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To find the Introduction and PART 1 and PART 2 CLICK HERE then just scroll down to the first post – and then read your way up through the eras.
The Iron Age (800 BC – AD 43) left more marks than the Bronze Age upon the landscape of the St. Dominick parish area. The most notable of these being at Berry Farm. See section of map below:
The change of name from ‘Bury Farm’ (with unrelated connotations as to its meaning) to ‘Berry’ could be relatively recent – though it was written as Berry on the Tithe map (1841) it was still written as ‘Bury’ on the 1892 – 1914 OS map.
Use the Reference (1) at the end of this post, to link into a side-by-side view showing the 1892 – 1914 Ordnance Survey map
A ‘Bury’ is the name given to a ditch and bank ‘fortification’ created during the Iron Age – and are sometime referred to as ‘rounds’ or ‘camps’ when of this smaller nature.
The listing for the ‘Round at Berry Farm’ (Reference: (2), St. Dominick from Historic England reads:
“The monument includes a round, situated on the east-facing summit of a spur, overlooking the steep valley of a tributary to the River Tamar. The round survives as a roughly-circular enclosure defined by a rampart and largely buried outer ditch with a similarly defined annexe to the north west. The main enclosure measures approximately 65m in diameter internally. The rampart survives differentially, but reaches a width of up to 10m and an external height of 0.8m up to 2m to the north and west. To the south it has been incorporated into an existing field boundary. The annexe rampart has been partially fossilised within existing field banks, although to the north the rampart stands to a height of 1.7m above the accompanying ditch which is some 7m wide and 0.3m deep. Elsewhere it has been cut by farm buildings or is preserved as buried features” (1) (noted as a legacy record – first listed 1957)
The difference between the designation of a ‘Round’ and a ‘Hillfort’ is one of magnitude firstly. Locally we can easily see the difference between Cadsonbury just outside Callington (a Hillfort, on the top of a steep-sided hill, defended by a deep ditch (still 1.3m) and a high bank (still 2m internally) and the ‘Round at Berry Farm’ which is on the slope of a hill, at a point that makes a promontory over the stream valley, with steep sides only on the stream side. It too has a ditch and bank but was probably never as substantial as that of Cadsonbury, and encloses a much smaller area though with annexe attached (a squarish enclosure) which, it is thought, animals could be herded into if under attack. There is also a ‘captured-spring’ well house (much degraded) beside the lane that passes the Round at Berry, on the higher side, and only about a 100m away from it.
There wasn’t much room for a large collection of houses within the space of a Round like at Berry, and it is possible that it was mainly the homestead of the local leader, a sort of clan chief, and his retinue, but also a refuge should the people under their protection be under attack. The people, mainly farmers would therefore live outside this enclosure on their own land, but paying tribute to the chief (who, in that culture, could be male or female) and both seeking refuge with them and fighting with them should their area be under attack from other clans.
See below – an artist’s impression by ©Mary Martin
In 1994, whilst we were researching the History of St. Dominick for the parish map project – the Cornwall Archaeology department happened to send a team to do a ‘walking survey’ of St. Dominick, and we were fortunate that they reported before we completed and sent us a copy. From this we were able to put in some of the other details they believed should be there – though now almost lost through agricultural process. This suggested that there was another iron-age bury at one time, across the stream from the Round at Berry. This would have been on the promontory, with a steep drop to the stream-side, below Pensingers Lane. The field shapes in that area, even now, show as curved and it isn’t too hard to imagine an enclosure here.
More recently LiDAR {Light Detection and Ranging} surveys have shown this to be the case – with the outline of this second bury showing on the village side of the valley. See the LiDAR finder picture below.
Harder to imagine is the iron age enclosure the Archaeological walking team suggested they saw in topographical evidence for down below Trehill farm, overlooking the same stream, but when still very small so with not such steep sides. The area suggested does show as having its own spring source, however, a good sign for a settlement of sorts.
A couple of items*, dug up from over a foot down when post-holes were being made for a fruit-cage just above Radland Farm, may also come from this era. Made of slate and with, what appears to be, baked clay either side, they look like loom weights and show wear from where warp thread would have been attached. The warp thread would be hanging from a frame and weighted with something like these and the weft woven into it. *[neither age not use has been confirmed at this point]
References:
(2)Listing for Round at Berry farm, St. Dominick
(1) Side by side map 1892 – 1914 and satellite view
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Questions or Comments on this post welcome!! Xx Ann
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Delighted that the novel – Dominica – a novel inspired by Saint Dominica of Cornwall was getting released to the world in the very church that was named after her – and where the original inspiration hit me.
So, here for everybody – is the (pruned) transcript of my talk about the WHY and HOW I went about writing Dominica in the first place …
My WHY for writing this novel goes back to about 2010. And I am going to describe it to you – as it was, a bit extraordinary, as an experience.
It was a late Saturday afternoon and I had just finished doing the sacristan duty, which entailed setting up the altar and the bread and wine ready for the Holy Communion service the next morning in this church – the church of St. Dominica – the Parish church of St. Dominick. As usual I completed my time in the church with a little reflection and prayer at the chancel step.
The sun was coming in through the window to one side of the tower behind me, shining through the leaves that flickered in the breeze, and painting the interior of the church with moving patterns of coloured light from the stained glass window it shone through – see below.
and lighting up the pillars and parts of the floor around me. And it is in this, I hesitate to say magical, light-effect that I was reflecting and praying. The type of prayer that has no words, that is just resting in God and waiting to know what you need to pray for. ….. and then, into this reverie came the thought, loud and clear: ‘What did she do? and I knew it referred to Dominica.
