Page:The parochial history of Cornwall.djvu/135

Rh than the others. What Mr. Hals calls a font is still there; and a font it assuredly is, the Friars having just as much right to a font as to a burying-place; but the inscription upon it is on two or three squares of the hexagon in which the font is shaped, and is too modern to mean any thing.

"There is a chapel of St.     at the west ende of the toune. There is another chapel in Bodmyn beside that at the west ende of the toune, and an almose house, but not endowid with landes." (Leland, Itin. ii. 114, 115.) Query, says Tanner, respecting the latter, Whether this alms-house was St. Anthony's or St. George's? for the will of John Killigrew, proved A.D.1500, gives legacies Pauperibus Sancti Antonii de Bodmyn, et Pauperibus Sancti Georgii de Bodmyn. Both these chapels had an almshouse. The latter is that chapel which stood on the summit of a hill north of Bodmin, called Berry, from some castle or fort upon it, I suppose, and giving name to the valley below it, Berrycoomb, or Bereum. The remains of this chapel are merely a tower, neat but slight, making a considerable object to the road from its elevation, yet small in its rise, or its pitch, and carrying a face of no great antiquity, being merely three hundred years old. The town, says tradition, stood formerly here, was burnt down, and then removed to its present site. That this is false as history we know for certain, as we know the town to have been where it now stands, but that the town in the days of its high prosperity had shot out hither.

"The showe and the principale of the toun of Bodmyn," says Leland, "is from west to est along in one streate." (Itin. ii. 114.) There were (says Mr. Hals upon the credit of information) within these sixty years past no less than thirteen churches, or free chapels, remaining either whole or ruined in the town and parish, and this was one.