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CALSTOCK PARISH HISTORY |
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The Middle Ages Our first glimpse of Calstock manor is from some fascinating Silver mining records about 1300 , translations of which are held in the Archives, and which are the subject of a booklet by Peter Mayer - Calstock and the Bere Alston Silver-Lead Mines. Then, in 1337, Edward III created the Duchy of Cornwall for his son. This was done by appropriating 17 Cornish manors, and Calstock was one of them. Apart from a few periods, Calstock remained in the Duchy until 1806, and documents abound for five centuries. It is from these that we know that Calstock Town did not exist as a separate settlement in 1337. It was part of the lord of the manor’s own farm, which stretched from the Danescombe valley, along the road, past the church to include the whole of Harewood, and along the river front back to the bottom of the Danescombe valley. We do know that there was a busy quay where Calstock is now, and there were probably buildings to house the lord of the manor’s workers. By the 15th Century, the manor farm was broken up and Calstock as a settlement first appears in the documents. From then on, the village begins to take shape as a busy little riverside port, with barges of sand coming up the river to fertilise the fields. The sand was unloaded on the old parish quay, then called the Sand Quay, and carted up the main hill out of the village via the road that is still called Sand Lane today. The barges went back down the river with a variety of goods, each barge paying a toll of a shilling at Calstock. Calstock manor was thriving agriculturally, with mills on the rivers to grind corn and to full cloth. The separate holdings kept cattle, pigs, and horses, and practised the rotation of a year of corn(or barley or rye), a year of peas or beans, and a year of fallow land. To supplement their income, many people were open tin streaming on the down and in the valleys. Even silver had been found in one location. The abundant archives for this time paint a picture of a very feudal society, with everybody in their place. The freemen were at the top, enjoying many of the advantages we would normally associate with freedom, whilst at the bottom, there were still virtual slaves who could not move, marry, brew beer, or even grind corn without their lord's consent. And they would have to pay a hefty sum for each privilege. All this will again be the subject of another booklet. But throughout the centuries, Calstock parish was a flourishing agricultural community, in which the village of Metherell was the most important village whilst Calstock was slowly developing as a riverside port. Thus, even before the advent of the mining era as we know it, Calstock was evolving into a lively, diverse and prosperous community. |
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