Tamar Valley Voyage The Great British Story: Regional Histories

The Tamar River, the border between Devon and Cornwall. It runs through

some of the country's most stunning This densely wooded stretch is

known as the Tamar Valley. It's a sleepy backwater now, but hidden

within this dense undergrowth is evidence of what drew people to

this valley for more than 2,000 years. For the next half hour, I'll

be looking for that evidence and what it says about the story of the

Tamar Valley. One recent find has amazed archaeologists. It was a

joyous occasion when we realised what we had found. It takes in

Cavaliers and Roundheads fighting to gain control of Cornish tin. And

the story is still being written, with this major new discovery in a

medieval mansion. Well, would you look at that! Join me on my journey

as I discover why this valley is a vital, living part of the Great

Plymouth, a bustling modern city, home to more than a quarter of a

million people. Set at the mouth of the River Tamar, its shores still

dominated by Devonport's Naval Travel 15 miles upriver and it's

very different. We could almost be travelling through virgin forest in

some faraway land. But this, believe it or not, is a post

industrial landscape. In its long history the Tamar Valley has been a

dividing line, a contested border between England and the rebellious

Cornish. It's also been a place of titanic struggle between man and

his environment, for the enormous wealth that lay deep underground.

And that's where our story starts. Today only ruins remain. It's hard

to imagine exactly what it must have been like to work down one of

these mines. Well, let me tell you. It was dark, it was damp and it was

This is the George and Charlotte Copper Mine, worked from the early

1700s up until 1869. This tunnel predates mechanisation. Miners

would drill a hole into the rock. They would used sledgehammers. Phil

the hole with gunpowder. What a rudimentary fuse into it. Light the

Gunpowder in confined spaces sound lethal. Were there many fatalities?

We do not really know. There was no centralised formal record keeping.

While at there were fatalities, we do not have a full picture.

George and Charlotte was just one of around 100 mines in this area

where men risked their lives during the 1700s and 1800s. But these

hillsides had been mined for centuries before that. The river

enters the Tamar Valley, just south of Launceston. It then meanders

more than 20 miles, past Tavistock, Gunnislake and Calstock, on its way

down to the Bere Peninsula, where the valley opens out into the Tamar

estuary. And the Bere Peninsula is where I'm headed, to meet one of a

team of archaeologists who are uncovering remarkable evidence that

shows mining was already a major undertaking in the Tamar Valley 500

years before the Industrial What have you got to show me?

Hopefully we will see some medieval minds. -- miners. Dr Chris Smart is

taking me to an area of woodland close to the river that's lain

undisturbed for centuries. We are looking further pits in the ground.

The woods in this area are pockmarked with shallow pits. It's

the only visible clue to the silver mines that dominated the Bere

peninsula in the Middle Ages. would have expected simple, shallow

pits. There was a requirement to go deeper. Over time, drainage became

a real issue. To begin with, manually -- water was manually

hauled up. The cost of the Labour became such that... How do we know

it is a mine? We know because of the crown accounts. This is a

record of the output of the silver from the mine. The first five years

of operation. �1,335, 14 shillings and 10p for the silver. We also

know how much people were paid. One man was a smelter and he was paid

8p for four day's work. Eventually medieval engineers built a 10-mile

leat to carry water to power drainage pumps. This is the kind of

terrain the leat's engineers had to deal with. There are few obvious

remains, except where they had to drive it through solid rock. This

is actually a tunnel that has been cut through this rock. How long is

this? 10 metres long before there is a break. Then there is another

10 metre section. It seems quite an effort to cut back through slate.

How did they do what? It may seem hard, but with van Ryan Pickett is

quite easy. That match with an iron Chris and I are now heading a few

miles upriver to Calstock, because records say there was a silver

smelter here, somewhere near the church at the top of the village.

