SCENERY FOR NATION

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 May 1933, Page 12

SCENERY FOR NATION

CORNISH BARONET’S GIFT. One of the most fascinating pieces of Cornish coast scenery has been presented to the nation through the National Trust. It consists of the promontory, west of Mount’s Bay, known as Treen Castle, with the mass of granite known as the Logan, or Rocking, stone. The donor is Sir CourtenayVyvyan, of Trelowarren, •Cornwall, in the possession of whose family the property has been for about 800 years. This new gift to the nation consists of about thirty-five acres of rough coast land. Sir Courtenay has made it certain now that the right of access to the public and to the owners of adjoining land will be preserved for all time, and that no buildings shall ever be erected there, other' than the little Board of Trade watch-house which already exists. Treen Castle, a very fine example of the fortified headlands which were known as castles, is a cape of three different groups of rocks, and seems to have been a sanctuary or fortress of the ancient inhabitants of the country. It is isolated by a triple entrenchment of 'earth and stones, forming a line of defence of which the vallum is about 15ft. high. It was common in Cornwall to cut off a headland from the mainland by a sort of scarp or breastwork. Such may be traced in the Trust property known as the Dodman. In the middle group of rocks on the west side of the Treen Castle is the Logan Rock. This is the famous stone which, though it weighs sixty-six tons, can be moved and rocked- by a child. But once the mighty, fell, and the story of that fall will never he forgotten. William Borlase, the mid-eighteenth century chronicler of Cornwall, wrote that the stone was “so evenly poised that any hand may move it to and fro, but .... it is morally impossible that any leaver, or indeed any force (however applied in a mechanical way) can remove it from its present situation.”

Years after, in 1824, this challenge was accepted. A certain Lt. Goldsmith, 11. N., a nephew of Oliver Goldsmith, when commanding a. revenue 'cutter in these waters, managed, with | the help of a boat’s crew,' to roll the stone off its base. It cost him I £2OOO to have it replaced, with the aid lot' elaborate machinery made expressly for the purpose. i There are other rocking stones in J Cornwall and in Wales, but none pos•sessing the interest of dimensions of the Logan. Pliny tells of one at Harpasa, a town of Asia, and Ptolemy of 'another which may be moved “with the stalk of an asphodel.” I