Description
Mawes, St, a small town in St Just-in-Roseland parish, Cornwall, on St Mawes Harbour, an offshoot of Falmouth Bay, opposite Pendennis Castle, 3 miles by water E of Falmouth town station on the G.W.R. It has a post, money order, and telegraph office (R.S.O.) It may have derived its name from St Mawe or St Machutus, an early hermit of Wales, but much more probably by corruption from St Mary. It belonged to Plympton Abbey, which was dedicated to St Mary, and it went at the dissolution to the Vyvyans, and passed through various hands to the Duke of Buckingham. A castle was erected at it in 1542 by Henry VIII. to protect Falmouth Harbour against the French, and this stands on a solid rock at an elevation of 117 feet above high watermark; was bombarded and captured in 1646 by Sir Thomas Fairfax, and remounted in 1855. The town stands along the shore at the foot of a precipitous hill, consists chiefly of one irregularly-built street, was governed by a portreeve chosen annually at a court leet, sent two members to Parliament from 1562 till disfranchised by the Reform Act of 1832, and has a coastguard station, a chapel of ease, and Congregational, Wesleyan, and Bible Christian chapels. A small weekly market is held on Friday. A pilchard fishery was formerly important, but has completely declined. A pier was erected in 1854, was destroyed by a storm in 1872, and rebuilt in the following year. A sea-wall has been built along the centre front of the town. There is a regular line of steamers from Falmouth. The manor belongs to the Pier and Harbour Company.
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