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50°10′N5°00′W / 50.167°N 5.000°W /50.167; -5.000
TheRoseland Peninsula, or justRoseland, (Cornish:An Ros, meaningthe promontory) is a district of westCornwall, England. Roseland is located in the south of the county and contains the town ofSt Mawes and villages such asSt Just andGerrans. It is a peninsula, separated from the remainder of Cornwall by theRiver Fal (on the east is the English Channel).
Where the peninsula begins continues to be a point of discussion amongst local historians and long-time Roseland inhabitants. The village ofTregony might be considered to be outside the Roseland. If travelling by road one enters the Roseland at the bottom of Tregony Hill by either driving up Reskivers Hill to take the road to St. Mawes and Gerrans, or by taking the lower road to Ruan Lanihorne. The Roseland Plan, aneighbourhood plan produced in 2015, defined Roseland as the areas of the civil parishes of St-Just-in-Roseland (which includes St Mawes), Gerrans,Philleigh,Ruanlanihorne andVeryan.[1]
Until 2021 there was aRoseland electoral division ofCornwall Council which also covered St Mawes, the population of which at the 2011 census was 3,375.[2]
In 1584 map makerJohn Norden wrote, 'The peninsula is called by the pretty name of Roseland, being derived from Rhos, the Celtic word for heath or gorse.' He goes on to say that, "Roseland is a circuit of land lying between the creek of Falmouth haven and the sea."
Lake's Parochial History of the County of Cornwall (1870) includes RevdJohn Whitaker’s discussion of the Roseland when dealing withPhilleigh parish. He notes that the villages ofVeryan andRuanlanihorne each has its church in a valley, the area which would have been inhabited first as the valleys were more sheltered and benefited from soil washed down from the hillsides. At the top of the hills lay an extensive heath (or rhos/rôs).
Whitaker believed that the area was first named 'Roseland' when the English came to settle in 936. The parish of Philleigh was carved out of the parish of Ruanlanihorne and was originally called Eglos-rôs. Two fields were tithable in common between Ruanlanihorne and Philleigh (Higher and Lower Congier) which he claims proves the two parishes were once one. According to Hals (inLake's Parochial History) St Just in Roseland was rated under the jurisdiction of Eglos-rôs (Philleigh) in the Domesday Book.
From this it seems reasonable to assume that the first people to use the term ‘Roseland’ understood it to cover the parishes which contained the ‘rhos/rôs ’, so the parishes of Veryan, Ruanlanihorne and Philleigh have a good claim to be part of the Roseland.
So it seems to make sense to regard the Roseland as starting at Daddiport Bridge at the foot of Reskivers Hill. The stream which comes down the hillside to Daddiport Bridge is the boundary between Veryan and Tregony parishes, thus continuing the water boundary of the peninsula. That is the way locals now see the Roseland Peninsula.
InThe Roseland: between River and Sea,[3] Laurence O'Toole described it rather differently, including the parishes ofGerrans,St Anthony in Roseland,St Just, andSt Mawes and so only taking the parishes that protrude on that thin arm of the land.
Place House at St Anthony was the seat of theSpry family for several hundred years. It has been enviously described byJoe Bennett in his travel bookMustn't Grumble, 2006.
In a highly publicised case, a 41-year-old local woman namedLyn Bryant was murdered while out walking her dog on the peninsula nearRuan High Lanes on 20 October 1998. The murder featured heavily inthe press,media and onCrimewatch, but her attacker has never been identified and the murder remains one of the highest profile unsolved murders in the UK. At the time, police believed that her random and apparently motiveless killing might be linked to the murder of 14-year-oldKate Bushell in another rural lane inExeter one year previously. Both had been randomly killed with knives while out walking their dogs down isolated lanes in the south west.
An unknown man had been seen talking to Bryant by Ruan Methodist Church that afternoon, only minutes before she was murdered only 100 yards (91 meters) away. Earlier in the day a different man with a full beard in a small white van (who was apparently not local) had also been seen following her in her car. In 2018, a DNA profile of Bryant's attacker was identified. The investigation into her death is one of the largest ever conducted byDevon and Cornwall Police and had cost nearly £2 million by 2018. There remains a £10,000 reward for information leading to the capture of her killer.[4][5][6][7][8][9][10]
Channel 4's 1992 seriesThe Camomile Lawn, adapted fromMary Wesley's novel, was shot at the National Trust property Broom Parc on the Roseland Peninsula. The series starred Felicity Kendal, Paul Eddington, Claire Bloom, Jennifer Ehle & Rebecca Hall and was directed by Sir Peter Hall.
The 2009 film documentaryAnd Did Those Feet suggests thatJesus Christ may have visited the Roseland Peninsula.[11] The legend of Christ's visit to England is depicted inWilliam Blake's poem "And did those feet in ancient time".
