Merther - a relic in rural Cornwall
- Louise@Gwanwyn
- Jul 19, 2024
- 5 min read
The hamlet of Merther – part of the Tregothnan estate to the east of Truro – feels remote in time and place, though the busy A390 road runs less than a kilometre to its north. The now-derelict Merther church was the place of worship for the population of Tresillian and the outlying hamlets for many centuries. Though it only became a parish in its own right in 1866, the church here is thought to have been built around 1340, on or near the site of a saint’s grave (1). The dedication of the church – to St Cohan, a soldier from Brittany - came later.
A sense of the links to the communities that worshipped here are entwined with the setting, in the same way that vegetation now wraps itself around the building and headstones. One of the people whose life was linked to this place was the Rev. John James Carne, who served the community here from 1861 until his premature death in 1868, aged 44 (2).
John was a grandson of William Carne of Penzance, who was a founder member of a bank; one of John's cousins was Elizabeth Carne – the first female member of the Royal Cornwall Geological Society, and her father’s heir to his portion of his banking interest (see her story here). After his education at Trinty College, Cambridge John had been associated with parishes in Hertfordshire, Illogan and Moreleigh prior to coming here (3). In Moreleigh, first his mother then his father had passed away whilst staying with him, in May 1859 and June 1861, respectively (2). Perhaps he expressed a wish to move to this rural hamlet to find peace after a difficult few years, and to be closer to his extended family living in Penzance. OPC records show that John was at Merther from around November 1861 onwards (2).
It must have been while he was living in Merther that John met the lady who was to become his wife. Isabella Emily Holland, twenty years younger than John, was perhaps introduced to him by members of the Polwhele family, who lived at Polwhele House, just north-west of the Tresillian; the Carne and Polwhele families had become linked by marriage when one of John's cousins had married Thomas Polwhele in 1861 (4).
Isabella had been born in Canada, and her father was the Commissary General to Canada but he died while Isabella was still young (4). By 1851, when she was aged 7, she was living in the household of her widowed aunt in Falmouth: her uncle, who must have been the brother of her father, was a Commander in the Royal Navy, but died in 1850, aged 50 (5). In the early 1850s, Isabella moved with her two aunts to Plymouth, where they are during the census of 1861 (4). Subsequently, Isabella must have moved to Baldhu, to the west of Truro, as this is given as her residence when she married John Carne in January 1864 (2).
After their marriage, Isabella moved with John to Merther, and it is easy to imagine that this peaceful, rural place was a haven for them both after so much change and loss in their lives. Their daughter, Avis, was born here in 1865, and she was baptised in the church at Merther by her father on 1st November, 1865 (2). It must have been a joyous occasion for the couple, one perhaps shared by members of John’s family from Penzance, and of course the congregation of the area, who would have come to know John well in the preceding years.
But their happiness was not to last; maybe John contracted an illness, or began to suffer from a health condition, but he seems to have been absent from his duties at Merther from the middle of August 1867. It’s likely he and his family moved to be nearer medical help and family for support in Penzance. Sadly, he did not recover: he passed away at Regents Terrace, Penzance in May 1868, leaving Isabella a widow aged 24, and a daughter who was not yet three (6).
John was laid to rest at Gulval, close to Penzance, and with his passing, Isabella’s link to Merther also ended. She later re-married (in 1870) but, tragically, the daughter born to her and John, Avis, passed away just a few months after this, in 1871, aged 5. Avis is also laid to rest at Gulval. Isabella subsequently had two other children (born in 1873 and 1878) with her husband, who was a cousin-once-removed to John Carne. Isabella died suddenly on 20th December 1888, just 2 days after developing 'alarming symptoms' that necessitated an operation (7). She was laid to rest at Gulval, and contemporary newspaper reports indicate she was well-known as a help to the poor of the area; her coffin was covered with 29 wreaths and crosses of beautiful flowers (8).
The patterns of life at Merther continued in the absence of John James Carne: Curate Richard Blackmore became the Vicar there from November 1868, and continued in this role for over thirty years until his death in 1899 (2). After this, baptisms were mainly performed by Curate, H E Dunn, and the last baptism here was in 1903 – the church at Tresillian (on the A390) being then complete. Burials at Merther continued up to the mid-1950s.
Parish records online (2) record over 4500 services at Merther church between 1608 and when the church was abandoned in the 1940s – the lead on the roof was removed to aid the war effort (9), and soon after this the building is thought to have fell in to disrepair.
During his tenure, 140 services were conducted by John Carne. In the same way that the ancient walls of the church are built of many small fragments of slate, his contribution to the community here was a small but significant part of a larger whole. In the quiet shade of the overgrown churchyard, it is easy to feel that some imprint from the lives of John, Isabella and Avis is a part of the fabric of this place, too.
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References
2 OPC records – www.cornwall-opc-database.org
4 Find My Past census search, at Cornwall Libraries
5 Royal Cornwall Gazette. 11th January 1850.
6 Royal Cornwall Gazette. 21st May 1868
7 The Cornish Telegraph. 27th December 1888.
8 The Cornishman. 27th December 1888
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