The following letter has been sent to the Cornish Times, written by Barbara Birchwood-Harper, our LOCS Archivist, following the Time Team broadcast n Channel 4 on Sunday 1st March 2009.

 

 

Time Team at Lamanna & Looe Island

 

I am sure that many people watched the Time Team programme on Sunday, I know that many video recorders were set & I expect that  the team’s findings will be  analysed and discussed extensively, especially in Looe.

 

Those who wish to investigate further, might be interested to know that a good many of the documents used  came from the Old Guildhall  Museum & Looe Old Cornwall Society. We collaborated fully with the investigating team & made all our information available to them. Copies of the documents are available in the Museum as is the ancient Amphora top featured. In addition to which, we have a copper & tin Ingot authenticated as over 2,000 years old & found off the Island, pointing towards the trade with the Mediterranean in early years as mentioned in the programme.

 

The excavations  by C K Croft Andrew in the 1930s were carried out with help from the Looe Old Cornwall Society, he was an early  member & we have many notes & letters from the period together with information added by the late Dr Leggat & his wife, Denise in the 1980s.

 

I was delighted  to see that so much evidence remained at the top of the Island, as a parachute land mine was dropped on the summit in 1940 leaving a crater  30ft wide by 12 ft deep. The tall skeleton found by the team was known about  nearly 200 years ago & is mentioned in Thomas Bond’s History in 1823.

 

Looe Island is an intriguing, spiritual  & special place with something for everyone, different periods interest different audiences & there is a choice of smuggling, the Atkins sisters’ experiences, the Cornwall Wildlife Trust provisions, the Trelawny years & now early Christianity & echoes of  the legend of a possible visit by Our Lord.  The two sites, so long places of Pilgrimage, will hopefully attract new visitors from far & wide.

 

The Museum will be open at Easter but anyone requiring information prior to that can ring 01503 262070.

 

Barbara Birchwood-Harper

Museum Curator & Archivist of the Looe Old Cornwall Society

The holiday season is upon us, Looe will soon be busy with visitors enjoying the various delights of a seaside break, others may well take time to investigate the heritage of the twin towns. Where better to explore than a church, there you can find many pointers to the past ages.

However, there is a place close by, where you can experience the spiritual peace of a church, yet there are practically no traces of buildings. The area is Lammana and, where now there are just green fields and cliffs, there was once a monastic settlement and a place of pilgrimage affiliated to the powerful Abbey of Glastonbury.

The name Lammana incorporates two areas, one is situated at the west end of the area of housing at Hannafore, West Looe, the other lies just off the shore, it is Looe Island, which has had several names over the centuries, one of which, in the 13th century, was St Michael’s. On the mainland site there was a Priory up on the hillside, probably because dedication to St Michael often meant that the site would be an elevated one. The other building there, called the Monk’s House is adjacent to the last house in Marine Drive, adjacent to the gate, here, there is still a small portion of a wall.

On the Island at the summit, there was a small Chapel. The sites are linked to the local legend that Jesus came to the Island with Joseph of Arimathea, his uncle, a tin trader.

Recently, Time Team from Channel 4 undertook an archaeological dig at both sites and we await the programme and their conclusions in due course.

The following images in the slide show were all taken on 20th June 2008 by Peter King, after Time Team had left.

 

 

 

 

The Looe Old Cornwall Society has a long standing link with Lammana. the sites on the mainland were excavated in the 1930s by C.K.Croft Andrew, who was one of the original members of Looe Old Cornwall Society, having been the original Chairman then Recorder for 4 years.

After negotiations with the owners, the Duchy of Cornwall, excavations took place in 1935 and 1936. Funds & time were limited but the findings and history of the establishments have been well documented. The late Dr Peter Leggat & his wife published 2 booklets on Lammana and other authors have published their theories. LOCS hold some papers, plans and reports of the excavation. The rest of Croft Andrew’s papers were deposited in The Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro. The Priory site was surveyed by Cornwall Archaeology Unit in 1988.

It is worth noting that, due to the findings by Croft Andrew and the importance of the site, a proposed sale of the land for further development, fell through and the area was saved.

So, even if the visitor finds the ascent to the Priory site daunting, it is still possible to see the small wall of the Monk’s house or just to sit a while, in the field, feel the peace and imagine the monks and pilgrims going about their lives more than 10 centuries ago, or to gaze out to the Island and go back further in time to a site which has been venerated for even longer. There have been exciting finds on the Island, by Time Team which point to that conclusion.

And the legend? Well, traders from the Mediterrenean apparently did visit these shores and in the museum one can see 2 artefacts, an amphora neck and a tin & copper ingot, dated as about 2,000 years old, found in the waters off the Island. There is a lot more to discover and LOCS intends to be part of the Lammana story for many years to come.