Now, I already knew the time-line – so the question instantly became ‘what did Dominica do for the people that they remembered her for over 550 years? So much so that when they built their new stone church, in the middle of the 1200s, they named it after her? St. Dominica – a saint known only to them in this little piece of Cornwall beside the Tamar,’
And then this thought: ‘You could write her story’ came in.
My immediate reaction was – Oh no! I do not write historical novels! For one thing, they are way too hard, for two, I have no idea what she could have done and for three, I was in the middle of writing a very contemporary novel, at that time – The Angel Bug – let’s just say it was a book involving dna / genome mapping and the Eden Project – to see how far away it was from this historical idea.
After about nine years of trying to ignore this idea of writing Dominica’s story, while finishing The Angel Bug, writing A Respectable Life and a non-fiction plus editing two other books (and going through my parents’ passing and breast cancer) – I felt she was still nagging me to write it. So I finally gave in and bumped it up my ‘book ideas list’ from number nine to number six.
And so we come to the HOW I went about it. I began by researching whenever I could. Firstly the legends – there are a few versions, but only one involves both Dominica and our area.
We, in this place, have the Legend“Indract and Dominica, son and daughter of an Irish King, came up the Tamar in a coracle to this place and made a religious settlement here.”
And there are other relevant interlinking legends too – one from Tamerton (Foliot) One from Glastonbury and two very local ones, only known in this parish. All of which I tried to weave into the tale.
The legends are in the section Author Notes at the end of the book. However I need to issue a ‘spoiler alert!’ if you do not already know of the legend involving Saint Indract and Glastonbury – I suggest you DO NOT read the legends until after you have read this story.
We have some facts too – but from a later date – We know that this church, though it was smaller than this at the time, was dedicated to Dominica in October 1259 when Bishop Walter de Bronescome did a tour of Cornwall dedicating churches
– and we know Dominica’s original saint’s day date was the 30th of August, from documentation requesting the change of date in 1445. Stating that it was then on ‘the day after the decollation of St. John the Baptist’ decollation is the beheading (which is the 29th of August) and asking for it to be moved to the day after St. Indract’s as it was ‘inconveniently in the middle of harvest’. Where it remains to this day as the 9th of May.
Then I began researching the times and what I could find out about life in Cornwall, in particular, at the time the legend puts her here – from AD 689. AD 689!
This was hard! This is deep in the Early Middle Ages, the time that used to be called ‘the Dark Ages’ mainly because of how little was known of those times.
There are few proper relevant records, not even a lot of helpful archaeology and it was a time of flux – especially on the borderlands of Saxon Wessex and Dumnonia, as the Celtic kingdom covering what is now Devon and Cornwall was then known.
Earlier, in the reign of King Centwine of Wessex, AD 676 – 685, the Saxons had invaded Dumnonia and then ruled the area right down to and including what we know as Exeter – but had then lost much of that area again during a time of instability in Wessex. So by the time this story arrives in Britannia, the old British kingdom of Dumnonia stretched roughly from Land’s End to a line lying roughly along the border of today’s counties of Somerset and Dorset with Devon.
The Saxon Kingdom of Wessex had, from AD 688, King Ina (also written as Ine and Ini) at its head. (but as it would be pronounced InA – I have used this version.
King Ina comes into the legends – so I researched him and his influence where it concerned Glastonbury and Cornwall.
When looking at my main characters’ origins, I also researched what being an Irish King of that era actually meant, again because the legend says Indract and Dominica were the son and daughter of an Irish King.
Then I delved into what is known about early medieval monasteries, both Irish and British, as our protagonists would come from the former type, and set up similar in Dumnonia.
The first thing I found out, very quickly, was that I had to forget everything that I thought I knew about medieval monasteries – for everything I knew was really about an entity and life-style that only came into being a few hundred years later than the date this book is set at.
I have always had a fascination for history, vernacular history in particular, yet I found I actually knew nothing actually relevant to this time. The monasteries we hear most about, in school for instance, are those of the High to Late Medieval period, with the latter eventually dissolved under Henry VIII, and as such would have been virtually unrecognisable to the people of Dominica’s time – and, most certainly in Cornwall, where things were different again to more eastern areas of Britain.
I spent a couple of years researching the history of the time, from a vast array of resources including published books, serious internet-based history platforms and up-to-date theses for PhD and Masters qualifications.
I also delved into scientific analysis of the ingredients of the herbal mixtures, poultices and potions probably used, and their actual effects on bacteria, viruses and well-being – combining this with the nature of diseases and ailments verified to that specific era and their usual outcomes.
I was even able to look into the weather! How amazing is it to be able to find out notable weather events and trends that were relevant to the dates and areas that Dominica’s story is set in?
Eventually I began to form an idea of what she could, possibly, have done … and sketched these out to make a proper storyline. In doing this, I sometimes had to pick and choose between competing narratives on the same scraps of information. And, as this is a novel, I chose the path that made it a better story.
After the talk – and a reading from the first chapter – we then cut the cake (see below – with a real book alongside) and all partook of nibbles, cake and fizz to celebrate the launch in the proper way!
Thank You to everyone who came along – and to all who bought books – not only Dominica – but some of my others too!! Many thanks to to the family team, especially the grandsons who served said drinks and cake and acted as cashier for me – wonderful boys!
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{I had been building my followers since 2011 – and had around 640 when an unfortunate technical issue meant that I lost ALL of these followers contacts – and need to start again – do join to keep in touch}
ps If you are reading this on email and would like to comment just click onto the title and it will take you to the actual blog – so you can comment there.
If it is the first time you have written a comment don’t worry if it doesn’t appear immediately, your first comment has to be verified (to keep the spam-bots out) and I do this personally – so I am sure to see your comment – thanks for reading – Ann