A History of the Barn Pool

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The River Tamar in south-west England rises just 6km from the north Cornish coast and empties into Plymouth Sound on the southern coast. The river forms a natural barrier which for much of history has separated what is now Cornwall from the rest of England. Maker is a peninsula of high ground surrounded by Plymouth Sound and Millbrook Lake, making it a good defensive position for early settlers. The span between the western Maker shore and the eastern shore at Devil’s Point is only 300m wide, making it one of the few suitable places on the Tamar for a ferry crossing. The tidal river, muddy foreshore and steep landscape further north meant that the next accessible east-to-west crossing was at Launceston. This southern crossing at Maker was short and was navigable by rowboats for passengers and larger horse ferries for livestock, carts and cargo. The wide Tamar river becomes constricted at this point, so at mid-tide the currents can be very strong, and on a falling tide the river boils up as the outflow hits submerged cliffs in Barn Pool. In strong winds the water can become dangerously rough, so river crossings would be restricted by both tide and wind, and there are many accounts of people losing their lives on the crossing.

The original ferry route used the sheltered Barn Pool beach as the western landing place. The route from there on the Cornish side took travellers close to the eventual site of Mt Edgcumbe House and then by a path still deeply cut into the hillside leading to the north side of Maker Church. In 1730, the western landing was moved to Cremyll, a less accessible location that is subject to the effects of tidal currents, and the road was moved outside of the Edgcumbe estate.

The river crossing points act as gateways to control movement of people, livestock and goods. Traditionally this has allowed whoever controls the crossing to charge a fee, and to decide who is allowed to cross. So the crossing point at Cremyll and Edgcumbe, as part of the area called Maker, has likely been an important place financially and politically throughout its very long and very turbulent history. Like much of the surrounding area, it has been subject to numerous cultural shifts and revolutions, many of which have left their mark on the landscape.

The earliest occupants in the area left stone tools on the high ground at Maker Heights. A range of flint tools have been found, including scrapers and knives along with the flint cores they were made from, all dated to the Mesolithic period (9600 BC to 4000 BC). Later stone tools from the Neolithic (4100 BC to 2500 BC) were also found, as was a Neolithic stone axe recovered from the Barn Pool in 1994.

The arrival of the Beaker people in the early Bronze Age between 2450 BC and 1800 BC fundamentally changed the population of Britain, introducing new burial practices, metallurgy, and their distinctively decorated pottery, and the burial mound in Barrow Park dates from this period. The Bronze Age also brought traders from the Mediterranean to Plymouth, whose ships left several stone anchors behind on the seabed for sports divers to find.

Maker heights was occupied in the Iron Age from 800 BC to AD 43, and there is evidence of a defended settlement enclosure from this time that would have been created by the native Dumnonii tribe. The next cultural shift came with the Romans, who reached Exeter by 55 AD. It was often thought that having fought their way to Exeter, the Romans went no further, but the discovery of a large Roman fort at the tidal reach of the Tamar at Calstock showed this not to be true. The fort at Calstock was only occupied for a short time between 50 AD and 80 AD.

Between 300 and 400 AD, Christianity arrived in Cornwall in a peculiar form which brought its own saints and methods of worship. This Celtic Christianity eventually took a firm grip on the people and superseded Roman and Celtic religions. By being different it was later at odds with the more widespread Christian practices in the country. This is also the time when the Romans departed Britain, leaving a power vacuum which the local tribes rapidly filled in the west, but allowed Angles, Saxons and Jutes from Europe to migrate to the east of Britain. Initially hired as mercenaries, these foreign tribal groups decided to stay and establish their own kingdoms, eventually overrunning the entire country.

By 705 AD, the Anglo-Saxons were pushing westwards, driving the native Britons into Devon and Cornwall. In a bid to appease the invaders, King Geraint, 'Lord of the Western Kingdom', gave land including Maker to Bishop Aldhelm at Sherborne Abbey, so it then became subject to the control of the kings of Wessex.

There are a few records that refer to a chapel built on shore at the Barn Pool, this would have been a passage chapel, constructed on the western shore to match the chapel of St. Lawrence at Devil’s Point. The chapels would be used by the devout to ensure a safe crossing of the Tamar, or as a place to give thanks if they made it safe across. Another suggestion is that the Barn Pool chapel marks the spot where the original St. Julian first landed and perhaps built a small oratory as thanksgiving for his safe landing. The date the chapel was built is unknown.

