United States or Lithuania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Others, again, without daring to name a date, have thought that the storm which destroyed Langarrow may have been the same as that which overwhelmed the "Lost Hundred" of Cardigan Bay. But without denying these convulsions of nature, we cannot venture to identify or time them.
The name of Langarrow, however, may safely be regarded as historic; and this, with its variants of Languna or Langona, is the earliest name that we can trace at Crantock. It proves the existence of a settlement here before the time of St. Carantoc; it seems also to prove the earlier existence of a church. The "garrow" might denote an untraceable St. Garrow or Carrow.
With wealth drawn from a fertile soil, a productive sea, and from rich mines of tin and lead, the inhabitants waxed proud in their prosperity, and revelled in luxurious vice. It would seem that a problem as to the provision of labour for the mines still a vexed question in parts of the British dominions led the Government of that day to convert Langarrow into a criminal settlement.
The daughters of Langarrow began to marry with the convicts; a slow process of contamination took place among those whose morals were already sapped by luxury. At last the town absolutely reeked with wickedness so says the highly moral legend. When the sin had reached its utmost the wrath of God descended.
Some day the fickle sand may desert that which it once buried, or the spade may lay bare relics that shall prove the tradition's truth. The lost church of St. Piran has been found; it may be so with the lost Langarrow.
During the restoration a granite monumental stone was unearthed, of Romano-British character; it has been placed in the wall outside the tower, and its inscription reads Conectoci fili Tegerno Mali. Whether legends of the lost Langarrow are true or not, there was evidently a considerable population of this part in early British times.
But tradition goes further back than this, and speaks of Crantock as having been once part of a large town or district named Langarrow, or sometimes Languna, most of which now lies beneath the sand-towans. This town is said to have had many fine churches and buildings, vying with the best cities in the Britain of that day, which seems to have been the tenth century.
Already many human remains have been found among the sand-heaps that extend intermittently from here to Perranporth, and traces of "kitchen-middens" which would throw back the date of Langarrow a thousand years or so.
Word Of The Day