David Thomas, Archivist, writes: In August 2023 a very public-spirited local historian alerted Kresen Kernow to the fact that a well-known London bookseller was offering a volume of rates and accounts relating to the Surveyors of the Highways for the North Cornwall parish of St Minver Highlands. We agreed with him that the book, which appeared to be a stray from the parish chest collection, ought to be in our collections and sought grant aid from FNL to facilitate the purchase. FNL very promptly and generously offered a full grant to cover the cost of acquisition, for which we are most grateful.
Kresen Kernow wished to secure this volume for our holdings for two reasons: firstly because it would augment a fine parish archive; secondly because the service did not already hold very many examples of Cornish highway surveyors’ accounts and rates.
The volume, bound in cream vellum, opens with the words ‘St Minver 1768 Inhabitants liable to send plows for the reparation of the Highways. Tenements valued by the Poor Rate at one penny to the pound.’ It records, for a period of 27 years, the names of the inhabitants, tenement names, their poor rate, yearly value, number of ploughs, number of men, the composition due and the composition received. Arrears are also noted. Much of the volume is recorded in very neat and stylised handwriting and the annual accounts are signed by the local Justices of the Peace.
When the book arrived and was unpacked a bundle of 26 additional folded documents dating from 1768-1814 was found tucked inside its front cover, consisting of lists of inhabitants liable for highways repairs, lane measurements, road completion agreements, compositions and arrears, highway order repairs and even a list of parish tools. It also contained several items of correspondence; one in particular, dated 23 March 1788, from William Sandys the vicar to Gregory Mably, Surveyor of the Highways in the St Minver Lowlands Division is worthy of note. Sandys quotes the Act of Parliament of 18 George III for highway repairs and gives notice to Mably that unless he forthwith proceeds to repair the highways in his Division according to that Act and perform his office as therein directed, he would move the Quarter Sessions to punish him ‘for your notorious neglect of duty in your office, in almost every particular - having viewed the said highways which are in many parts much out of repair thro your neglect’.
Another of the papers tucked within the book, a 1775 list of inhabitants liable to plough labour on the King’s high roads, is indicative of the highly organised manner with which such repairs were conducted. The ploughs were to ‘meet tomorrow at Dinham Clift at a place called Sand Gate by 8 o’clock in the morning and to work eight hours, and each plough to have two sufficient labouring men’.
This archive provides fascinating insights into 18th-century road maintenance in a North Cornwall rural community, and will be valued by family, property and social historians.
Bought from Jarndyce.
