PENZA

CHAPTER III

SENNEN CHURCHTOWN

ENZANCE is the gate of Land's End, and the Great
Western Railway Company holds the key.

The drive from Penzance to Sennen, the last and therefore the first village in England-the real village of Land's End-is an up-and-down one, even switchbacky at places, and very sinuous. In several places it winds sharply like the curves in a capital "S." I am glad to say that recently many of these exceedingly sharp angles and quite dangerous curves have been rounded off, and the highway in consequence much improved in safeness and easy going for horse and motor vehicle. What did in old days does not suit the present time of rapid motors and much increased traffic. The Penzance road going to Land's End passes, just on leaving the town, the municipal buildings and Town Hall on the right-a fine edifice well set back from the road where is also a small museum of antiquities-chiefly local.

At the commencement the way is through some fine Gothic arches of trees and past high-banked hedges where grow luxuriantly honeysuckle, ferns, and bramble. The mildness of the climate is evidenced at once by the dracenas, aloes, castor-oil plants, Australian gum trees, and other quite sub-tropical plants growing in the open in gardens and on the hedges on the outskirts of the town.

At the foot of one of the hills are a pretty avenue of trees and a trout stream, a bridge, and one or two picturesque cottages. Buryan Bridge is one of those picture bits which have often been seen at the Royal Academy and at other picture shows, it being quite handy for the little colony of artists resident at Newlyn close by.

As we near Sennen the landscape becomes tame and flat. Buryan Church is seen on the left, and Sennen Church also, long before it is near.

Houses scattered about over the bare, moor-like downs

are mostly of the simplest style of modern architecture conceivable. Two-storied, a ground floor and one above. The front door in the centre, a window on either side; two windows above, one on either side, with sometimes a centre one to light the staircase. These simple edifices of grey granite with slate roofs, with edging of whitewash picking out the door and windows, frown austerely over a landscape in keeping with them in plainness and barrenness. They breathe a spirit of stern simplicity, moral superiority, and Methodistic fervour of heart. Exactly similar structures occur in the distant parts of Ireland. But there, alas the tidiness of the exteriors and the cleanliness of the interiors are wanting.

Soon after leaving Penzance, on the left-hand side in the hedge, the observant traveller will notice one of the old Celtic crosses. This is the first of many similar ancient relics he will see in this part of Cornwall. The contour shows no cross at all. Like all the other old crosses we shall come across in this part of Cornwall- —a rich cabinet of antiquities—it is a monolith, and consists of a rudely fashioned granite shaft, with circular head on which is carved a cross. Many of the crosses we see about here are of the Greek form, showing the connection the ancient Cornish had with the Eastern Church. But many of them are of early British origin, or Celtic, of the second, third, or fourth, and perhaps even earlier centuries-venerable relics of antiquity indeed.

Many of them were set up by the Irish missionaries, who exercised a powerful influence over the people of this part of Cornwall in the time of St. Patrick. They were probably carved-a work of great labour in those days of primitive tools-when there were no regular roads in the county, and placed at spots to direct the traveller, and tradition says it was usual for the well-to-do traveller to deposit alms on these crosses for the benefit of the poor wayfarer who might chance to come that way. They also, no doubt, served as prayer stations, just as crucifixes do in the country places in France, Switzerland, Italy, Spain. Many of these Cornish crosses have crucifixes carved upon them.

Then again, they acted as guides to the various cells,

TREE DESTRUCTION

19

baptisteries, and oratories where dwelt the hermits and saints. Nearly every church, we shall find, has one near the south door, and often others in the vicinity.

A large monolith of granite will be seen standing, a solitary sentinel over some secret of ancient civilisation, on the right in a field close to the road. It is called the "Blind Fiddler," the true history of which, like many more similar stones, evidently artificially hewn and placed, is unknown. To account for these curiosities tradition has woven many fairy tales around them and dubbed them with fantastic names.

These antiquities are just the beginnings of the great wealth of ancient remains for which this district is famous. The first and last oak tree in England is passed on the left, and after that few, if any, trees of any kind are to be met with on the way to Land's End. Near the Land's End, a quarter of a mile from the actual point, the first and last tree in England is to be seen, which is all the more noticeable because there are no other trees in the neighbourhood on these bare, bleak downs for miles. Judas might have repented before he could have found a tree to hang himself upon had he betrayed Christ in this part of Cornwall. Dr. Samuel Johnson, who loved the sight of forest trees and detested treeless countries, might have said of this part of Cornwall, as he did of Brighthelmstone Down, "it was a country so truly desolate that if one had a mind to hang one's self for desperation at being obliged to live there, it would be difficult to find a tree on which to fasten a rope."

