Revd. G.D. Melhuish - Notes on the History of Ashwater Parish and Church

Prehistoric Ashwater.

I have used up most of my material for the history of Ashwater, though, no doubt, more could be gathered from the Registers and old Account Books. Indeed, every page of these books is interesting. Possibly some odds and ends may turn up from other sources, such as the Diocesan Registry. Meanwhile, some notes on prehistoric remains may be found readable by those who care for such things. Those who don’t can skip!

First then the Barrows, which are the burial places of people who lived 3,000 or 4,000 years ago. In this district we have only Round Barrows. Further up in England they have Long Barrows, which I am told are of an earlier period.

The people who were buried in our Barrows knew the use of Bronze and Copper but had not yet discovered Iron.

The late Mr. T. Fry, of Pristacott, used to tell me that when one of the Sandbury Moor Barrows was partly destroyed, some metal was found, weapons, he thought.

The Barrows in Ashwater are as follows
One where the lanes from Higher and Lower Larkworthy join; one by Swingdon Cottage and two others in the same field ; three at Borough; one, partly destroyed, on Sandbury Moor, and a very low one by Braddon Lane; one in Cookworthy Moor and three in Langaford Moors.

Flints are found lying about here and there, they were brought down from Flint districts such as Haldon or Woodbury and split up to make scrapers, arrow heads, and such like. I have an arrow head which was found on Larkworthy and have seen another which was picked up on Swingdon. It would puzzle us to fashion useful tools and weapons from a brittle flint, but these barbarous people did it successfully. Bronze and copper were hard to get and much valued, so that flint came in useful. You can see flints sometimes in the ploughed fields, mostly chips and waste bits, but sometimes flakes that have been shaped to some useful purpose. Of course, arrow heads are rare. No natural flints are found for about 40 miles, so all that you find have been brought here. Some may belong to a later flint and steel time, but most of them date probably from the olden days and were used by the people buried in the Barrows ; some, perhaps, are even earlier, before any metal was known to the people of these Islands.

Prehistoric Ashwater. Amongst things prehistoric I am inclined to reckon the (so called) old Churchyard which is situated on Barton, not far from the river, at the bottom of a field called by the mysterious name, Middle Hooks Arch.

Of course, the old yarn runs that people tried build the Church in that out of the way corner and that the wise spirits, seeing the silliness of such a position, removed by night what the foolish humans built by day—that tale is told—about many other parishes. But what was the old Churchyard really? It is in grass now and you can't see anything to mark its site, but Mr. John Dufty, who has often ploughed the field, says that in doing so you can quite plainly tell where the old boundary bank ran. The enclosure was of an irregular oval shape and reached to the end of Ashwater wood: it contained about half an acre.

Now there is an old British Camp situated in a similar position just above the Tamar, in Northcott Hamlet, not far from Picklebury Hill (which perhaps takes its name from the camp). Part is in Oak Coppice and has been very little interfered with (indeed I found a flint on the surface) but part is in a tillage field and the enclosing bank has been levelled so as to be hardly discernable. Usually these camps were on the tops of the hilIs, but not always, so I suggest that the old Churchyard may have been a British Camp with its bank now levelled.

Perhaps some bones were found there which may have given the finder the notion of its having been a Churchyard. Ashbury “Castle” was levelled in this way within living memory. You can only just trace where the embankment ran. No doubt many other small camps have been destroyed. Mr. Bernard once told me that all places ending in ~bury~ may be suspected of having had camps.

It may, on the other hand, be a burial place in the time of some virulent plague and not prehistoric at all, but I don’t think they would have taken so large a piece of ground for that purpose, or enclosed it.