The story of the Ring and Thimble Stones is a striking reminder that small, seemingly insignificant objects can be important signposts in the landscape that can point us towards much bigger stories. These little stones, beside a road just outside Newlyn, illustrate how fact and folklore can merge and transform over the centuries, how meaning can change as half-remembered truths jostle up against local superstitions. These seemingly unimportant pieces of granite reveal to us tales of murder, mishap, mystery, buried treasure and slavery.

So, when were the Ring and Thimble placed at Treveneth Corner, a nondescript crossroads between Newlyn, Paul and St Buryan? Who put them there and why? What secrets are they hiding? These were the questions I set out to answer . . .

The Phantom’s Curse

At a quarter to nine on an dark evening in early October 1884 the farmer John Thomas was on his way home to St Buryan from Penzance. As he reached the crossroads to Paul beside the Ring and Thimble Stones for some reason rather than taking the sharp bend to the right his horse and trap bolted straight for the hedge in front of them. Thomas was thrown headlong 14ft (around 5m) up the road and was killed instantly.

Apparently it was a particularly gory scene, a policeman commented at the inquest that there was so much blood it looked like a cow had been slaughtered, and news of the accident spread quickly around the neighbourhood. Soon an estimated 150 people from the villages of Newlyn and Paul had been drawn to the crossroads to see Thomas’ broken body.

“Onlookers described the face of the dead man as looking fearfully pallid as it lay upturned in the light of the moon” – The Cornishman, 9th October 1884

Rumours began to circulate that the victim, who was 46 years old and married with five children, had been intoxicated and that this had been the cause of his unfortunate end, in fact, this was also the conclusion that the inquest that followed reached. But there were others who believed that there were much darker forces at work.

There was a local belief that the crossroads where Thomas had died were haunted.

Some stories claimed that the ghost was that of a woman killed there in an accident or perhaps even murdered by the side of the road. Meanwhile the writer Ithell Colquhoun was told by local people in the 1950s that the Ring and Thimble was “haunted by the ghost of a man who was cruel to his hounds and, now himself a hound in shape, [made] a midnight appearance at the full Hunter’s Moon”. Whatever form the phantom took it seems that many believed that it was a spectral apparition that had spooked Thomas’ horse, causing it to bolt and resulting in the terrible accident.

A few years after the tragedy an article appeared in several local papers describing a series of unfortunate events at the “much-dreaded” Ring and Thimble crossroads (also known as Treveneth Corner). The anonymous writer, who lived in the village of Paul, claimed that he had been making a note of the various mishaps at the crossroads for over 20 years and went on to list numerous accidents at that spot – men falling from their horses, stirrups breaking, carts overturning, horses behaving strangely or bolting for no reason and loads falling from wagons. Although there had been some serious injuries, Thomas’ death seems to have been the only fatality. The writer concluded:

“If I were superstitious about ghosts I should think there was some evil phantom at this place . . .” – The Cornish Telegraph, 29th November 1888

The Ring and Thimble Stones

These two pieces of granite have stood at Treveneth Crossroads for around 250 years, though it is likely that they have moved at least twice when the road was widened in the 1930s and again in 1990. Treveneth Corner is a crossroads just outside the village of Paul where the roads between that village and Newlyn and St Buryan meet at a sharp bend in the road. Both stones are roughly 3 feet (under 1m) tall and very different from each other. The ‘Thimble’ is a round cone of granite with a flatish top sitting on a square base, while the ‘Ring’ stone is a flat wedge on which is carved a ring and a very faded Latin inscription and a date on the front face.

‘IN HAC SPE VIVO’

May 31 1781

The Latin translates as “I live in this hope” or “In this hope I live” though the exact meaning behind these words, why this quote was chosen, has been the subject of debate. Apparently one Penzance cab driver (the horse-drawn kind) even told a tourist that the inscription was in “Old Cornish” . . .

This quote or motto was once a fairly common one, Shakespeare uses it in one of his plays, and it is generally considered to speak of resilience, faith in future prosperity, or perhaps a romantic devotion.

The first mention that I can find of the Ring and Thimble in the press is in April 1874 in relation to the cutting of a field of clover and rye beside the stones. It is clear that at this point the stones meaning, their reason for being there, was not widely known; another article in 1878 calls them “curious” and the writer notes that they must have been “set in that particular spot to commemorate something”. In 1890 M. A. Courtney records the following:

Close by the highway, where the Buryan road joins the high-road from Paul to Penzance, is a smoothly-cut, conical granite stone, popularly supposed to have been placed there in memory of some woman who was found murdered at that spot, with nothing on to identify her, and with only a thimble and ring in her pocket. – Margaret Ann Courtney, Cornish Feasts and Folklore, 1890

This feminine connection is something of a theme, as well as the stories of a murdered woman, another article claims that the stones were placed there “by some fair lady in memory of the loss and recovery of her ring and thimble given her by some fond love”. While another legend has it that a local landowner erected the stones to mark the place where he had met and proposed to his wife.