Four years ago Chris came here looking for that smelter. We did

not find it. We thought it would be near the church. There is no sign

of it. What we found was an enormous Roman fort. Chris' team

had stumbled upon evidence of the biggest Roman fort ever found in

Cornwall. They were able to build up a detailed picture of what it

must have looked like. There for it measured about 180 metres north to

south. And the same dimension east to west. It would probably have

held 800 to 1000 men. It was a joyous occasion when we found out

what it was. I cannot describe it really. It was the first sign of a

substantial Roman presence in the Tamar Valley. But why were they

here? It's possible to get some idea from the top of the church

that sits slap bang in the middle of the site. Not only do we have a

great advantage point, it is a focal point macro of communication.

-- point. The reason we really think the Romans were here it is

the mineral content. Lead and silver deposits. We know minerals

are coming out of the south-west in pre- history. This would not be a

new industry. The Romans didn't stick around for long, probably

less than a century. They left the Valley much as they'd found it -

thoroughly British, but not yet English, with this river at the

heart of an ancient kingdom. Here on the tamer roar we would have

been in the middle of the kingdom. -- here on the Tamar. All speaking

a single language through the area, so having a cultural unity as well

as being a single kingdom. Saxons started to settle this

Valley in the 600s after conquering Dumnonians east of the river. But

the Tamar presented a formidable barrier, and it was another two

centuries before they were to advance into what remained of the

ancient kingdom to the west, and take control. Believe it or this is

a ford - Lamerhooe Ford. You can see the track where tractors and

horses still make it across today. This could be the very spot where

the Saxons crossed over from Devon en route to their final decisive

battle with the Britons, because where they fought is only two miles

across the river from here. Rather Hingston Down. To the ancient

Britons this was a sacred place. Their burial mounds lie dotted

across this site. It rises steeply to more than 1,000 feet above sea

level and offers commanding views in every direction. The British

must have had a clear view of their Saxon enemy as they made their way

up here from the river below. And time perhaps to contemplate an

inevitable outcome. The AS Chronicle records that Egbert, king

of the West Saxons, defeated the Cornish and their Viking allies at

the Great Battle of Hingston Down in 838. This is the place where

Cornwall ceased to exist as an independent kingdom. Within a

century England had become one nation under King Athelstan, and

the Tamar fixed as a border between the shires of Devon and Cornwall.

But to this day, the Cornish have remained in some way apart from the

rest of England, with the Tamar more than just a county boundary.

Look at the places named on this sign post on the Devon side -

Luckett, Callington, Sydenham, Tavistock - all good English names,

those ton, ham and stock endings all being Saxon words for a

settlement. But on the opposite bank it's a different story. We're

less than two miles from the Tamar on the Cornish side and look at the

contrast. Launceston has that Saxon ending found so commonly in England,

but what about the other three? They don't sound English at all.

They are not. In this area we find a distinctive mixture of Cornish

and English place names. The Saxon conquest obliterated ancient place

names from every part of southern England except Cornwall. Professor

Oliver Padel has studied the distribution of names beginning

with Tre. In Devon and Cornwall we see a terrific contrast.

