In the west of Cornwall, near Breage, Godolphin House is the seat of a family whose power came from the subsoil: the tin mines. This mining wealth, singular in the agricultural England of the time, allowed the Godolphins to build a house of surprising elegance, crowned with a colonnaded loggia.
A fortune come from the tin mines
Cornwall had been since antiquity the great country of tin, and the Godolphins drew from it a considerable fortune. Their manor, whose core goes back to around 1500, was enlarged throughout the Renaissance thanks to this money from the subsoil. At a time when the gentry's wealth came almost everywhere from land and rents, the Godolphins stood as an exception: their industrial prosperity, ahead of its time, could be read in the growing sophistication of their house. Sir Francis Godolphin contributed, moreover, in the late sixteenth century, to the improvement of Cornish mining techniques.
The colonnaded loggia
The architectural jewel of Godolphin is its colonnaded loggia, a Jacobean wing of the early seventeenth century: an open gallery of seven bays, carried on columns, surmounted by a crenellated north front. This loggia — an element of classical, Italianate inspiration, rare in so remote a house — bears witness to the architectural refinement that mining wealth allowed this family to display. The interior keeps a sixteenth-century linenfold-panelled room and Elizabethan stables. To see: the colonnaded loggia (Jacobean wing), the linenfold-panelled room, the Elizabethan stables, the early formal gardens.
Did you know?
In an England where the nobility drew its wealth from land and sheep, the Godolphins were an exception: their fortune rose from the depths, extracted from the tin mines of Cornwall. This 'industrial' prosperity ahead of its time explains the sophistication of their house — an Italianate loggia, rare and costly, planted at the end of a country of moors and mines.
Notes
Godolphin House lies at Godolphin Cross, parish of Breage, Cornwall; a National Trust property, house and gardens open to the public. Seasonal hours to check.
Quiz
- Where did the Godolphins' fortune come from?
- The tin mines of Cornwall
- The wine trade
- Piracy
- What is the architectural jewel of Godolphin?
- Its colonnaded loggia (Jacobean wing)
- A Gothic spire
- A Norman keep
- In what way were the Godolphins an exception?
- Their wealth came from mining, not from land
- They paid no taxes
- They were foreigners