Unnamed Woman - c 1400 BCE
We do not have a named individual, but as the Bronze Age was a matriarchy, women headed the families and made the decisions.
About 1400 BCE the weather worsened and the tribes wandering the north of England came south. Those already here began to settle. We can imagine a woman looking down from the ridge-way route above Zennor and choosing the place on the plateau below for her family to make their home.
The family built a round house and enclosed five fields for their crops. Surrounding them they built another hedge further out, enclosing grazing for their longhorn cattle and sheep in winter. In the summer, the animals grazed the downs and cliff - while the grass in the pasture fields was cut for hay to feed them in the winter.
Zennor Quoit was built in the Stone Age at the junction of two trackways across the downs. Its massive capstone, now fallen, measures 18 feet by 9.5 feet (5.5m by 2.9m). Drawing by Ros Prigg. By kind permission of Ros Prigg.
Other families followed and as farming developed, people established hamlets. Zennor Quoit (above) was already two thousand years old and they gathered there for ceremonies and trading along the ridge-way route.
This Bronze Age pattern of fields still survives in Zennor today making it internationally important - and all because a woman in the Bronze Age decided to settle her family in a place we now call Zennor.
A round house with smoke seeping out through the roof. Photo Jean Nankervis
Sennar – 600 AD
Although this woman is almost as important, we do not know anything about her except her name. It has been spelt with all the vowels from Sinare, to Senare, Sener, Soner, Sunner and Synner. When the Cornish language hardened in the sixteenth century, the spelling changed to Zenar, Zenor… and finally Zennor.
Sennar arrived in about 600 AD and was so influential that she gave her name to the parish. When the Normans came, their scribes Latinised it by adding an a - and she has reappeared recently as St Senara.
Nicholas Orme [please add reference: ‘ Cornwall and the Cross, Christianity 500-1560’ pp 17-18] suggests that there is no evidence of a widespread missionary movement before 900 AD, and that most chapels were probably founded by members of an important local family who were later made saints. By 900 AD, 140 people had inspired the building of at least 185 churches in Cornwall. So we may imagine Sennar saying to her father that it would be a good idea to build a chapel in Zennor; after all, it was the latest fashion. Anta already had a chapel at Lelant and Ia had one on St. Ives Island.
In the 13th century the Celtic monks were trying to withstand the influence of the Norman Church and the stories of their Celtic saints were a form of religious propaganda. By 1300 Zennor Church had been transferred to Glasney College. So little was known about its saint that the monks wrote a wonderful story about her which was read every year on her saint’s day, the nearest Sunday to May 13th. To strengthen the claims of Glasney, Senara was made the mother of their patron Saint Budoc.
When it became fashionable for Cornish saints to be connected with Ireland, in about 1300, an extra episode was written in for that.
The story begins in the 6th century with Azenora, a Breton princess. A rival persuades her husband that she has been unfaithful and he casts her into the sea in a barrel, (possibly in origin a coracle). The story continues with Senara giving birth to Budoc before they are washed up on the shores of Ireland. Budoc, who was a real person, grows up and returns to Brittany where, in about 600 AD, he became the third bishop of Dol. Senara then sails for Cornwall where she attracts many Celtic myths including the ability to give mothers a good milk supply.
St Sennar as imagined in a recent painting by Jean Brock. By kind permission of Jean Brock
Meginia of Trewey - 1327
By the 14th century we not only have an agreed name of an individual, but we also know where she lived - and the tax she paid - in 1327. Edward III had come to the throne at the age of fourteen years. His mother had imprisoned his father, and was now was ruling a chaotic country with the hated Earl of Mortimer. This news came to Zennor together with an unwelcome tax demand of one twentieth (5%) on all ‘moveable goods’.
Two Zennor men went around the parish collecting the money and we are fortunate that a copy of this 700 year old Lay Subsidy Roll for Zennor survives. The writing is faded and it is in poor condition, but of the 38 legible names Meginia of Trewey was the only woman. She paid eighteen pence, an average sum.
What was Trewey like in 1327? The Bronze Age fields had been reorganised under the Normans. The four farmers at Trewey had large fields divided into strips, and in each field they all had some strips to till. In one field they planted corn in the autumn, in the spring they planted peas and beans in another, and one field was left fallow every year for the soil to recover. When these holdings were added together each family had ten acres, the same as in the Bronze Age, for that was the area needed to feed a family.
The farms in Zennor stretched in a strip from the cliffs up to the parish boundary of the ridge-way route. Above the Trewey fields was Trewey Common which was undivided but shared by the four farmers. They also shared Trewey Cliff for grazing their sheep and cattle. The rough land was very important as it had rights for gathering fuel, furze and turf. Their other rights included grazing for geese down by the river.
We know what the farms were producing by the tithes paid. When the corn was cut every tenth sheaf was supposed to go to Glasney College at Penryn, but how was this done? Perhaps money was paid instead. William de Carnellow was the vicar of Zennor for 40 years, and received a tenth of the beans and peas grown in the open fields. Peas and beans were dried for the winter while the whole plant was fed to the livestock. Meginia's family cut hay in their meadows and a tenth of this, too, was supposed to go to the vicar. If they grew flax or hemp, that was taxed, as well as leeks and onions which were 'cultivated in a garden with a spade'.
This was twenty years before the Black Death and what was life like for Meginia? The weather had been deteriorating for the last 70 years. All her life Meginia and her family had been struggling. With poor harvests, food was so scarce by the end of winter that the death toll in Zennor rose noticeably. In summer there were droughts or storms. Either the fields were scorched bare by the sun, or the crops were flattened by rain. A series of meagre harvests provided no winter fodder for the Zennor livestock, who fell prey to epidemics.
Meginia and her family struggled through the bitterly cold winters and gales blew the thatch off their roofs. We do not know whether she was still alive when the Black Death came in 1348. Every conceivable remedy was tried, but the numbers of dead rose relentlessly and so did the graves. As fear swept the parish, Sir William de Carnellow visited his parishioners with prayers and concoctions to relieve their pain. Like all the priests on Sundays, he urged his people to repent of their sins to escape God’s wrath. But no amount of penitence and preaching prevented the Black Death from return in 1361. This visitation was called ‘the children's plague’ and more boys than girls died. The plague kept returning and those of child-bearing age were particularly affected.
Pieter Brueghal the Elder, De Triomf van de Doods (The Triumph of Death) Museo del Prado. Via Wikimedia Commons.
The population of Cornwall fell from 60,000 to 40,000 –a reduction by a third – and then to 30,000. Whole families were wiped out. If this pattern was followed in Zennor, there would have been fewer families by the end of the 14th century, and smaller households. Instead of four families at Trewey there would have been only three – or even just two.
Everywhere, marginal land grew in. The turf and cob buildings of abandoned farmsteads fell into ruins. With the shortage of labour ploughing was cut to a minimum and a third of the arable fields turned into pasture. Those left were glad to let their animals graze the untilled land of their neighbouring empty fields. Nobody was digging or streaming for tin any more so the valleys and workings in Zennor were deserted. It was 150 years before the population began to recover.
Plague Victims blessed by a priest. England, late 14th century. Via WikiDoc Via Wikidoc
Today, although pandemics spread alarm and disruption, it is almost impossible to imagine the deaths of half of the population.
Jean Nankervis
Next month, part 2 will be about three different women who lived during the turbulent 17th century
Penwith Local History Group
Edited by
Sally Corbet
price £10
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