Exploring the River Fowey by John Neale

Author:John Neale
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amberley Publishing
Published: 2013-08-26T16:00:00+00:00

At isolated Bodmin Road station, now Bodmin Parkway, an attempted mail train robbery took place in 1974. Since that time the incident has become known as ‘Cornwall’s Great Little Train Robbery’.

From Bodmin Parkway the river wends its way and shortly reaches the fifteenth-century Respryn Bridge with its five arches of various sizes and dates, the main pointed arch being 15 feet in span and the other round. The arches spring from outposts some 5 feet above the water. One of the earliest references to a river crossing at Respryn Bridge, set amid its tree-clad valley, comes in the twelfth century when a charter mentions that a chapel stood here. By 1300, Henderson records that fishing rights on the river belonged to the Lords of Restormel Castle. During the Civil War Respryn Bridge was a strategic crossing and the objective of some fierce fighting between the rival forces of the Royalist and Parliamentarian troops. In August 1644 Essex, who had earlier staged an outpost at the bridge, was forced to abandon it, so giving free access to King Charles, who was at Boconnoc, and Sir Richard Grenville at Lanhydrock.

In September 2006, several thousands of pounds worth of damage was done to the Resprynn Bridge when a 40-ton articulated lorry struck the bridge and a 10-metre length of the wall from road level up to the parapet was thrown into the river. The bridge was closed to all vehicular traffic for around a month while repairs were carried out.

The River Fowey flows under Respryn Bridge and caresses Lanhydrock House, which, with its long and colourful history, is in the top ten of Cornish houses. Lanhydrock originally belonged to the Priory of St Petroc in Bodmin. After the Dissolution of Monasteries Lanhydrock was bought by the Glynn family and later it passed to the Lyttleton family. In 1620, Sir Richard Robartes bought Lanhydrock but strangely he never actually lived there. He did, however, start building the house to replace the monastic buildings but died in 1634 and it was left to his son John, who completed the scheme between 1635 and 1642. The house is early seventeenth-century and was originally in quadrangular form with embattled walls, and the gatehouse was built in 1658. In the seventeenth century the deer park stretched over some 250 acres.

Respryn Bridge spans a peaceful stretch of the River Fowey. Here there are two walks, one to Lanhydrock House and another beside the river. Interestingly, close to the bridge there is a designated dog bathing pool.

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