In this parish are two notable camps, castles, or intrenchments of our ancestors the Britons, wherein they fortified themselves against their enemies in former ages, the ruins and downfalls of which are yet to be seen, the one called Castle-an-Dunes,[3] or Denis (See St. Colomb.); the other Tre-crag-an, the ragged rock town, situate upon Tre-crag-an hill or mountain, as I take it.
Towednack lies in the hundred of Penwith, and has to the west Zennor, to the north the sea, to the east St. Ive’s and Lelant, to the south Ludgvan.
I take the name of the parish to signify no other than St. Wednock or Wynnock; for Ta and Da are synonymous terms for good. [It is perhaps only Ti Widnak (C.) the Whitish House. W.] It is a daughter church or chapel of ease to Lelant, and goes in the same presentation.
There can scarcely be a doubt of this parish, Landewednack, and some chapels, being dedicated to one of the Missionaries from Ireland.
Towednack, like most of the districts situated on granite, exhibits a strange and almost unaccountable mixture of cultivated and of unreclaimed soils. On one side of a fence may be seen land producing abundance of grass and excellent for daisies, or bearing ample crops of barley, and of clover hay and on the other side, an inclosed waste, named throughout Cornwall a croft, producing nothing better than the species or variety of furze, Ulex Nanus, and some of the most coarse grasses.
This parish has been productive of much tin near the surface; but a wide stripe of granite nearly resembling that of St. Stephen’s in Brannel, extends from the parish of Zennor through Towednack, and thence into Ludgvan, including Castle-an-Dinas, which Mr. Hals by mistake places in this parish. Its course is distinctly marked by the absence of all bolder rocks from the surface, and in some places it has been wrought for china clay, found quite equal in quality to that near St. Austell, but occurring in layers of but little breadth, and therefore expensive to pursue. This soft granite, called by the miners whetstone, permits the lodes to continue their courses through it from the hard and crystallized granite, but the tin in a great measure disappears at a trifling depth.