About the HODGE Familes

Home Village in Cornwall

Liskeard is a market town in South East Cornwall that lies in an area for rural and seaside tourism. It is 19 miles from Plymouth (Devon), the nearest city

It has a mainline railway station and lies on the main A38 trunk road. Local sites include the Stuart House, St Martins church and the Town Museum.

The town is close to Bodmin Moor, Polperro, Looe and Plymouth.

 

Location: In the village of Pensilva, 5 miles north east of Liskeard, north of A390 Liskeard - Callington Road.

LISKEARD & the Moors

To the north west of Liskeard lies the windswept uplands of Bodmin Moor, a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The moors, shrouded in mist and mystery, hold abundant clues for those who want to delve into the past - burial chambers and holy wells, giant stones and Bronze Age settlements, decayed mine-workings and disused quarries.

When you visit the moors you are retreading the footsteps of Neolithic man, of Cornish Kings, and of the thousands of miners who once worked the area.

Liskeard

Liskeard is an ideal base from which to explore. Situated at the head of the Looe Valley, it has long been an important market centre, and was one of the four original Stannary towns.

The mining industry played an important part in the town's growth, and in 1828 a canal link enabled ore and stone to be carried down to Looe.

The railway which replaced it has become today's single track branch line along scenic wooded riverbanks, the Looe Valley Line.

Liskeard remains a picturesque and lively market town, full of interesting buildings: a Victorian Guildhall and clock tower; the Stuart House where Charles I stayed in 1644; and the second largest church in Cornwall.

Market days are still held every Monday and Thursday, and the town now has an excellent leisure centre, Lux Park.

West of Liskeard, just off the A38, Dobwalls Family Adventure Park offers a range of attractions.

At St Cleer, on the edge of the moors and surrounded by farmland, another Holy Well can be found.

Housed in a granite baptistery, the well was used to treat the insane, who were repeatedly tossed up and down in the water until sanity returned.

North of St Cleer stands King Doniert's Stone, on which a Latin inscription asks for prayers for the Cornish King, who drowned in 875.

Nearby is the Neolithic burial chamber known as Trethevy Quoit (c3500BC), where five huge stones support a massive capstone.

 

Minions

Once the centre of mining activity, the village of Minions boasts the highest pub in Cornwall. The setting of E V Thompson's historical novel Chase the Wind, a century ago the area would have been teeming with miners and quarrymen seeking granite, copper and lead, but today the nearby Cheesewring Quarry is deserted except for rock climbers.

On the edge of the quarry stands the Cheesewring itself, an extraordinary natural tour formed from precariously balanced rocks, resembling a massive cheese squashed in a press.
Close by Minions village are the three ancient stone circles called The Hurlers.

Two standing stones to the west are The Pipers, and the surrounding hills abound with burial mounds and Bronze Age settlements, particularly below Tregarrick Tor. Beyond the circles, Rillaton Barrow is the site where in 1837 a ribbed cup of beaten gold was found beside a skeleton in a large stone cist.
At Upton Cross you can visit Sterts Arts & Environmental Centre, where plays are performed in the open- air Amphitheatre throughout the summer. In the Visitors' Centre at Siblyback Lake Park you can view geological displays and artefacts from a medieval tin mill, and go sailing and fishing on the lake itself.

Pronounced St Eve, this parish is inland in east Cornwall and must not be confused with the port of St Ives on the north coast.

Named after an obscure saint, believed to have been a Persian bishop. The small village of St Ive is on the A390 between Callington and Liskeard.

The ancient farmhouse of Trebeigh was given to the Knights Templar in 1150, and there is a legend they built an underground passage between the church and the farmhouse in which they stored their treasure.

The village of Pensilva is about two miles north-west and has splendid panoramic views stretching from St Austell to Plymouth and Dartmoor. It was built in the 19th century to serve the tin and copper mining industry.

When the mines closed miners emigrated, chiefly to the USA, Canada, Australia and South Africa.