Immediately we notice there are 3 in Devon compared with about 1200

in Cornwall. And in Cornwall they are covered all over the County

except in the more land areas, and they go right up to the River Teme

her. It was the linguistic boundaries. That match the River

Teme are. Pockets of English place names on the Cornish side of the

river, like Calstock, suggest the Saxons did settle Cornwall

immediately next to the river. But Professor Padel says this was an

exception. Anglo-Saxon peasant farmers moved in, bringing their

language and place names with them. They moved into those bits of

Cornwall. In the rest of Cornwall, the population has remained the

same and get its language. -- kept. This may help account for

Cornwall's enduring sense of difference. The Cornish language

survived in the far west until the 18th Century, but disappeared from

the valley long before that. By the end of the Middle Ages, the valley

had become thoroughly Anglicised. Land, with all its great mineral

wealth on one side owned by the Duke of Cornwall,on the other, by

Tavistock Abbey. But that was before the Tudors came to the

throne in the late 15th Century. Their reign brought contrasting

fortunes for the two sides of the valley. And the family that lived

here was in the thick of it. In 1483, local landowner Richard

Edgecumbe spoke out against the Yorkist, Richard III, during the

Wars of the Roses. The king's men put him under house arrest. But he

was having none of it. As the story goes, which has doubtless been

embellished, he slit the throat of a couple of centuries and made

haste towards the river with the King's men in hot pursuit. He hit

in the undergrowth by the river. He had to think quickly because his

life was in danger. He took off his cap, he put a stone in it, and he

put it in the river. The King's men heard the splash and saw the cap

floating off and decided he must have turned. -- drowned. Edgecumbe

escaped and fought alongside Henry Tudor at Bosworth in 1485. This

allegiance brought massive wealth to the Edgcumbes and they rebuilt

Cotehele, one of the finest Tudor houses in the country. Even in this

small river valley we can see how powerful national forces massively

shaped the fortunes of its inhabitants. Across the river lay

Tavistock Abbey. Its fate, at the hands of the Tudors, couldn't have

been more different. This is the ancient port of Morwellham, one of

England's busiest inland ports right up until the 19th Century.

For centuries before the industrial era it had served Tavistock and the

surrounding area. In the Middle ages this place and the land for

miles around, was in the hands of Tavistock Abbey. Next to the port,

the Abbot's country house still stands, wonderfully preserved. I've

come to view a recent discovery that throws further light on the

Tudors' impact upon the Tamar Valley. It's pretty dark in here so

I'm going to pull open this sliding door. Wow! Look at that. In the

process of restoring one wing of this medieval building, the owners

removed a layer of lime wash and exposed an extraordinary set of

designs. 500 year-old paintings emulating strips of tapestry. These

designs include the Tudor Rose. The houses of York and Lancaster, put

together. Here are the pomegranates of Catherine of Aragon. This

painting obviously symbolises the union of the two houses, which

occurred when Henry VIII married Catherine of Aragon. The owners

believe this painting suggests Catherine of Aragon stayed here,

shortly after landing in Plymouth, on her way to the London Court.

Equally, it could have been painted as a proof of loyalty to the Tudor

crown. But a fat lot of good that did the Abbey if it was. Henry VIII

broke with the church of Rome and dissolved the monasteries. In 1539,

he gifted the whole of Tavistock Abbey's estate to his political

ally, Sir John Russell, the first Earl of Bedford. Tudor patronage of

Cotehele and Tavistock ensured the Valley's loyalty to the crown for

the next century. But that loyalty was to be tested by a conflict that

tore apart the whole nation. For the first time since the Saxons,

the Tamar became a border between warring factions, with control of

July 1644. The English Civil War is raging in the West. A small Cornish

force loyal to the king guards Horsebridge. The Cornish are making

a great deal of money by sending tin abroad. Po cid mack using that

money for weapons. -- they are. The Cornish still saw themselves as a

separate people. Intent on crossing into Cornwall and seizing control

of the tin trade, a Parliamentarian army approaches from Tavistock.

They see Cornwall as the centre of The Cornish Royalists put up some

resistance but are heavily The Parliamentarians, under the

Earl of Essex, force their way into Cornwall and the Royalists take a

More than 100 were left dead or dying after the skirmish at

Horsebridge, most of them Cornish supporters of the King. But the

Cornish had their revenge a month later. Let's have a pint. The Earl

of Essex may have won this little battle, but history says he was

foolhardy to move into Cornwall. soon as he went across that bridge

he was in hostile territory. The Cornish were not interested in

Parliament. They were staunch supporters of the King. They were

having none of it. They gave him a rough time. They gave his army a

rough time. They had trouble finding food. This is an army of

10,000 men. The Parliamentarians went on to suffer a humiliating

defeat in Lostwithiel, some of it possibly dished out by women - not

that their contribution to the cause was always welcome. There was

an edict put out by the King that women dressed as men would be put

to death if there were found fighting. Many women did fight.

