What Three Words: ///reliving.elevate.surfacing
OS Grid Reference: SX105597
At the heart of the town, The Parade has long been the place for carnivals and celebrations. Bull-baiting, popular in the 18th Century, has now given way to Lost Fest, the Gin Festival, the Lost in Voice Choir, and Town Band concerts
The Parade is a riverside promenade leading to the open Parade Square. The river bank adjoining the Parade is an extensive area of gravel deposition as the river moved eastwards. It was built up from building rubble, pottery, and domestic rubbish and was consolidated and embanked in the 1880s, when it was landscaped and planted with trees. At this time the grassed area was open to the river, but a raised wall to the embankment was built in 1968 as a flood defence. By the railings at the back of and underneath the Drill Hall was the ‘dung pool’, a former inlet with a jetty for loading tin from the vaults of the Duchy Palace. This got cut-off from the river and gradually filled with rubbish, so gaining its name, and it was eventually filled-in with river gravel.
The Parade in Edwardian times (Francis Frith collection)
The area adjoining the river was originally the site of Pont’s Mill or the Prince’s Mill, but has been known as The Parade since at least the 1750s. It has long been the centre for many of the town’s fairs when the streets were filled with activity and decorated with floral arches. Well into the 18th century Parade Square, sometime known as Monmouth Square, held a Bull Ring, for the barbaric sport of bull baiting. An annual fair was held in September (originally a Bartholomew Fair held in August), and in August the whole area from the bridge to the Town Quays was busy with a Regatta and Sports Day involving athletics, two-oared and four-oared canoe races, and a swimming competition. In March a ploughing match was held on Penquite Farm, where there were also spear-making and rope-spinning competitions. The Parade still provides a communal space for fairs and festivals and the annual Remembrance Day Ceremony. It was most recently used to proclaim the accession of King Charles III.
Proclamation of King Charles III, 2023
The British Legion Garden of Remembrance and War Memorial were laid out on the riverbank in 1921 with a memorial to commemorate those killed in the First World War, and a granite cross was added in 1995 to commemorate the fallen of the Second World War. The small ornamental garden was built around a plinth that originally supported a fountain that had been donated by Lord and Lady Robartes in 1895 to mark the provision of mains water to the town in that year. Before 1895 water had to be carried from wells, springs, or the river to private houses. One of these springs is visible in the wall of a house in Shute Hill. The mains water was collected from three springs on the Lanhydrock estate and piped to a reservoir high up on Terras Hill, from where, it was distributed to properties in town. The scheme cost the Corporation £2,500 (more than £250,000 at current prices). When piped mains water was provided to the town, the fountain was removed. A new cross in its place was given in 2002 by Councillor Warren Nicholls MBE.
The Parade Gardens with the original fountain
Low down by the railings, just past the notice board, is a small stone marked with a ‘C’. This was set up in 1531 as a result of a law of Henry VIII that borough councils must be responsible for maintaining the road approach to major bridges. The Council was responsible for the surface of the road between the stone and the bridge. Under the noticeboard is a memorial stone inscribed ‘JCB, Mayor, 1859’. The purpose of the stone is long forgotten, but it is believed that it was installed at the instigation of the Mayor, John Collins Blewett, to mark the arrival of the railway in Lostwithiel.
Parade Square was used from 1880 as a parade ground for the Territorial Army, and the nearby Drill Hall was built in 1913 as their official base (it is now used by the army cadets). The 13th Service Battalion of the Sherwood Foresters, formed in Plymouth, were billeted in town during the First World War and used the square as their parade ground between December 1914 and April 1915. A house in the square is named Sherwood House. The Monmouth Inn (now Molesworth and Bird, Seaweed Art) served stirrup cups to the East Cornwall Hunt until the 1960s.
Lostwithiel Town Band on the Parade