The scarcity of trees in Cornwall generally is no new thing, though there is ample evidence that once the country was covered with dense forests. Carew, the historian of the county in 1602, wrote: "Timber hath in Cornwall, as in other places, taken an universal downfall, which the inhabitants begin now, and shall hereafter rue more at leisure; shipping, housing, and vessel, have bred this consumption; neither doth any man (well-near) seek to repair so apparent and important a decay." I am afraid we in this twentieth century are even now rather cutters down of trees than planters. It requires a most unselfish man to plant an oak; he can never hope to live to see it arrive at maturity.

We pass two roadside crosses at cross-roads, one on the left where a road turns off to Buryan, and one on the right at Crows-an-wra, then the tiny walled enclosure of the Quakers' burial-ground, a solitary chapel belonging to the Bible Christians, and soon on the right (opposite Sennen school-house) the awfully bad side-road leading down to Sennen Cove. A slight hill brings us to the blacksmith's forge on the left (behind which is the King's Table, TableMên), and then, passing the old church, our trap pulls up at the First and Last Inn, immediately next to it.

This was until recent years truly the first and last inn in England, but another has been established at the base of the promontory of Land's End itself. Still, to all intents and purposes, it is the first and last inn; the sign-board on one side displaying "The Last Hotel in England," and on the other side "The First Hotel in England." The innkeeper is a farmer, and he also provides carriages for travellers. A very comfortable hostelry it is, though it seems a pity the good old name "inn" should have made way for the modern ambiguity-" hotel.”

The visitors' book, as usual, contains a depressing collection of drivel, and pathetically piteous attempts at being funny. Among the best things I found there are these:

"Mr. Welsh, of London, went into the First and Last,
And ordering a meal, found it a very good repast,

So his advice to others, who chance to pass this way,

Is to patronize the First and Last and spend a pleasant day."

:

Punning upon the name was, of course, inevitable :

And :

"These rhymes, from first to last, attest

An excellence of wit,

Where all agree upon a jest,

You cannot better it:

And though the First shall still be Last,
As First and Last' 'tis writ,

I was the last to come last night,
The first this morn to quit.'

"At the Last Inn in England

Is excellent Cream,

And for quiet and comfort
"Tis the first Inn I ween."

In Hitchins's Cornwall (1824) is this reference to Sennen and the "First and Last

:

"Mean is the last village towards the Land's End, and

"INN" VERSUS "HOTEL"

21

as such it is designated by a sign suspended over the door of a house of entertainment, on the eastern side of which it is said to be The Last Inn in England,' and on the western is inscribed, The First Inn in England.' This house, in which good accommodations may be found, derives its chief support from travellers, who, from motives of curiosity, visit this western extremity of the British shores, to inhale the spirit wafted from the Atlantic Ocean, and gaze on the wild sublimity which earth, and sea, and sky present to the optic sense.'

The good old English word "inn," since 1824, has, as I have said, become "hotel," just as that expressive word of our early dramatists, "lodgings," has deteriorated into "apartments," "girls' school" into "establishment for young ladies," "shop boy" into into "grocer's assistant," Ichimney sweep" into a "cleanser of chimneys," and

so on.

Sennen Churchtown lies nearly four hundred feet above the sea, and consists of one long, straggling street, the way to the Cove being either down the narrow road we passed on coming, or over a stile of the regular Cornish description and then across one or two fields divided by hedges and more stiles.

The post office is a picturesque thatched cottage, and opposite it a row of upright granite stones does duty as a wall, with a gate in the centre.

"

A huge granite stone lies on the ground at the back of the blacksmith's shop. There is no directing post to indicate where it is situated, therefore it has to be looked for. Dr. Borlase, historian of Cornwall, calls this Table Mean, on which, according to tradition, three kings once dined together. Main or Mên is Cornish for stone." Hals, the old writer, says there were seven kings, "Ethelbert, fifth King of Kent; Cissa, second King of the South Saxons; Kingills, the sixth King of the West Saxons; Sebert, third King of the East Saxons; Ethelfred, seventh King of the Northumbers; Penda, ninth King of the Mercians; and Sigebert, fifth King of the East Angles; who all flourished about the year 600."

Of course, this remarkable stone is associated with a legend as well. Merlin, who has something to say of a