In her book on feasts and folklore Courtney also touches on a different aspect of the name – the more general symbolism of the ring and thimble in women’s lives.

“Into the Twelfth-day cake were put a wedding-ring, a sixpence, and a thimble. It was cut into as many portions as there were guests ; the person who found the wedding-ring in his (or her) portion would be married before the year was out ; the holder of the thimble would never be married, and the one who got the sixpence would die rich.” – Margaret Ann Courtney, Cornish Feasts and Folklore, 1890

But the truth about these stones, or what we know of it, has nothing to do with murder or lost loves however. In fact the real story of these stones takes us to a dark tale of sugar, slavery and buried ancient treasure.

The Gold Ring

[The stones] really mark the place where an ancient gold ring, three inches and a half in diameter, bearing the motto, ” In hac spe vivo,” was discovered in 1781. – Margaret Ann Courtney, Cornish Feasts and Folklore, 1890

It seems that some time in May 1781 a labourer on the estate owned by Sir Rose Price of Trengwainton, which included the land at the crossroads, dug up a gold ring. This description of the find as a ‘gold ring’ has caused some confusion over the years with the natural assumption being that it was a lost wedding ring or some other kind of finger ring. This does not appear to be the case, however, it seems that the gold object was around 3.5″ (9cm) in diameter and “ancient”, possibly prehistoric in age (?). Some writers describe it as a torc (or torque) or armband that would have been worn “by ancient rulers” of these lands.

Numerous sources claim that the gold ring was given to the British Museum but if that was the case there doesn’t appear to be a record of it now (that I can find). The closest example in their catalogue is this Bronze Age gold ring found in Towednack in the 1930s.

Another clue perhaps is that Cyrus Redding does mention in his 1842 Illustrated Itinerary of Cornwall that a “piece of gold in the shape of a crescent” was found near Newlyn, though we can’t be certain that this is the same object.

“There are some noble views on the hills near Newlyn from whence a road by the sea leads to Penzance. A piece of gold, in the shape of a crescent, was found near this place, weighing between two and three ounces, supposed to be a torque, an ornament worn by distinguished persons amongst the ancient Britons.”

As well as the provenance of the gold ring there is also some confusion over the Latin text, some sources claim that the words were engraved into the surface of the ring and that is why the words were carved into the granite. However, others seem to imply that the quote was simply chosen to give thanks for the gold’s discovery.

What we do know is that the gold ring was in the possession of Sir Rose Price for some time, that the Ring and Thimble stones were erected by him to mark the spot where it was found and that association alone adds another unpleasant and controversial element to this tale.

Who was Sir Rose Price?

So far much of this article has been devoted to understanding the inscribed stone and the stories around it, but what about its companion? The one shaped like a thimble. It is generally agreed that this stone was placed there by Sir Rose Price (21 November 1768 – 24 September 1834) to represent a sugar loaf – the source of all his wealth. Price’s family had owned sugar plantations in Jamaica since 1663 and had made their money importing sugar and rum. Trengwainton estate had been bought with the profits from this business. (One of their former plantations, Worthy Park, is still a rum producing distillery to this day.)

The family also had a large number of enslaved people on their plantations. When Rose Price inherited the estates in the 1790s after the death of his father, John Price, he travelled out to Worthy Park in Jamaica and records show that he put in place measures to increase productivity and raised the number of enslaved people there from 355 to over 500. In his ‘great plantation book’, which detailed his business transactions for the three years he was there, Price also recorded the birth of his first two children. Shockingly their mother was a 13-year-old enslaved child called Lizette. Once these children were older he apparently sent them to England to be educated.

Price was a staunch anti-abolitionist and when he returned to England it is believed that he brought a number of enslaved people with him. They were said to have worked on the Trengwainton estate, dressed in the family livery. A huge wall known as ‘Price’s Folly’, which was built as part of his plans for a new grand house which was never completed, can still been seen to this day on the hill above Newlyn. There are deeply unsettling descriptions of Price riding along this great wall on his horse, accompanied by black servants.

It is possible that the shadow of the great house that was never built is what led to the other explanation for the Ring and Thimble stones given to the writer Ithell Colquhoun, though her story does also hark back to the themes of a curse and a lady’s death too.

“A lady and gentleman were driving by them one day in their carriage when the horse shield and overturned them. The lady was picked up dead and a ring and thimble fell from her purse. These were carved in stone and set up on the spot as a memorial to her. But it was Lady Tillard who filled in a soberer historical background, telling me that an old mansion once occupied the site of the Ring and Thimble, which may have formed part of the stonework.” – Ithell Colquhoun, The Living Stones, 1957

Beyond the folly, the Price family’s influence can still be seen elsewhere, if you know where to look – they are said to have built Jamaica Terrace in Heamoor and Jamaica Place in Penzance, as well as constructing many other roads in the vicinity. The gardens at Trengwainton, now owned by the National Trust, were for the most part designed by Rose Price when he married the Irish heiress, Elizabeth Lambart in 1795. Together the couple had at least 10 children there.

