216 BUILD IKG AND ORNAMENTAL STONES OF CORNWALL. 



according to the purpose in hand, must have been com- 

 paratively easy. And, later still, when the crosses, which 

 are so distinctive a feature of our Archeeology, began to be 

 erected, granite was still the favourite stone. Its accessibility, 

 in some measure, atoned for its hardness ; and these were days 

 in which labour was cheap. For ages granite was chiefly 

 obtained from the surface blocks; hence its local name of 

 moorstone. Carew says, that in his time it earned the chiefest 

 reckoning for ''windows, houses, and chimneys;" and Norden 

 that it was " verie profitable for manie purposes, in buylding most 

 firm and lasting." Borlase notes five kinds of granite — white, 

 dove colour, yellow, red, and black, and says that they were chiefly 

 procured in Constantine, Tregoning, and Ludgvan. He gives 

 the palm to the Tregoning granite, which is more showy than 

 the Ludgvan or Tregenver. The latter stone is now exhausted ; 

 it was close-grained and tough. From Tregoning and Tregenver 

 most of the granite used in the churches of the Lands' End 

 district of West Cornwall came. 



It is to the churches of the county that we have mainly to 

 look for the material of our archaeological notes. It will be 

 admitted that the building materials of a period or a locality 

 have a very marked and definite influence upon its architecture. 

 When our far-off ancestors became builders, they were, at first, 

 content with the materials which lay nearest at hand. As they 

 acquired skill, and art develo]ped, they sought to supply the 

 deficiencies of those materials by obtaining others from a distance ; 

 and hence arose a jDractiee which has continued to the present 

 day. There are very few parishes in the ''rockie land of 

 strangers " that do not yield rough walling stone ; it is only here 

 and there that stone suitable for finely- wrought work is obtain- 

 able — stone adapted for quoins and dressings, mullions and 

 tracery, arcades, and decorative carvings. So far as we. know the 

 earlier churches were built entirely of stone raised on or near 

 their sites; but it is surprising at what an early date the 

 advantages of employing such rocks as the elvan of Pentewan, 

 the trap of Catacleuse, and the quasi-serpentine of Polyphant 

 were recognised. Carew mentions Pentewan and Catacleuse 

 stone as employed in his day ; biit we can carry back their use to 

 many centuries before that. 



