Stowe Barton
Sir Richard Grenville was born in the County of Devon in England's West Country at Buckland Abbey in 1541; however, the Grenville family were the owners of much of the land on the northern Cornish Coast and the west coast of Devon and it was there, near the little village of Kilkhampton with its Norman Church, where stood on the Atlantic Ocean, Sir Richards's manor at Stowe Barton..
When Sir Walter Raleigh was unable to persuade Queen Elizabeth I to allow him to lead the expeditons to establish the first British Colony in North America, he appealed to his cousin, Sir Richard Grenville, to lead the second expedition in 1585 to Roanoke Island, a tiny island which had been explored two years earlier in a 1583 expedition financed by Raleigh. And, so it was in 1585, Sir Richard Grenville commanded the fleet that embarked on the voyage to the tiny island situated inside the barrier islands of the Outer Banks, just west of Nags Head, in present day North Carolina. Named Roanoke Island after an Indian tribe of that name, the adventurers arrived there in 1585 and many of the one hundred and eight men were West Country men from Devon and Cornwall, which included John Pridieux and Philip Arundell, both descended from Norman conquerors, whose families still retained their huge estates granted to them by William the Conqueror in 1066.
The above photograph is a picture of the North Cornish coast and captures how modern technology marvels changes the scape of the land. The satellites outline the curve of the steep cliffs that fall off into the Atlantic Ocean just north of the manor house at Stowe Barton and I first saw them on my first visit to the northern Cornish Coast in the fall of 1987 when unexpectedly the satellites came into view, a complete surprise, as we came up from Coombe Vale, a deep valley leading from the manor house at Stowe to the northern end of the Cornish coast. The satellites contrasted greatly with the rest of the landscape, which probably has changed very little since the times of the Grenville family. It was the influence from the counties of Devon and Cornwall in the West Country, England found its adventurers, the principals that planned and conducted the plan of English settlement in the New World.
