Conan and all that he did has long since faded into oblivion; all that survives him are the mounds of stones that mark the site of his rude stronghold and his name, which has escaped oblivion in the name of the hill on which he lived and ruled…
H.R. Coulthard. 1913.

Tregonning Hill is no lofty pile. No terror mountain, like K2, towering over a groaning, endless Himalayan glacier, patiently waiting to kill its next victim. Not even a Great Gable, crouched above its peaceful valley, a place of poets Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelly, and Keats.

For sure, our hill was once bigger, but no volcano. 250 million years ago, molten rock squeezed out of the earth’s crust and ground down bit by bit until only a stump of old rock was all left. Sitting back, a gentle mile behind the coast. The hilltop was first occupied maybe 2,500 years ago by Iron Age men and women, living on and farming the denuded hillside.

250 years ago, a chemist, William Cookworthy, came here for a visit. While he looked, he wandered and picked up bits of rock as he looked. Some hard granite crystals. Others were more crumbly. Chalky almost. Throwing away the granite lumps, he put these softer bits of rock into his pocket and went home, ground them up, made Chinese clay, and blasted it into a pot.

Cookworthy (friend of Captain James Cook, colonial navigator) returned and started digging and quarrying, pleased with his “China” plate and wanting more. He carved a line of pits, making a lane as his men quarried upwards. When they reached the hill’s ridge, they dug out their biggest hole and named it after their employer.

By 1910, the china was no more, and the digging and the dynamite and noise of the quarrymen had all gone eastwards, the barren hillside left over again for the butterflies, the birds, and the fox.

Follow the path from the fort downhill, along the ridge, then skirting Cookworthy’s straggling quarries to where his lane begins and hooks left. The ocean zooms back into sight. You see this spot from lower down, at the bottom of the moor lane, just by a rough field a barn owl hunts in.

Stand in front of the gate where the lane bears left for a second time. As Cookworthy’s quarrymen had hacked out those new clay pits higher up the moor, they barrowed the waste and spoil back down. Backfilling their oldest hole.

Three tall pines stand behind you in a paddock where animals graze. In front, a grassy field climbs past a small cowshed. At the top of this mound of spoil? At the top, looking down at you, stands a simple bungalow. To its right, another path, more of a trod, cuts across the remaining quarry top, leading into another field. Chickens bark, unseen behind its hedge.

A real old Cornish farmer stands up there, looking down, coat held together with twine. That’s Ivor. It’s 1993, and this is his home, where this short story would end. At a dilapidated house, built up a crooked lane by the old man’s own hands seventy years earlier. But soon after, he passed on to dust, and his family came to see, mourn, and sell his fields, cows, hens, and home. So Cookworthy’s lowest quarry changed hands again.

There are two versions of what happened next.

Either the house and quarry were put on the market. Or that Ivor passed on the house to his niece. This is the better story and the one we’ll follow. Jean inherited Tolvan, sold off the paddock with the pines and the fields with the hens, and then demolished the house.

She used the money to build a new house fit for the new millennium. 

Jean was an Eco Builder. Returned from Italy. To build an Eco Villa. With concrete walls and draft-free windows. Insane amounts of insulation. A solarium captures the sun’s energy. Pumps recycling heat and rainwater. Marble floors and sustainable drainage. All gathered together in this perfect place. But soon after building it, she tired of the new Tolvan. And again, our quarry changes hands twice more. Others arrive, admiring the view but perhaps not the vision. Ideas are neglected. Swales are filled in, and pipes are disconnected.

By then, I’d often walked past that gate, the featureless lawn climbing to a bleak-looking building, menacing rabbits everywhere. I saw the paddock bulldozed; the tall pines felled. Homes built.

Even so, this place pulled me back. Spring’s blossom arches over the lane as you turn into it. Primrose bursts out of a green verge. The hawthorn flowered tunnel guides you onto the moor, over the stile, and past Cookworthy’s old quarries.

Fourteen dwellings and forty-five years after setting out. A final home, a fresh vista. With buzzards wheeling overhead.