Gwarn-ike, _i. e._ lake, river, or leate, summons, notice, or warning, so called from Gwarnike Castle, a treble intrenchment or fortification lately extant on the woody lands thereof, is the voke lands of the manor and barton of Gwarnike, the old inheritance and dwellinge of the once rich and famous family of the Bevills for many generations; whose ancestor came out of Normandy into England with William the Conqueror, and was posted an officer at Truro under William Earl of Morton and Cornwall (or Robert his father). Of his posterity, tempore Edward III. Sir Richard Bevill held by the tenure of knight service 20_l._ per ann. in lands and rents, and therefore was commanded by that king to attend him, with a horse-trooper furnished cap-a-pee, on his expedition into France, in the 25th year of his reign. (Carew’s Survey of Cornwall.) John Bevill of this place was sheriff of Cornwall 5 Richard II. Finally, the name, blood, and estate of those Bevills terminated in two daughters and heirs of John Bevill, Esq. sheriff of Cornwall 16 Eliz. 1573, married to Grenville of Stowe, and Arundell of Trerice, to whose younger son by Bevill’s heir this barton and manor of Gwarnike was given, but the said Mr. Arundell, commonly called the Black Arundell by reason of his complexion, dying without issue, gave those lands to his kinsman Mr. Prideaux, of Fewburrow in Devon, whose heir sold the same to Mr. Kempe, of Penryn, now in possession thereof. Over the entry door of this house, in a stone or piece of brass, is cut the arms of Bevill, viz. Ermine a bull passant Sable, surmounted with an oak-tree Proper or Vert; near which is this inscription likewise in stone in Saxon-English letters:
Man, aboue all thinge Feare god and the kinge.
[In 1704 it was sold by the Prideaux family to Jamss Kempe, of Penryn, and in 1731 purchased by Edward Prideaux, Esq. of Place House, Padstow, ancestor to the Rev. Charles Prideaux Brune, of the same place, who is the present proprietor. There were formerly two chapels at Gwarnike; one at a small distance from the house, which was demolished before the year 1736, and another attached to it, which, together with “the old hall, curiously timbered with Irish oak,” was then remaining. These old buildings were not long ago pulled down, and a farm-house built on the site with the materials. Talgrogan, in this manor, was some time the seat of a younger branch of the Prideaux family. _Lysons._]