Many an old tale is told of that great waste of sand-hills which fringes the coast of Perran Bay between Newquay and Perranporth. They say that there stood the lost city of Langarrow, once a busy town, that became so wicked that it was swallowed up in a night of fierce storm by the sands, and no trace of it left to offend the earth.
Right on the very edge of these sands, in the parish of Cubert, is the hamlet of Ellenglaze. Hellenclose was its old name, and that means the “Four Halls.” There is a little known story about this place, or rather about the house that stood there in the very old days, and it explains why the place was so called.
Hellenclose was once much nearer to the sea, but three times the relentless sands overwhelmed it, and each time the Lord of Hellenclose set himself to erect a new dwelling further inland, for they were of a stubborn race in those days, and would not easily submit even to the power of the storms and the winds.
It was a young Lord who built the fourth hall, in defiance of all advice, close by where the present house stands. Wise men warned him that the same fate would befall that as had overtaken the others, but he laughed at them, and his house finished, he rode off to fetch his bride from Meneage by the Lizard.
The night he returned was an ominous one. A great gale was getting up, and the retainers eyed anxiously the restless sand-hills not so far away. But the young Lord was happy and careless and bade his people sleep soundly for no harm would come. But the next morning the invading sands were seen approaching, and panic fell upon the household, who cried out that there was a curse upon the land.
Presently they dragged to the anxious Lord and his new-made wife an old hag whom they had found hiding in a barn. She was a witch they said, and to her was due all their troubles. By this time the cruel sand was already sweeping around the walls of the house, and the young Lord in his trouble gave orders for the hag to be hanged forthwith, saying that she should not live to cackle over the result of her evil designs. But his beautiful young bride intervened.
Casting herself weeping at her bridegroom’s feet she begged him to spare the old woman’s life. “I believe she is no witch, but one in misfortune as we are,” she cried, and so eloquent were the pleadings of this beautiful girl that all who heard her were moved to tears—all, that is, save the old woman who remained dry-eyed throughout the whole scene. At last the husband relented so far as to promise that the supposed witch should be spared until nightfall. If by then the house remained safe the old woman should go free; if not: “By St. Pirran, she shall hang,” he vowed.
The young bride agreed to this compromise and herself undertook to be responsible for the old woman’s safe keeping. She led her outside the hall, where the sand was now driving in low clouds over her lord’s land, and besought the old dame, if she had any power to do so, to avert the almost inevitable tragedy.
The hag avowed her innocence. “Then the Saints aid us all,” replied the girl, and with that she planted a kiss upon the old woman’s shrivelled cheek.
Now a witch cannot shed tears—that is one of the ways you may always tell one—but a kiss given freely and with good will, can break the bonds of magic that bind a witch; and no sooner had the young bride of Hellenclose kissed the aged woman than tears began to well from her eyes. These fell to the ground and caused first a tiny trickle then a regular stream which flowed on through the sand towards the sea at Holywell Bay.
And as the stream grew in size, so the invasion of the sands ceased for sand cannot cross running water, and the Fourth Hall was saved.
To-day you will find Ellenglaze separated from the barren sands about a hundred yards away, by a little brook. So long as that flows, the hamlet is safe, but should it ever dry up, they say there would have to be a fifth hall, and the waste would sweep on until perhaps it reached St. Cubert’s Church on the hill inland.
The lonely and fascinating Perran Sands are easily reached from either Newquay or Perranporth. The coast on the Newquay side is particularly fine, for a succession of steep rocky headlands here thrust themselves into the Atlantic rollers, and between them are quiet little sand-fringed bays where one may idle away a summer afternoon with only the sea birds for company.
Newquay itself, with its many fine hotels and its bathing beaches, is one of the most attractive of all the north Cornish coast towns, from which the most impressive of that coast scenery may easily be visited.
