two houses at each end of the village and one in the middle, one for each of Jeremiah's five daughters.

Picture
Picture
Picture
Date taken: 05/04/2009
Copyright Ray Blyth 2018