Cargoll

The name appears in Domesday Book as Cargau. Medieval forms include Cargaul in the register of Bishop Walter Bronescombe and Caergaul in the record of a fourteenth-century market grant.

Cargoll was substantially larger than the modern locality bearing the name. Its lands extended through the area around Newlyn East and into St Allen. A historic-environment record based on earlier documentary research gives an extent of approximately 5,856 acres (2,370 ha) for the manor in 1700. The medieval episcopal residence and demesne were associated with Cargoll itself, while Lanher or Lanner in St Allen was also regarded in post-medieval accounts as a capital messuage or principal demesne of the manor.

At the time of the Norman Conquest, Cargoll belonged to the ecclesiastical community of St Petroc at Bodmin. It appears as Cargau in the survey of 1086. Before the Conquest the estate had been held by an unnamed thegn dependent upon St Petroc; the Domesday entry states that he could not separate the estate from St Petroc's church. By 1086 the immediate lord was Robert, Count of Mortain, half-brother of William the Conqueror, who held Cargoll from St Petroc.

Cargoll is also recorded in the Exon Domesday, the surviving collection of working texts produced during the Domesday survey of south-western England. Exon frequently preserves economic information in greater detail than the final Great Domesday Book, including counts of livestock on the lord's demesne. The Cargoll entry consequently provides an unusually detailed picture of the manor's economy in 1086.

The estate was assessed at two hides and contained land sufficient for fifteen ploughs. Three plough teams were maintained on the lord's demesne, while the tenants possessed six. The recorded dependent population comprised 12 villagers (villani), 22 smallholders (bordarii) and 16 slaves (servi). These figures represent recorded household heads or tenurial units rather than a census of the manor's total population.

Cargoll's other resources included a watermill rendering 30 pence annually, four acres of woodland and pasture measuring approximately two leagues by one league. The small recorded area of woodland has attracted attention in studies of the Domesday landscape of south-west England. F. W. Morgan noted that Exon recorded only seven pigs at Cargoll despite its four acres of woodland, using the example to caution against treating the number of demesne swine as a direct measure of woodland extent.

The Exon return also records the livestock belonging to the demesne: 12 mares, 7 cattle, 7 pigs, 60 sheep and 12 goats. Such livestock inventories are an important feature of the Exon material and give a fuller impression of the mixed pastoral economy of Cargoll than the assessment of its arable land alone.

The manor had declined markedly in recorded value following the Conquest. It was valued at £10 when Count Robert acquired it, but at only £3 annually in 1086. The legal wording of the entry is also significant for Cargoll's later history: although Robert was its immediate lord, the pre-Conquest thegn had been unable to detach the estate from St Petroc. The survival of a superior Bodmin interest in Cargoll is consistent with the later documentary evidence, since Bodmin Priory was still able in 1269 to confirm the alienation of the manor by Roger de Valletort to Walter Bronescombe, Bishop of Exeter.

The precise descent of the immediate secular interest between Robert of Mortain in 1086 and the Valletort family in the thirteenth century has not been securely reconstructed from surviving evidence. By 1269, however, Roger de Valletort possessed the interest which he was able to grant to the bishop of Exeter.

On 29 December 1269 Richard, prior of Bodmin, and the convent formally confirmed Roger de Valletort's grant to Walter Bronescombe, bishop of Exeter. The confirmation, preserved in Bronescombe's episcopal register, described the property as the whole manor of Cargoll, together with the advowsons of the churches of Newlyn and St Allen, the homages and services of its free and other tenants, and all other appurtenances.

Bodmin Priory did not surrender every element of its superior title. The priory reserved an annual rent of four shillings, payable at the feast of Saints Philip and James, together with a relief on the death of a bishop or other tenant. The transaction therefore converted Cargoll into an episcopal manor while preserving a small residual feudal interest for Bodmin.

The acquisition formed part of Bronescombe's development of the landed endowment of the See of Exeter. Cargoll subsequently remained one of the bishopric's temporal estates for more than five centuries.

Dispute with Edmund, Earl of Cornwall

Bronescombe's possession of Cargoll soon led to a serious conflict with Edmund, 2nd Earl of Cornwall. In 1272 the bishop complained of violence by the earl's officers and adherents against his clergy and tenants and of the destruction of his park at Cargoll. The proceedings preserved in Bronescombe's register also describe the seizure and imprisonment of John de Esse, the bishop's chancellor, and offences committed against free and unfree tenants of the episcopal estate.

The dispute was settled by a composition made at Lambeth on 14 March 1275. Among its terms, Edmund undertook that the park at Cargoll should be repaired and that the liberties of the manor should thereafter be observed in accordance with the bishop's charter. John de Beaupré, a former Cornish seneschal implicated in the disturbances, subsequently made a substantial payment towards compensation; an acknowledgement dated 21 June 1276 records payment of 100 marks towards the injuries done to the bishop.

The Cargoll episode has been discussed in modern scholarship on medieval episcopal parks and lordship. Andrew G. Miller has treated conflicts surrounding episcopal deer parks as expressions not only of economic and jurisdictional disputes but also of the political and symbolic character of episcopal lordship.

The bishops of Exeter continued to exercise secular lordship over Cargoll while the churches associated with the manor developed their own ecclesiastical relationship with Exeter Cathedral. In 1283 the church of Newlyn, rather than the manor of Cargoll itself, was appropriated to the chancellorship of Exeter Cathedral. Cargoll remained a temporal possession of the bishopric.

