Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
The parish of Boconnoc near Lostwithiel is dominated by a private estate, shown on an
unusually attractive watercolour tithe map, part of which we see here. This level of detail
was not a requirement of the Tithe Survey, since the estate would be valued in total for the
purpose of calculating how much tithe it was due to pay. It seems likely that the map was
commissioned by the estate's owner and made by their steward, John Bowen, who also made
tithe maps for three neighbouring parishes.
Bowen had given decades of service and would have been very familiar with all the details
of the estate. His map shows at left the mansion in red (denoting an inhabited building), with
next to it the church in black (uninhabited). There are pleasure gardens, avenues of trees,
orchards, a deer park, woods, and the River Lerryn. At some distance is a pheasantry (top
left) where pheasants were reared, and to its right an obelisk 123 feet high, erected in 1771.
Lands surrounding the estate are shown in less detail. There are named farms, fields, villages,
roads and footpaths, and the boundaries of parishes and manors.
As so often with maps in the archives, this map is a key to another record. The plot num-
bers on the map link to a text document called an apportionment in which details of property
owners and occupiers were recorded. In this case, Lady Anne Grenville of Boconnoc House
was the main landowner in the parish, and all her tenants are listed, including John Bowen.
For his house, garden, meadows and pastures he paid a pound and ten shillings in tithe per
annum.
The Tithe Survey was the most detailed study of land use and ownership since Domesday
Book over seven centuries earlier, and these records reveal a wealth of information about
early Victorian place and society. Many of the maps capture the landscape just before the
changes wrought by the railways, industrialisation and urbanisation. Others, such as this one,
present a scene little altered from the countryside today.
