Warbstow, Cornwall

Warbstow Church - viewed from the South West.
The graves immediately to the south of the Church are those of the Gynn family of Treswine (now Treswen) and their relatives.

Warbstow, although pivotal in the Trease Family History particularly for the branches now living in Australia, is a relatively small agricultural parish with typical North-East Cornwall topography. Warbstow is one of the parishes immediately inland from St. Gennys and at the time of the 1801 Census Warbstow Parish had a population of 330, just over half that of St. Gennys. Unfortunately unlike St. Gennys, there is little published information available about the parish. Warbstow, like many parishes in the past, had a detached part or exclave: it is one of the only ones in England to have such a feature, the Canworthy Water area being separate from the remainder of the parish by about 150 yards!

Warbstow in the past, like St Gennys, had no principal village: it essentially consisted of scattered farms and smallholdings plus a number of small hamlets, such as that near the Church and at Warbstow Cross, Downinney, Trelash and Carnworthy Water. One of the most important farms in the parish has been Treswen near Warbstow Cross, farmed since the early 1800s by the Gynn family.

In recent years most of the expansion of the village has taken place at Carnworthy Water and particularly at Warbstow Cross where several small housing developments/ estates have been built. This expansion is reflected in the Census returns, by 2001 Warbstow’s population had increased to 439.

About half a mile to the West of Warbstow Cross is the ‘highpoint’ of the Parish, the Iron-Age Hill Fort called ‘Warbstow Bury’, a large double rampart earthwork, approximately 800 feet above sea-level, with panoramic views over the surrounding countryside and out to sea. In contrast Canworthy Water on the River Ottery at the other end of the village, about a mile East of Warbstow Cross, is only about 340 feet above sea-level.

Warbstow Parish church, dedicated to St. Werburga, is a chapelry of nearby Treneglos. There was a Bible Christian Chapel at Canworthy Water which was included in the Week St. Mary Circuit (in about 1907 the Bible Christian movement became part of the United Methodist movement and there is today in Canworthy Water a United Methodist Chapel built 1909).

The first member of the Trease family to live in Warbstow was James (Generation 19) who during 1840 married Elizabeth Gynn from Treswen Farm at Warbstow Church. James and Elizabeth had five sons and two daughters who survived infancy and who were all baptised at Warbstow Church:-

• Two sons and a daughter emigrated to Australia:-
  • William (Generation 20) as a bachelor,
  • Amelia (Generation 20) who married shortly before to Julius Bone in Warbstow,
  • and Thomas (Generation 20) who married shortly before to Mary Baker Mably.
• Their brother John subsequently emigrated to Canada, North America as a bachelor.
• James (Generation 20) left Warbstow as a bachelor and settled in the Camborne/ Redruth area of West Cornwall where he married Elizabeth A Hancock.
• Dorothy (Generation 20) was married by Bible Christian ceremony at Tower Street Methodist Church, Launceston to William Sandercock and subsequently lived in Rosecare, St Gennys.
• Richard (Generation 20) married Eliza Pearce by Bible Christian ceremony at the Tower Street Methodist Church, Launceston. They had five children, two sons and a daughter all baptised at home in Bible Christian ceremonies: -
  • Mary Matilda (Generation 21) married Ernest John Charke during 1908 and afterwards they lived in Stoke, Plymouth.
  • James (Generation 21) emigrated to South Africa where he worked in the Gold Mines and there married a widow Mary Elizabeth Sparks. He died in South Africa but his three daughters returned to live with their grandparents, Richard and Eliza in Warbstow.
  • Mabel (Generation 21) married Ernest Henry Greaves during 1908 and emigrated to Australia.
  • Amelia MaudAmelia Maud (Generation 21) emigrated to Canada and there married Edward Bailey in about 1914.
  • Richard Owen Trelawney, 'Lawn' (Generation 21) remained in Warbstow all his life. He married Lily/Lilian Bolt in Warbstow during 1918. They did not have any children.

With ‘Lawn’ and Lilian’s deaths during 1956 and 1958 the name Trease died in Warbstow after approximately 120 years as did the family’s blacksmith business there.There are memorials in Warbstow churchyard to James and Elizabeth (Generation 20) and their infant daughter Grace, Richard and Eliza (Generation 21) and to their son James (Generation 22).