Musings from Higher Downgate and Elsewhere: Around and about Warbstow

Another of a trio of recent walks and one we did with friends from Launceston - another North's Choice. And an excellent choice it was, too. As they live about 10 miles north of us, they are choosing routes in areas that we are not familiar with and that adds a lot of interest. This one started and ended in the shadow of Warbstow Bury (more of that later) and was mostly within the Parish of Warbstow, which has an unusual claim to fame. It is one of the few in the country to still have an 'exclave' - an island of the parish in another. In this case, the hamlet of Canworthy Water is surrounded by Jacobstow parish and is separated from the main body of Warbstow parish by some 150 meters. An historical oddity, the origins of which I just cannot find. That irritates me - bad show, Mr Google, bad show. But it didn't spoil my/our enjoyment of the day. The photographs will show what I mean.

This turned out to be a 6.5 miler and the profile doesn't do proper justice to the ups and downs we encountered. A mixture of quiet country lanes, farmland, tracks and footpaths, spiced with a couple of churches, some mediaeval crosses and an Iron Age hillfort. All that and surprisingly very little rain.

Yet another use for tyres. A necklace to hold a tarpaulin down. Typical farmer's ploy - never spend any money when you can botch for free. I've definitely got some farmer's blood flowing through my veins. Nothing pleases me more than fixing a job with something from my seemingly inexhaustible supply of 'things that might come in handy one day'.

Church #1: St Werburgh’s Church, Warbstow. Unfortunately closed due to Covid but one to visit when the virus cloud passes. What you see now is, apart from some Victorian tinkering, largely 15th century, with few remains of the two former buildings on this site - Saxon and Norman respectively. The church is dedicated to Saint Werburga, the daughter of an Anglo-Saxon king of Mercia. She is also the patron saint of St Werburgh's church at Wembury that I've written about before.

They (who are they?) say that no two stone stiles in Cornwall are exactly alike and I can quite believe that as we've encountered many of them. This one is a fine example of a 'coffen' stile, usually written incorrectly as “coffin” stile, and is named after the Cornish word 'coffen' meaning a man-made hole in the ground. This refers to the stile's construction with a pit, not to the ease with which men can carry a coffin across it. Although the stile sometimes has a stone shelf alongside for a coffin (or any other burden for that matter) to rest on while the bearers got their breath back, this is not the source of the name, though presumably the English word coffin is from the same ancient root. Most coffen stiles are associated with 18th and 19th century country mansions or wealthy manor farms and with churches, being convenient for ladies with their long dresses, as the stile, a fore-runner of the modern cattle grid, is walked across, not climbed. Others were built wide enough for a worker carrying two pails with the aid of a wooden shoulder-yoke. Sometimes they were built when an ancient packhorse route was converted to a footpath, after a carriage road was opened.

I think this bracket fungus is Chicken of the woods (Laetiporus sulphureus) but I would welcome being corrected.

This cross was found at Higher Youlton in 1976 buried upside down and used as a gate post. It was moved to its present position at Youlston farm some years later and reset on a new base stone.

This cross was originally used as a bridge over a nearby stream and was re-erected by the Old Cornwall Society in 1936 - as the little plaque to the right of it said. The stream forms part of the parish boundary so its present position is quite logical - such crosses were frequently placed at key junction points.

Panoramic views all the way around on this walk. This is a very sparsely populated area and, in many ways, is quite remote. In the distance, the high land of Dartmoor can be made out.

My fungi identification book points me in the direction of Many-zoned Polypore (Coriolus versicolor) for this one. Looks reasonable to me.

I presume that, at some stage, the occupant of the caravan will realise that this isn't the best place to be a fisherman. The high tide never quite gets this far so launching the boat might pose a few problems.
Church #2: St Gregory's, Treneglos. Guess what? It was closed and is added to the list for a revisit. There has been a church here since Saxon times; in the Domesday Survey of 1086, the church was given to the Priory at Tywardreath. The church was confirmed as the Priory's by Bishop Chichester on 14th February 1154. The present church was rebuilt in 1858, and the tower, having become very dilapidated, was taken down in 1871 and completely rebuilt; its four bells were reused.

The sculptured Norman tympanum, similar to other works in nearby churches such as Egloskerry, is described as "a conventional tree in the centre, with a pair of beasts having their tails bent round between the legs, and upwards across their bodies, placed symmetrically facing each other." The meaning may be found in the Psalms verse about the vine of Egypt: "The boughs thereof were like goodly cedars... The boar of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast of the field doth devour it."

VR? I wonder how many of this vintage are still around? And I wonder how many will remain in 5 or 10 years still with this livery? Precious few, I think.

Every war memorial is unique and every one has tales to tell. This one in Warbstow is no exception. Amongst the fallen of WW1 is Lance Corporal John Stapleton who had emigrated to Australia and was killed at Ypres whilst in the 55th Australian Infantry Battalion. One other thing about this memorial that's interesting is that it's the only one I've come across that names the women from the Parish who served in a war. In this case, WW2 and noted the service of seven women in the ATS, WAAF and NAAFI. It was good to see this.

The first photograph of this pair shows part of the surviving wall structure of Warbstow Bury. The size of this hillfort means that it's impossible to get an image that does it justice. Hence I thought that the photograph of the information board at the site would give a better idea of layout. Here's some information I've plagiarised from the English Heritage listing.
Warbstow Bury (above), a multivallate hillfort in north Cornwall, is one of the largest and best-preserved hillforts in the county. It is also known as ‘The Giants Grave’ after the legend that a giant that lived here was killed when the giant of Launceston Castle threw a tool at him. It also called ‘The tomb of King Arthur’ although there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to substantiate this. It has two ramparts, with two entrances each, the inner one measuring 370 by 450 feet. The outer rampart averages 15 feet in height, with an external ditch 15 feet wide. After the abandonment of the hillfort in the late Iron Age, the site is unlikely to have been used frequently for anything more than the summertime grazing of sheep in the early medieval period. The inner-circle was used as a beacon for the jubilee of Queen Victoria celebrations in 1887.

The Bury really is an impressive site and, as we did not know much about it, came as a complete surprise. This image is taken across the breadth of the central portion and keen eyes will make out the mound in the centre. Mythology gives this as the site of the Giant's Grave but it is thought that it's most likely to be the remnant of a mediaeval pillow mound that housed rabbits. The rain clouds in the distance did not come our way, I'm glad to say.