In 1311 Edward II granted the bishop of Exeter the right to hold a weekly Thursday market at his manor of Caergaul, together with an annual fair around the feast of St Matthew on 21 September. The market and fair were associated in practice with Newlyn East, illustrating the close relationship between the episcopal manor and the developing settlement there.

The bishops maintained a manorial complex at Cargoll. Although much of it has disappeared, evidence for the scale and status of the establishment survives in the medieval barn at Cargoll Farm and in later descriptions of the site.

By the Tudor period the bishops increasingly exploited Cargoll through long leases while retaining the freehold of the manor. Nineteenth-century county historians Daniel and Samuel Lysons recorded that John Vesey, bishop of Exeter during the reign of Henry VIII, leased the Cargoll estate to Clement Throckmorton. According to their account, the lease subsequently passed from Throckmorton to a member of the Williams family and then to the Borlase family.

A similar descent was given by Davies Gilbert, drawing on the earlier antiquarian work of William Hals. Gilbert described Laner or Lanher in St Allen as the voke lands or principal demesne of Cargoll and as a former residence of the bishops. He likewise stated that Vesey leased it to Clement Throckmorton, whom he identified as an officer of Catherine Parr, and that the interest later passed through Williams to Borlase.

These accounts describe the descent of an episcopal leasehold, not a transfer of the bishop's freehold. The distinction became important during the transition from Borlase to Hawkins ownership in the early eighteenth century.

By the later seventeenth century the Borlases of Treludderow held the Cargoll lease from the bishop of Exeter. Manorial courts for Cargoll were consequently associated with Treludderow during the period of Borlase occupation.

The family's interest was disrupted by the financial failure of Humphrey Borlase. Gilbert's account states that Borlase became heavily indebted and ultimately died a prisoner for debt in the Fleet Prison. Following his death, his estate was disposed of under a decree of the Court of Chancery. The freehold estate of Treludderow and other lands was purchased by Sir William Scawen, while, in Gilbert's words, the lease of the manor of Cargoll held under the bishop was purchased by Philip Hawkins.

The distinction is central to the later descent of Cargoll. Philip Hawkins did not at this stage purchase the episcopal freehold of the manor; he succeeded to the Borlase leasehold interest under the See of Exeter. His involvement in the administration of Cargoll is independently attested by a surviving appointment of 1706 naming him as steward of the manor.

The leasehold remained in the Hawkins family. Gilbert stated that it descended to Philip Hawkins's great-grandson, Sir Christopher Hawkins.

Acquisition of the freehold

Sir Christopher Hawkins, 1st Baronet, of Trewithen, eventually converted the family's long leasehold interest into ownership of the manorial freehold. Gilbert dated the transaction to 1804 or 1805 and stated that Hawkins acquired the freehold from the See of Exeter under parliamentary authority for redeeming the Land Tax.

Surviving Cargoll legal papers corroborate the unusual statutory character of the transaction. Documents preserved at Kresen Kernow name the bishop of Exeter, Sir Christopher Hawkins and statutory commissioners including Lord Auckland and Lord Glenbervie among the parties concerned with the Cargoll estate. Other papers record the surrender and regrant of episcopal leases during the same period, including a lease of the demesne lands of Cargoll from the bishop to Hawkins.

Hawkins ownership thus arose in two legally distinct stages: the purchase by Philip Hawkins of the Borlase leasehold following the Chancery administration of Humphrey Borlase's estate, and the acquisition by Sir Christopher Hawkins approximately a century later of the freehold from the See of Exeter.

This transaction should also be distinguished from Hawkins's purchase of former Borlase property at Treludderow. That estate had passed separately through Scawen and the Basset family before Sir Christopher Hawkins acquired it towards the end of the eighteenth century.

The acquisition of the manorial freehold did not bring an end to separate claims by the ecclesiastical authorities to the mineral estate beneath Cargoll. By the middle of the nineteenth century mining had become an important issue in the district, particularly in the aftermath of the development of East Wheal Rose.

In 1865 Thomas Spargo described Cargoll Mine in Newlyn East and explicitly named the Bishop of Exeter and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners as its mineral owners. Cargoll Mine had initially been associated with the East Wheal Rose sett before being worked separately.

The continued distinction between manorial or surface ownership and mineral rights ultimately resulted in litigation. Kresen Kernow preserves a nineteenth-century Queen's Bench special case entitled Hawkins v Bishop of Exeter, brought to determine the bishop's claimed right to open and work mines in Newlyn East. The archival description notes that the case rehearsed the history of the ownership of Cargoll as part of the argument concerning the mineral title.

The surviving litigation is therefore significant for the history of the manor because it demonstrates that Hawkins's acquisition of the episcopal freehold in 1804-05 did not necessarily extinguish every proprietary interest formerly associated with the See of Exeter. The precise division between the manorial estate and the mineral estate remained a matter requiring legal determination in the nineteenth century.

The most important surviving building of the medieval episcopal complex is Cargoll Farm Barn. Historic England dates the structure to the late fourteenth century and describes it as the only surviving part of the medieval residence of the bishops of Exeter at Cargoll. It was designated a Grade I listed building in 1967.

The barn is particularly notable for its medieval timber construction, including raised base-cruck trusses. Such roof structures are rare survivals in Cornwall and have been the subject of modern architectural study. Together with documentary references to the park, demesne, manor court and episcopal residence, the barn provides physical evidence for the importance of Cargoll as one of the medieval bishops' Cornish estates.