Crossing The Tamar

by Clifford Trethewey

Read this book here.

Five years have passed since their hastily arranged marriage in the town of Plymouth Dock and John Trethewey and his wife Ann realise that they have no future in their native parish of St. Dennis. In 1819 they decide to leave and with their two young children they head back to Plymouth. Where should they live and what should John do for a living? This story unwraps those dilemmas. John abandons his life as a rural labourer and transforms into a stone cutter, but there are many mysteries surrounding his new work. How can he afford to buy not one but two houses? Did he win the money as a Cornish wrestler? How did he discover the granite moorstones on Bodmin Moor that gave him 13 years as a granite merchant? This book reveals something of the atmosphere of early Plymouth as it grew and evolved under the pen of the famous architect John Foulston.