‘Passing Place – No Parking’ said the sign in the layby, but I parked anyway, and followed the track signposted to the Bethadew Well mine.
The main pump house lay about a hundred yards into the woods and, when I got there, I could see that the words ‘Cornish Castle’ had long since ceased to apply to this virtually extinct pile of stones. The roof was entirely collapsed, as were the upper parts of the walls, which were anyway largely obscured by ivy and surrounding brambles. The chimney had somehow managed to stay up though, and there was still an intact doorway that showed evidence of having held metal gates at some point by the remains of hinges either side, but other than that the Bethadew Well mine was little more than a ruin. I looked inside, to see more brambles, and occupying much of the floor, which was mostly earth (perhaps locals had ‘liberated’ building materials like flag stones from the building over the years), a large round indent filled with gravel.
Beside the doors was a sign from the National Trust, giving a little of the mine’s history, warning against stones falling from the unstable walls, and explaining that the indent was the original mine shaft, long since filled in with concrete and gravel for safety. There was also a description of an entrance behind the mine, apparently listed as a national monument (the words ‘There’s a closed-up entrance to a fogou next to the building where we’d, you know, snuggle up,’ then whispered in my ears). I walked around the building and found WPC Woon’s erstwhile love nest, which was a rock-lined entrance. Another National Trust sign, naming the structure ‘Bethadew Fogou, origin unknown’, stood next to it, noting that the precise purpose of these ‘fogous’ (which the sign described as pre-Christian rock-lined shelters), was also unknown. This entrance, the sign said, also led to the remains of a shallow open cast mine (once again, origin unknown), predating the main Bethadew working by many centuries. I peered inside, to find the way blocked by an iron grille that had been permanently fixed into the rock, beyond which there was a short tunnel leading to a dead end.
I then saw a signpost to the Percuil River creek-side path next to a track leading away from the fogou, so continued on through the woods. And with the sky now thick with thunder clouds, I began to find the Plantation oppressive and almost threatening. Before today I would have said the place exuded tranquillity, but now, with the stench of the wild garlic that carpeted the woodland floor almost drug like, I imagined the very trees wanted something from me I couldn’t give them.
‘Garlic’s really early.’ I remembered Morwenna saying.
‘Don’t overdo it, Jack,’ I then heard Sarah saying, as I walked on down the track, which wound steeply, loose soil and boulders constantly ready to catch my feet unawares, so that I stepped slowly and carefully. After a time, the going became easier, the terrain levelling out, although I could see from a glint of water ahead that I was still about fifty yards from the creek. Either side of me were what at first appeared to be odd shaped green bushes, but on closer inspection, proved to be overgrown stone walls. These looked to be ruins of what might once have been huts, and further on a moss-covered pavement of weathered granite blocks, that dropped squarely two or three feet at its far edge, formed what must surely have served as a jetty in the distant past. Ahead was a small pond, and beyond that an inlet, no more than a backwater of the main creek, and entirely surrounded by oak trees.
It was here that I’d seen Angel and Jonny disappear in the canoes from the ferry that day with Sarah, I felt sure, and here that the St Mawes Ferry crossing on Pengelly’s medieval monks’ map made its landing.
“You’re near, Angel, I can feel you,” I shouted, the echo of my voice fading as thunder rumbled in the distance, and for a moment thought I glimpsed someone by the water’s edge.
“Hello,” I called, but looking again I realised it was just shadows that I’d seen, from the sky’s reflections on the surface of the creek, which was now beginning to ripple as the wind rose. I shivered, despite the warmth of the afternoon, and started back up the track, to the sound of more thunder, with raindrops beginning to tap on the trees as I passed the mine building. I ran to the car, and just as I sat down and the door slammed shut, the heavens opened, rain drumming mercilessly against the hood.
*
“Runtle, open up,” I shouted, hammering at the postern door.
“Alright, Mr Sangster, come out of the rain a minute and I’ll open the gates, then you can go back to your car.”
I waited in the tiny postern room, watching Runtle at his space-age control panel, throwing the various switches needed to open the gates.
“Runtle, was there ever a village close by here, in the Plantation, near the mine perhaps?”
“No village, Mr Sangster, not that I know of.”
“But there are the foundations of what look like buildings close by the creek. I just saw them.”
“Ah yes, the old caretaker talked about those.”
“And?”
“And what, Mr Sangster?”
“What did he say?”
“Never called it a village.”
“Did he call it anything?”
“A settlement, he said. When the mine was working there were more folk around of course, and those buildings are by the old dried-up quay, where they’d ship the tin ore. Storehouses, lime kiln, oyster keep, small cottages for the men to sleep in. Been there a long time he said, ever so old.”
“Did this place perhaps have a name?”
“Yes, now what was it again, that’s it… Joseph’s Pill he called it.”
“Pill?”
“Old slang in these parts for a creek, I think.”
“Thank you, Runtle.”
I ran back to the car through the rain, hit the start button, and the engine immediately misfired, making a very similar sound to the Stocker’s Land Rover when Mabel had tried to affect a quick getaway the night before.
‘And he checked your points, said you were misfiring a little,’ Pete Stocker had boasted about his brother Ted.
“Bloody Stockers,” I yelled out loud as the engine finally sprang to life, and the car passed through the gates and up the drive.