Descriptive Gazetteer Entry for LOOE (EAST)

LOOE (EAST), a small sea-port town and a chapelry in St. Martin's parish, Cornwall. The town stand's on the E side of the mouth of the river Looe, 9 miles SW by W of St. Germans r. station, and 8 S by E of Liskeard; was made a market-town so early as the time of Henry II.; sent 20 ships, with 315 seamen, to the siege of Calais, in the time of Edward III.; was then the only sea-port of any consequence in Cornwall, except Fowey; claims to be a borough by proscription; received a charter from Elizabeth; returned two members to parliament from Elizabeth's time till disfranchised by the act of 1832; is still nominally governed by a mayor, a recorder, and 12 burgesses or aldermen; carried on, for some time, a considerable trade with France, Spain, and the Mediterranean; was long noted also for a prosperous pilchard fishery; shows high indications of a reviving trade, after long and great decay; conducts a coasting business, in the import of coal, culm, and limestone, and in the export of fish, bark, granite, and tin, copper, and lead ores; has an excellent harbour and quay, defended by a small battery and breast-work; enjoys railway communication up to Liskeard, and to the great Cheesewring granite quarries; has a post office‡ under Liskeard, two good inns, a weekly market on Wednesday, and fairs on 13 Feb., 10 July, 4 Sept., and 10 Oct.; is a seat of borough courts on every third Monday from Michaelmas day, and of two courts-leet annually; was long noted for a picturesque fifteen-arched bridge built in 1400, and 423 feet long, now replaced by a less interesting but more commodious structure; contains a church of the 14th century, greatly altered in the 16th century, and mainly rebuilt in 1806, yet possessing a few ancient features and an old low castellated tower; contains also two dissenting chapels; partakes in the benefits of an endowed school in West Looe; occupies a romantic site, in a deep recess, overhung by garden-clad acclivities; was, before the formation of a new road to it along the water-side, approached from the E by a path so steep that strangers, in descending, felt as if they would be precipitated on the roofs of the houses; and presents a strange jumble of curious houses massed irregularly in short narrow streets or alleys. "Such houses ! ''exclaims an intelligent visitor to it in 1859. "Never, certainly, except in some mediæval town abroad, have we encountered such startling illustrations of the ideas of the old house-builders. Gables, quaint and ragged as Mr. Ruskin could wish, or Turner could have painted; staircases of wood and of masonry outside of the houses, instead of inside; quaint and picturesque porches; hanging gardens on the sides of the hills; and a general arrangement of the several tenements, or rather want of arrangement, singularly fitted for the pencil, but as directly opposed to all our modern notions to order, and as inconvenient for all purposes of drainage, as possibly could be. "The view of the town and its environs from the sea-side is very striking; and several views in the vicinity, particularly one in the inlet of Trelawney mill, opening into the Looe river immediately above the bridge, is exquisitely beautifu1.—The chapelry politically is conterminate with the town or borough. Real property, £1,820. Pop. in 1851,970; in 1861,1,15 4. Houses, 205. But the chapelry ecclesiastically includes also most of West Looe, bears the name of East and West Looe, and was constituted in 1842. Pop., 1,860.Houses, 366. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Exeter. Value, £75. Patron, the Bishop of Exeter..


(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))

Linked entities:
Feature Description: "a small sea-port town and a chapelry"   (ADL Feature Type: "cities")
Administrative units: St Martins IslParPart/CP       Cornwall AncC
Place names: EAST LOOE     |     LOOE     |     LOOE EAST
Place: East Looe

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