Sydenham Damerel

The quiet lanes west of Tavistock pass through a landscape whose appearance gives little indication of the changes it has seen. Two places on this ride were particularly revealing: Bradstone Manor and the little parish of Sydenham Damerel.

At Bradstone, the road approaches an extraordinary late-16th-century gatehouse, its battlements, pinnacles and granite-dressed entrance announcing that this was once the centre of a considerable landed estate. Bradstone itself has a recorded history stretching back before the Norman Conquest, while the surviving manor is principally 16th century. The estate became associated particularly with the Cloberry family, and much later remained sufficiently substantial to comprise some 6,600 acres in the early 20th century. The gateway is therefore more than an architectural curiosity: it is a surviving expression of the wealth and authority once exercised by landed families over the surrounding countryside.

[MORE → Bradstone Manor: the manor, the Cloberrys and the landed estate]

A few miles farther on, St Mary’s, Sydenham Damerel, tells a very different story. Its tower and porch survive from the 15th century, but much of what appears at first to be an ancient church is actually the result of a remarkable reconstruction following disaster. In January 1955 the church was struck by lightning and gutted by fire. When rebuilding began, the parish decided not to restore the north aisle which had been added when the local population was much larger. Instead the church was returned approximately to its earlier medieval proportions, with surviving carved stonework and 15th-century windows incorporated into the new building. The barrel-vaulted roof was recreated in the traditional manner familiar from many churches in Devon and Cornwall.

[MORE → St Mary’s: the 1955 fire and rebuilding]

Behind that architectural decision lies another story. Sydenham Damerel's population rose from about 199 in 1801 to 466 in 1851, before declining again to little more than 200 by the 1930s. Mining was an important part of that expansion. Although Sydenham Damerel was an old agricultural parish rather than a settlement created around a single mine, its inhabitants were drawn into the great Tamar Valley mining economy, with workings locally and across the river towards Kit Hill. As mining declined, so did the population. The church itself consequently preserves the evidence: an aisle needed by a larger mining-age congregation disappeared when the building was reconstructed for the much smaller community of the 1950s.

[MORE → Mining, Kit Hill and the changing population of Sydenham Damerel]

The parish reaches much further back. Sydenham is an English place-name, while Damerel derives from the Norman family associated with the manor by the 13th century. In this country close to the Tamar, medieval English existed alongside the Anglo-Norman French of the landholding classes and the Latin of Church and administration, while Cornish was still spoken not far away and may well have been heard across the border.

[MORE → Why “Sydenham Damerel”? Names and languages on the Tamar border]

There is also an unexpected royal connection. Inside the church are photographs of Charles, formerly Prince of Wales and now King Charles III, including one showing him in the countryside and another formal portrait in ceremonial dress. The precise date and purpose of his visit to Sydenham Damerel have not yet been established, but the prominence given to the photographs suggests that the connection was significant to the parish.

Charles's presence also raises a wider question about the Duchy of Cornwall, of which he was Duke from 1952 until becoming King in 2022. The Duchy is often misunderstood. It does not mean that the Duke owns Cornwall, nor are its lands confined to Cornwall. Created by Edward III in 1337 to provide an income for his heir, it was endowed with lands and rights already under royal control, some of them in Devon and elsewhere. The present Duke of Cornwall is Prince William, and the Duchy still owns extensive property in Devon.

Unlike an ordinary landed estate, its capital is preserved for successive Dukes: the Duke receives its income but cannot simply sell the estate and spend the proceeds. That helps explain why the Duchy has survived for nearly seven centuries while many private estates such as those represented by Bradstone were divided, sold or diminished through inheritance, debt and taxation.

[MORE → What exactly is the Duchy of Cornwall — and why does it own land in Devon?]

Thus a ride through what now seems an overwhelmingly rural landscape passes through the remains of several different systems of power and influence: the landed estate centred upon Bradstone Manor, the mining economy which transformed the Tamar country, the medieval patterns preserved in parish names and churches, and, still surviving in altered form, the extraordinary institution of the Duchy of Cornwall.

All have left their mark on the landscape.