Charles Rashleigh and Charlestown

Next weekend sees the anniversary of the birth of Charles Rashleigh in 1747. He was the tenth child of Jonathan and Mary Rashleigh of Menabilly near Fowey. With six older brothers and unlikely ever to succeed to the family estate, he became a property developer.

His best known purchase was on the coast south east of St Austell, a place called Porthmear. In Cornish, Porthmear means a great cove or landing place. However, landing on the open beach was neither easy nor safe. Therefore, in 1790 John Smeaton, builder of the third Eddystone lighthouse, was commissioned to design a harbour, which was constructed in the early 1790s.

Behind this, inner harbours were dug. At first these would have sheltered vessels engaged in importing timber and supplies for the mines and lime for the farmers and then exporting copper when mining boomed in the locality in the 1810s. When the mines faltered Charlestown, as it quickly became known, was perfectly placed to become a china clay port, until eclipsed by Par and Fowey in the early 1900s.

When the harbour was built, Charlestown was home to a farm, a hotel which had been built in 1782 and a few cottages. Within a generation it had grown to more than 100 houses. Its decline in the twentieth century left it intact as an unspoilt example of a nineteenth century working port. It now has a new role as the picturesque backdrop to films and TV series set in that period.

Charles himself made little from his venture, being swindled not only once but twice and bankrupted in the process. He died in 1823, a tenant at the home he’d formerly owned at Duporth.