Erisey


Erisey was a manor on the Lizard Peninsula, Cornwall, UK and is the surname of the family that built the house. The manor was originally in the civil parish of Grade and since 1934 Grade-Ruan. The Grade II listed building was built by Richard Erisey in the 17th-century and in the 18th-century was owned by the Boscawan family of Tregothnan.

Geography

Erisey is named as Erisey Barton on the Ordnance Survey and is on the Lizard Peninsula, at the southern end of Goonhilly Downs and to the east of the A3083 Helston to Lizard road.

History

The Erisey family can be traced back to the reign of Edward I. James Erisey was the Sheriff of Cornwall in 1513 and there is a brass memorial recording his death and that of his wife, Margaret in the parish church. Another James Erisey was born at Erisey and was a privateer with Sir Francis Drake. The house was built in the shape of a letter E by Richard Erisey in 1620. John Erisey added gardens before he died in about 1671 and the last male descendant, Richard, died in 1722. Admiral Boscawen of Tregothnan purchased the property from the co-heiresses of the Erisey family sometime in the middle of the 18th-century. The present building was probably built in the late 18th or early 19th-century.
Oliver Rackham, who studied the history and development of the countryside considered the pattern of farms and fields on the Lizard to be largely complete by the 14th-century. He considered the Erisey estate to be an example of ″in-field and out-field system″ with small, highly cultivated fields near the house surrounded by the moorland of the manor, and separated from the wider moorland by a great outer wall.
In 1880 the estate was owned by Evelyn Boscawen, 6th Viscount Falmouth, occupied by a Mr James James and consisted of 177 acres of arable and pasture land, dwelling house and buildings. A To Let notice for a new tenant was published in The Cornishman in July 1880.