Site: Tresco

Name:Tresco CISP No:TRSCO
Place:inc Grid Ref:SV 8945 1424 (GB)   Map
Parish:inc Stones:1
County:Cornwall (Scilly) (Kernow) , England Saint(s):Nicholas
Site Type:ecclesiastical

Site Notes

Thomas/1985a, 178--179: `On Tresco there was a cemetery close by the ruins of the Priory Church of St Nicholas, the so-called Abbey. An inscribed memorial stone, the only one known in Scilly, must have marked one of the graves...The existence of early graves here must have been known, since the Priory precincts were unsystematically used for burials in post-medieval centuries; but they seem first to have been reported during Augustus Smith's construction of his famous gardens. Some are probably dectectable now among the luxuriant growth. Henry Whitfield was present, as an admirer of the flowering beauties, when a grave was discovered:

`A group of workmen is busily excavating the hill-side...One of the labourers gives a cry of surprise, and the others hurry to the spot. He has broken into what appears a vault, formed of smooth flat stones. A few more strokes of the pickaxe enlarge the aperture, and lay bare its contents. Some faded relics of mortality are taken carefully from what was deemed their last retreat'.

Elsewhere, Whitfield suggests that he had seen two graves opened, as well as a cache of `several layers of bones' and among them `a curious round stone, marked with a Greek cross''.

References

Stones