Sir Rose Price died in 1834, a year after the ‘Abolition of Slavery Bill’ was passed. By that time Trengwainton was heavily mortgaged and had to be sold to pay his debts. He also seems to have had a less than warm relationship with some of his children, he left his eldest son Charles Dutton Price one shilling in his will which, he wrote, was ‘more than his base and unnatural conduct towards me and my family deserves’.

Price was laid to rest inside the huge family mausoleum in Madron churchyard.

Final Thoughts

I hope you may now agree with my initial, rather bold, statement that these little pieces of granite have a surprisingly impressive story to tell! Whatever part of this article sticks with you, I hope that when you pass them now you will look at them a little differently.

But before I leave the Ring and Thimble behind there are a couple of things I would like to add.

Those of you who listen to my podcast may recognise Sir Rose Price as the man who built the rather controversial memorial to the elderly murdered woman, Martha Blewett, that once stood beside the road near the village of Paul. It was removed 1923 but I discuss this poor woman’s fate and Price’s contribution to it all in that episode. So take a listen if you want to know more.

I would also be remiss if I didn’t point out that the so called Thimble Stone looks very like the base of a saddlestone or rickstone to me. We have several of these on our farm, they are often seen in gardens these days as granite mushrooms ornaments, but were once used to support hay ricks. Just a thought . . .

And finally, the Price Tomb. Madron Chruchyard is a treasure trove of interesting graves and well worth a visit but it has to be said that the mausoleum dominates all – it is large enough to house a small family or be rented out as a holiday let! Joking aside, I thought that you might be interested to read a description of the last time the mausoleum was opened in 1881, written by Mr G. B. Millett and published in the Cornishman newspaper:

“On Friday, the 30th December last, the Price mausoleum, in Madron Churchyard, was opened preparatory to the burial of Mrs. Nugent (daughter of the late Sir Rose Price, of Trengwainton,) the following day. The stone-work in the doorway having been taken down, a strong oak door studded with large nails was disclosed. The lock and hinges were of brass. The vicar of Madron, Rev. Franklin Tonkin, having placed the key in the lock turned it with ease and threw open the left half of the door. A ponderous bar iron secured the other half. I was the first person enter the mausoleum after a lapse of 48 years, and perhaps some notice of the interior may not be without interest.

“It was a vaulted chamber of 13ft in length by 9ft in width, entirely lined with brick except as to the floor which was laid with freestone. Over the door on the inside, there was a block of granite, on which was engraved ‘Sir Rose Price, Bart. erected this tomb Anno I827.’ The western end of the mausoleum was divided into six compartments, of brickwork and slabs of freestone—the arrangement resembling the bins of a wine cellar, and in the three lower compartments were lodged the coffins containing the remains Mr. Rose Lambart Price on the left, Lady Price in middle, and Sir Rose Price to the right. At the feet of each coffin a brass plate was attached to the flooring of the several cells, (which was just the thickness of one brick above the floor of the rest of the chamber) on which were inscribed the names and dates of death of the persons mentioned.

From the position of the coffins it was almost impossible to see what was engraved on the breastplates, and a thick coating of dust and mould obscured them for the most part. On the first coffin, however, that of Mr. Rose Lambart Price, aged 27 years, was plain. This coffin was the most decayed of the three, and the sides had in places fallen away, showing the lead shell underneath. That of Lady Price was in the best condition. Sir Rose Price’s coffin, which was very much larger than either of the others, was somewhat decayed also, and showed the inner lead coffin slightly. All were covered with what was once, as I am told, red velvet, now mouldy and earthen-coloured; whilst the gilded nails and ornaments that might once have been bright were longer, being tarnished and corroded. High up on either end of the mausoleum, east and west, there was small circular orifice, filled in with perforated metal, and from the centre of the roof was hanging beautiful white stalactite, which was immediately brushed down by the mason, who was preparing give the walls a coat of white-wash.” – The Cornishman, 19th Jan 1882.

This description creates such a vivid picture I think . . . and a strange scene to imagine if you stand beside the mausoleum today.

UPDATE

Since publishing this article I have an email from Dr Charlotte MacKenzie, who has been an enormous help to me over the years. She has sent me the image below from D Lysons’ book about Cornwall (vol 3) published as part of a set in 1808 – 1822, which also included the following description.

“In 1783, one of the ancient British ornaments of gold, in the form of a crescent, with a narrow zigzag pattern slightly engraved on it, and weighing two ounces, four pennyweights and six grains, was discovered near the remains of one of the circular earthworks in the neighbourhood of Penzance, a curious relic which is in the possession of Rose Price Esq . . .”

Further Reading:

Newlyn: The Last Port for the Mayflower

The Keigwin Arms, Mousehole – ghosts, smuggling & bad behaviour!

The Bleu Bridge inscribed stone – Gulval

The Mawgan Cross – an Inscribed Stone in Meneage

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