Page:The Cornwall coast.djvu/327

THE PADSTOW DISTRICT 321 eye is soothed by these wastes of blown sand stretching inland from the sea to where the little hamlet called Rock rises from the shore." Sundries are imported at the docks, and there is some shipment of corn ; but the ship-building, once notable, has greatly declined, and the town now does little but repairing. It is satisfactory to find that the sands of the Doom Bar have a certain value, as they contain much carbonate of lime, and they are carried inland for agricultural pur- poses. The church, which stands well above the town, has a good Early English tower, and a beautiful, finely carved catacleuse font ; in the south porch the parish stocks are preserved. In the chancel, over the piscina, is an effigy some- times mistaken for that of St. Anthony, but almost certainly the figure is St. Petrock himself, with his usual symbols, the staff and wolf, at his feet. There are modern monochrome pictures from drawings by Hofmann in front of the organ. It is natural to find monuments of the Prideaux family both within the church and without ; in the churchyard also are two granite crosses, one much mutilated. Prideaux Place, generally named Place, stands a little higher than the church, in a glorious situa- tion ; it is a finely designed Elizabethan mansion — Elizabethan in style if not exactly in date — erected by Sir Nicholas Prideaux about the year 1600. Its old staircase was brought thither when Stowe House, once the seat of the Grenvilles, was broken up. The Prideaux are a Cornish family of ancient note, whose names we often meet with in the Duchy's annals ; but the most widely known was Humphrey Prideaux, born here in 1648, who at one time was Rector of St. Clement's, Oxford, and