Trelowarren

The Vyvyan family is one of two Cornish families that claim to have escaped from Lyonesse when the seas rose to engulf it, and having made landfall they settled in St Buryan where, for several centuries, they stirred up considerable lawless trouble.

You can take the Pirate out of Penwith – but you cant take Penwith out of the Pirate.

In 1427, having looked about themselves, the Vyvyans of Treviddren in St Buryan (Penwith) made a good match for their son who married the heiress Honor Ferrers of Trelowarren on the Helford River.

The house, listed in the Domesday Book, was enlarged in the 17th Century and in the 18th Century, after another good marriage, the interiors were given a fashionable makeover by Thomas Edwards, the chapel acquired a strawberry hill gothic interior, and the garden was re-designed by Dionysus Williams. Most importantly, the house was given an excellent drainage system that separated the clean water from the foul, which must have transformed their health.

From the medieval period onwards the focus of the various exterior re-designs has been to make the house and by extension the family seem as ancient and respectable as possible – possibly to counteract a distinct lack of respectability in their behaviour.

Romantic but Wrong!
For idealistic, or perhaps pecuniary, reasons the Vyvyans have a long history of standing by the King.

In 1328 Richard Vyvyan and his sons attacked and killed the usurping priest at St Buryan (placed by the Bishop of Exeter not the King) causing ‘great bloodshed and violence’ and they were excommunicated at St Michael’s Mount, with bell, book and candle by the Bishop, ‘wearing his stole’ no less, for their trouble. The Bishop won the fight over the rights at St Buryan and the King lost – and presumably so too did Richard Vyvyan although he doesn’t seem to have been overly careworn by the experience.

In 1636 Richard Vyvyan presented a masque for the King in Oxford and was knighted for his trouble and (considerable) expense. During the civil war he was a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber and Master of the Mint at Truro and at Exeter. Unfortunately the King lost the war and his head to the roundheads, who were of course Revolting but Right.

In 1752 Sir Vyell had the house re-modelled and the garden re-designed to show to the new(ish) Hanoverian Kings that the Vyvyans had finally turned their backs on the Stuarts. I’m sure it had been giving the Stuarts sleepless nights.

In the 19C Sir Richard Vyvyan, in possession of a handsome fortune from the mines, fell rather heavily for one of the royal nieces and invited Queen Victoria to visit Trelowarren. In order to make a good impression he built a new quay on the Helford at Tremayne; a new boathouse for the royal barge; and several miles of new drive to the house from the river. Unfortunately the weather was inclement and on the day the Queen decided not to come. Much later, by which time the Vyvyans had become stultifyingly respectable, and even had a Bishop in the family, Edward VIII came for a quick visit and used the quay and was, according to Lady Vyvyan, ‘charming’ at tea Unfortunately he had a yacht hanging about offshore and on board was Wallace Simpson and before the tea cups had been dried he’d abdicated.

Trelowarren and the Vyvyans have had their share of vicissitudes, some brought about by their manifest lack of respectability and disinclination to follow rules and others, like the loss of Walter Drummond Vyvyan in 1917, by being brave but unfortunate on the Western Front.

The 20th Century, two world wars, heavy death duties, and the Depression brought The Old Place as C.C. Vyvyan called it, to its knees. It rotted from the outside in and from the inside out and she described it in 1946 as being nothing but rats, ruin and (more) death duties. There were telegraph poles holding up the ceilings and dry rot just about everywhere. Great Aunt Clara lived at one end of the house and her friend Foy Quiller-Couch at the other, and in the middle, with her children the young Lady Vyvyan, Jonet, another excellent marriage.

Do come to visit and see what happened next!