Lots of big houses were defended by the female staff. We know there

were female soldiers dressed as men. In 1645, Cornish Royalists are back

guarding the Tamar. This time Cromwell's New Model Army is fast

approaching. In a last ditch attempt to stave off defeat,

Cornish commander Sir Richard Grenville puts an audacious

proposal to the Duke of Cornwall. Who is with me? He proposed that

Cornish royalist soldiers should guard the bridges and set up a sort

of semi independent Cornish state, what the Prince of Wales as its

head, which would stand as a neuter between the parliamentarians on the

one hand and the King on the other. It was the last time really in the

historic period at least at the idea of some sort of independent

form was mooted. Grenville's proposal was rejected out of hand,

and Civil War in the West came to an end with Royalist capitulation

at Torrington in Devon, four months later. Any hopes for independence

the Cornish entertained were washed away by the tide of loyalism

following the Restoration of The Tamar became less border, more

county boundary. And it was what Devon and Cornwall had in common

that determined the valley's future - the mineral deposits that ran

under the river. The Industrial Revolution saw the west Cornish

return - this time in peace, lured by a massive copper strike in

Gunnislake. They were not out of work. They were more induced by the

spectacular Ridgers. -- riches. The miners were exceptionally rich. The

mine itself and the village grew hand in hand. The boom spread to

both sides of the river - like here at Devon Great Consols, on land the

Dukes of Bedford had appropriated from Tavistock Abbey. When this

mine was discovered, it was the greatest Cupper strike in World

Mining history. -- copper strike. A �1 share that was being hawked

around Tavistock, suddenly the value leapt. This mine provided

employment for something like 12 on that people directly. Indirectly it

supported maybe 5000-7000 in the immediate neighbourhood. Devon

Great Consols produced fantastic riches for Francis Russell, the 7th

Duke of Bedford. He rebuilt Tavistock in what's come to be

known as the Bedford style, and provided hundreds of houses for his

Cornish miners. These houses, still in demand today, were not simply a

result of the Duke's generosity. built perhaps up to 300 of these

model cottages, but I only after considerable public pressure.

Basically Tavistock was his town and the town was up in arms about

this mining boom causing such insanitary conditions. Living

conditions for most miners stood in stark contrast to the opulent

surroundings enjoyed by the Bedfords at their summer retreat

overlooking the river at Endsleigh. Francis Russell's glamorous parents

built this house in 1810. They were real a socialite. They were the

David and Victoria of their time. The parties that were here or of

that calibre. Had there been Hello magazine, they would have been in

it. The great and the good of the English establishment came here to

play, in what is now an upmarket country hotel. All these Shiels

represent either very close friends to us mack families. They are a lot

of the high-society at the time who would have Fishwick the Duke. We

have Spencer, we have very recognisable names. They would have

eaten here. This has always been the dining room. It was a world

away from the dank dangerous places where miners toiled underground,

just five miles downstream. The copper boom came to an abrupt halt

when prices crashed in 1866, but the Bedfords struck it lucky all

over again thanks the demand for pesticide from American cotton

plantations. But the arsenic had to run out sometime and by the close

of the 19C mining had all but ceased in the Tamar Valley. What

they left on the walls of the cabins that they excavated, for a

couple of metres either side was arsenic ore. That was there for the

taking. No cost. It became instantly the world's biggest

The contaminated waste from arsenic production has left a huge scar on

the landscape. A deadly reminder of the Valley's industrial heritage.

Elsewhere though the evidence is slowly disappearing. Much like the

miners who abandoned this area in search of work in distant lands.

They left behind what must be one of the country's most attractive

We're now approaching Calstock. Tamar Valley still has armies of

invaders. Now they are friendly - pleasure boats bring visitors away

from the hustle and bustle of Plymouth, to soak up the valley's

For 400 years this tiny Bridge at Gunnislake in the heart of the

valley was the southernmost crossing point on the Tamar. Now

you can cross the river on a suspension bridge that soars above

the mouth of the estuary, completely bypassing the Tamar

Valley 10 or so miles upstream. I wonder how many of the millions who

visit Cornwall every year even know the valley exists? Cornish

nationalists like to think of the Tamar as a national border. Most

tourists see it as nothing more than a beautiful gateway to another

holiday by the sea. But it's so much more than that. Written on the

landscape around this winding, historic river is evidence of

forces that shaped the lives of the Cornish and the English alike.