The appeasement of the Saxons only lasted so long, and in 813 AD, Ecgberht, King of Wessex, ‘laid waste to the West Welsh’ as the local tribes were known. In 936 AD, King Athelstan of England fixed Cornwall's eastern boundary at the east bank of the Tamar and the remaining Cornish were evicted from Exeter and herded west over the Tamar. The Britons were left under their own dynasty to regulate themselves in their own province with West Welsh tribal law and customs. The Vikings visited the area, often joining forces with the Britons in attacks against the armies of Wessex, and in 997 AD they sailed up the Tamar to sack Lydford.

The next upheaval happened only a few centuries later with the arrival of the Normans in 1066. The invasion and takeover was complete; the entire ruling class in the country was replaced by Normans. Uprisings against new Norman rule were swiftly and effectively dealt with. By 1086, the Normans had installed the Valletorts as tenants of most of the land controlling the Tamar, and at this time the area was known as ‘Vaultershome’ (Valletorts-home). Following the Norman Conquest, Maker church was appropriated to Plympton Priory in 1121.

There are very few records of the village of West Stonehouse. One of the records is from the start of the Hundred Years’ War in 1339 when a combined French-Genoese flotilla of 18 galleys and pinnaces entered Plymouth Sound on 20th May in a surprise attack. The invaders burned Sutton Harbour and buildings on the shore at West Stonehouse.

West Stonehouse was the property of the ancient family of ‘Stonehouse’, whose heiress brought it to the Durnford family. Sir Piers Edgcumbe, who died in 1539, married the heiress Jane Durnford, daughter of Stephen Durnford, and the estate has since remained in his family. In 1511, the Edgcumbe family took control of the Cremyll ferry, and in 1515 Henry VIII granted a Royal Licence to create the 500-acre Mount Edgcumbe Deer Park in West Stonehouse and Cremyll. In 1540 the Cremyll Blockhouse was built, and the first map is created that shows West Stonehouse and the chapel constructed by the Barn Pool. At some point after this date a large barn was built by the waterside at West Stonehouse, which then gave the Barn Pool its name.

Piers Edgcumbe was succeeded by his eldest son, Richard, who was knighted in 1536. Sir Richard Edgcumbe built a castellated mansion on the hill, to which he gave the name of Mount Edgcumbe. It was completed in 1550, but the round towers, being originally small and inconvenient, were pulled down and rebuilt in an octagonal form. Decorative landscaping was started, and the gentle hilltop at the eastern end of Maker Heights was gradually enclosed. The Edgcumbe family went on to create a landscaped parkland of national importance, making large changes to the entire landscape in the course of several centuries.

About 1730, the 1st Lord Edgcumbe (1680-1758) remodelled the estate gardens. The work included demolishing the barn, the passage chapel and the remains of the village of West Stonehouse, which at the time was occupied by fishermen. Richard, then aged 49, obtained permission to move the ferry landing from the Barn Pool to its present position at Cremyll and move the road to Maker westward outside the estate. One account says that some of the stonework from the chapel at West Stonehouse was used to build the Picklecombe Seat in the Picklecombe valley, the seat resembles a deeply recessed church porch with a wooden seat where the door would be.

The ferry crossing was at this point between Cremyll, where it is today and Passage Point in Stonehouse, close by Devil’s Point, often referred to simply as ‘the Point’. The eastern end of the ferry route was moved in 1826 to Admiral’s Hard when building work started on the new Royal William Victualling Yard. The small passage chapel of St. Lawrence at Devil’s Point was demolished at this time. The oddity of ‘Vaultershome’ being in the county of Devon was corrected when the land was moved from Devon to Cornwall as part of the Counties (Detached Parts) Act of 1844. In 1885, the Cremyll steam ferry was introduced so the crossing became much safer and more reliable.

In 1941, the house and many of the estate records were destroyed in a fire caused by an incendiary bomb dropped during a raid by the Luftwaffe. The landscape of the Barn Pool area was again modified, but this time as part of its conversion to a loading area for tank landing craft heading for the Normandy beaches on D-Day, 1944.

After the war, Kenelm, the sixth Earl of Mount Edgcumbe, elected to rebuild the house with architect Adrian Gilbert Scott. By 1964, the reconstruction was complete, and Mount Edgcumbe House was once again the seat of the Edgcumbe family. But just seven years later, the house and 865 acres of land were sold to Cornwall County Council and Plymouth City Council.

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