Bowithick is a
hamlet on the northern edge of
Bodmin Moor
Bodmin Moor ( kw, Goon Brenn) is a granite moorland in north-eastern Cornwall, England. It is in size, and dates from the Carboniferous period of geological history. It includes Brown Willy, the highest point in Cornwall, and Rough Tor, a s ...
in
Cornwall, England, United Kingdom.
[Ordnance Survey: Landranger map sheet 201 ''Plymouth & Launceston'' ]
Bowithick is situated near the disused
Davidstow Moor airfield. The nearest villages are
St Clether
St Clether is a civil parish and village in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The village is situated on the east flank of Bodmin Moor approximately eight miles (13 km) west of Launceston in the valley of the River Inny. The population o ...
and
Altarnun (where the 2011 Census population is included). There is a
ford and two
clapper bridges on the Penpont Water and the 346 m (1137 ft) high hill Bray Down nearby with Buttern Hill (1135 ft) immediately to the west of it.
The manor of Bowithick was recorded in the Domesday Book (1086) when it was held by Osferth from
Robert, Count of Mortain
Robert, Count of Mortain, 2nd Earl of Cornwall (–) was a Norman nobleman and the half-brother (on their mother's side) of King William the Conqueror. He was one of the very few proven companions of William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastin ...
. He had also held it before 1066 and paid tax for one furlong. There was land for 2 ploughs. There were one villein and 2 smallholders. The value of the manor was 2 shillings though it had formerly been worth 5 shillings.
[Thorn, C. et al., ed. (1979) ''Cornwall''. Chichester: Phillimore; entry 5,13,6]
The area around Bowithick was busier during
World War I than it is today due to the presence of a
Prisoner-of-war camp, the German prisoners being used to mine
wolfram
Wolfram may refer to:
* Wolfram (name)
* Wolfram, an alternative name for the chemical element tungsten
* Wolfram Research, a software company known for the symbolic computation program Mathematica
** Wolfram Language, the programming language use ...
and
tin at an opencast mine in Buttern Hill immediately to the south west.
During
World War II Bowithick had a near miss when a 115mm shell fired from a
155 mm M1 Howitzer
A howitzer () is a long- ranged weapon, falling between a cannon (also known as an artillery gun in the United States), which fires shells at flat trajectories, and a mortar, which fires at high angles of ascent and descent. Howitzers, like ot ...
as part of a shoot from the training range on
Laneast downs landed in a nearby field that was being ploughed, the ploughman escaping uninjured as he was having lunch at the farmhouse.
In April 2021 two small brown crabs were found in the Ford alongside Bowithick Bridge despite being ten miles from the sea as the crow flies.
References
External links
Jossie Marie's Miscellany
Hamlets in Cornwall
Manors in Cornwall
{{NorthCornwall-geo-stub