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Bodmin b&b, guesthouse and hotel accommodation

Visit Bodmin and the surrounding villages and stay in bed & breakfast accommodation:

Bodmin, Cornwall, was officially the county capital until the Crown Courts moved to Truro. Throughout the Middle Ages Bodmin was Cornwall's largest town. A monastery is said to have been founded here by the Weishman, St Petroc, c. 550. He was also the patron saint of the Augustinian priory founded here, c. 1124.

The Dissolution and the town's rebellious nature were the reasons why it never really expanded. In 1496 two of its men led to London and massacre the great Cornish protest march against excessive taxes. The next year Bodmin rose for Perkin Warbeck, the pretender, and followed him to defeat at Exeter. In 1549 it was, with Helston, the main Cornish source of revolt against Edward VI's Prayer Book in English, with the macabre sequel that its mayor was hanged after dinner on the gallows he had been asked during the meal by his guest, the Provost-Marshal, to have erected for “an execution”. The railway between Bodmin and Wadebridge, opened in 1834, was among the first in Britain; but not till 1887 was it linked to the main railway system. Bodmin became the county town in 1835, replacing Launceston.

Its best building is St Petroc's Church, the largest parish church in the county, built 1469 — 91. It originally had a spire, which was felled by lightning in 1699. The things particularly to note in it are the groined roof of the porch, the fine late-Norman font, the grandly carved catacleuseslate monument to Prior Vyvyan, the fine roof timbers over the Lady Chapel, and the 12^th-century ivory reliquary of Moorish-Spanish style in a cabinet in the south wall. The latter is thought once to have contained the relics of St Petroc and to have been stolen away to Brittany by a delinquent monk in 1177, and recovered only after Henry II had taken a hand in the hunt.

Of the rest, the Assize Courts date from 1837. On application at No. 24 Fore Street (the main street) an exceptionally large granite fire-place, found buried can be inspected.

The obelisk, 144 ft high, on the hill to the South West, was erected in 1856 in memory of Sir Walter Raleigh Gilbert, a soldier of worthy service in India. The local rivers Camel and Fowey provide good fishing.

Bodmin Moor is a plateau mainly over 800 ft high. Its highest peak, Brown Willy, is 1,375 ft. and it is roughly 12 miles across both North to South and East to West. Not a National Park, bad weather and infertility protect its wildness fairly successfully. Rough Tor has been given to the Wessex Regiment and there is a regimental memorial at the top.

It has rough grass instead of heather, and indecisive contours. Yet Brown Willy and its second peak, Rough Tor (formerly Rowtor), 1,311 ft, look from a distance more like Scots mountains than hills in southern England, and from close to Rough Tor is as impressive as any tor on Dartmoor. A road South East from Camel-ford ends about 3 miles from the latter. Brown Willy can be reached from Codda Farm, ¾ mile North of Bolventor.

The moor's other most spectacular places are on its west edge: the Hanter Gantick Valley, grandly rocky with a cascading stream just East of the famous De Lank granite quarries, and the Hannon Valley some 3 miles North where two sentinel crags called the Devil's Jump flank a ravine. Dozmary Pool, considered bottomless until it dried up in 1869, and still held by some to have been the recipient of King Arthur's sword, Excalibur, is a big, bleak pond. A road South from Bolventor, where Jamaica Inn, on which Daphne de Maurier based her novel, is intriguing from without but fairly normal within, passes close to it.

Of the prehistoric remains that dot the moor, probably the most impressive is Stripple Stones, a circle of standing stones on the south-east slopes of Hawkstor, just North of the china-clay mine beside the A30. The enclosure called King Arthur's Hall, about 1¾ miles North East of St Breward, is thought to have been built c. 2000 B.C. as a shelter for livestock. In the Middle Ages the Knights Templar had a chapel at Temple, a short detour off the A30 South of the clay works.

To appreciate the moor at all you must leave the A30 and walk. Some interesting villages round its edge are Altarnun, Blisland, St Neot, St Cleer, St Clether and Laneast.

Nearby towns: Liskeard, Lostwithiel, Padstow, Par, St. Austell, Wadebridge

Nearby villages: Altarnun, Blisland, Boconnoc, Bodmin, Braddock, Bugle, Cardinham, Dobwalls, Doublebois, Egloshayle, Fowey, Golant, Helland, Lanivet, Lanlivery, Lanreath, Lansallos, Lanteglos, Lanteglos, Lerryn, Little Petherick, Luxulyan, Michaelstow, Padstow, Pelynt, Polperro, Polzeath, Port Isaac, Porthallow, Roche, St. Blazey, St. Breward, St. Columb Major, St. Dennis, St. Endellion, St. Issey, St. Kew, St. Mabyn, St. Minver, St. Neot, St. Stephen, St. Teath, St. Tudy, St. Veep, St. Winnow, Stenalees, Temple, Tywardreath, Warleggan, Withiel

Have you decided to visit Bodmin or the surrounding villages? Please look above for somewhere to stay in:

• a Bodmin bed and breakfast (a Bodmin B&B or Bodmin b and b)
• a Bodmin guesthouse
• a Bodmin hotel (or motel)
• a Bodmin self-catering establishment, or
• other Bodmin accommodation