chasing Cornwall tourist-board...
Sep. 30th, 2004 06:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
burntcopperToday we have done disgraceful things, the parents and I. We've just imitated American tourists. Oh god, the utter *shame*. Yes, we chased down the ancestral homes of our forebears. Well, mum and my ancestors, not Dad's. One's a National Trust large house and grounds near Helston that's known as Penrose House - lots of grounds around a lake (which was previously an estuary that got cut off from the sea), rather pretty and two fields that definitely looked like one of the family was a pony-person. No, none of the family live there anymore, it was bought up a good many years ago. Mum proved she was out of shape and we mocked her for it whilst walking back to the car. Dad has the Cooper walking long distances without effort genes, and I'm just generally in decent shape fitness-wise. Later in the afternoon, went and checked out the parish church of St Sithney which has bits left in the church of the original one and has part of the Penrose coat of arms in one window.
Besides that, did St. Michael's Mount inbetween the two. Which is a rather cool place and fort-like, as well as being prime picture-postcard area. (It's a rather cool-looking castle on an island in the middle of a pretty bay with a causeway going out to it, what do you expect?) Parents crossed causeway, couldn't be arsed to pay the fiver it took to gain entrance, so I hiked up the very steep cobbled path on my own. On getting there, there's a sign inside the castle that says 'no stilettos or sharp heels'. See a load of us go 'I didn't think it would be possible to actually climb the path in stilettos.' The cobbles are mostly those little inch-high out of the cement oblong ones, mixed with others. It's uneven enough on the causeway, which is big stones. Though apparently only last week they had a woman in kitten heels climb it. That's a woman with a lot of determination and at least one twisted ankle.
Anyway, inside it's rather cool - used to be a monastery, contrary to what me and Dad reckoned - we thought it was a fort first. Post dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII, it was turned into a fort about the same time Pendennis near Falmouth was majorly fortified, then Elizabeth gave it to one of the Privy Council members, one of the Cecils, I think, he sold it to the Bassets almost straight away. Bassets, being royalists like the majority of Cornwall, slowly got poorer and poorer during the civil war and the Protectorate, and sold it to Colonel John St Aubrey. One year before Charles II got on the throne. poor sods. :g: Anyway, the Colonel's family still lives there. There's walls of paintings of them on the staircases and in the halls. Must be seriously weird to see every single one of your ancestors for the last few hundred years every day.
Got back, went to lunch, then watched the people left on the island get ferried back by boat, the tide having come in. And some idiots get stranded on a rock that temporarily serves as a drop-off/pick up point until the causeway gets completely flooded.
Besides that, did St. Michael's Mount inbetween the two. Which is a rather cool place and fort-like, as well as being prime picture-postcard area. (It's a rather cool-looking castle on an island in the middle of a pretty bay with a causeway going out to it, what do you expect?) Parents crossed causeway, couldn't be arsed to pay the fiver it took to gain entrance, so I hiked up the very steep cobbled path on my own. On getting there, there's a sign inside the castle that says 'no stilettos or sharp heels'. See a load of us go 'I didn't think it would be possible to actually climb the path in stilettos.' The cobbles are mostly those little inch-high out of the cement oblong ones, mixed with others. It's uneven enough on the causeway, which is big stones. Though apparently only last week they had a woman in kitten heels climb it. That's a woman with a lot of determination and at least one twisted ankle.
Anyway, inside it's rather cool - used to be a monastery, contrary to what me and Dad reckoned - we thought it was a fort first. Post dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII, it was turned into a fort about the same time Pendennis near Falmouth was majorly fortified, then Elizabeth gave it to one of the Privy Council members, one of the Cecils, I think, he sold it to the Bassets almost straight away. Bassets, being royalists like the majority of Cornwall, slowly got poorer and poorer during the civil war and the Protectorate, and sold it to Colonel John St Aubrey. One year before Charles II got on the throne. poor sods. :g: Anyway, the Colonel's family still lives there. There's walls of paintings of them on the staircases and in the halls. Must be seriously weird to see every single one of your ancestors for the last few hundred years every day.
Got back, went to lunch, then watched the people left on the island get ferried back by boat, the tide having come in. And some idiots get stranded on a rock that temporarily serves as a drop-off/pick up point until the causeway gets completely flooded.
