Perran in the name of the village meant the same as Piran, and
the small church there was dedicated to that saint, who deserved to be
called the St. Patrick of Cornwall, for he occupied the same position in
the popular imagination here as that saint did in Ireland. It was in
this parish that St. Piran had his Holy Well, but that had now
disappeared, for accidentally it had been drained off by mining
operations.
Gwennap was only about three miles away--formerly the centre of the
richest mining district in Cornwall, the mines there being nearly six
hundred yards deep, and the total length of the roads or workings in
them about sixty miles. No similar space in the Old World contained so
much mineral wealth, for the value of the tin mined during one century
was estimated at ten million pounds sterling. After the mines were
abandoned the neighbourhood presented a desolate and ruined appearance.
[Illustration: OLD ST. MARY'S CHURCH, TRURO. (_The Cathedral of Truro is
now built on the site where this old church formerly stood._)]
Many human remains belonging to past ages had been found buried in the
sands in this neighbourhood; but Gwennap had one glorious memory of the
departed dead, for John Wesley visited the village several times to
preach to the miners, and on one occasion (1762), on a very windy day,
when the sound of his voice was being carried away by the wind, he tried
the experiment--which proved a great success--of preaching in the bottom
of a wide dry pit, the miners standing round him on the sloping sides
and round the top.
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