Menabilly

Menabilly (Men Ebeli, meaning stone of colts) is a historic estate on the south coast of Cornwall, England, situated within the parish of Tywardreath on the Gribben peninsula about west of Fowey. It has been the seat of the Rashleigh family from the 16th century to the present day. The mansion house, which received a Grade II* listing on 13 March 1951, is early Georgian in style, having been re-built on the site of an earlier Elizabethan house, parts of which were possibly incorporated into the present structure. The house is surrounded by woodland and nearby is the farmhouse Menabilly Barton. In the Return of Owners of Land, 1873 Jonathan Rashleigh of Menabilly, Par, was listed as the largest landowner in Cornwall with an estate of or almost 4% of the total area of Cornwall. The Rashleigh family of Menabilly originated as powerful merchants in the 16th century. In 1545 Philip Rashleigh (died 1551), a younger son of the Rashleigh family of Barnstaple in Devon, who had become wealthy through trade, purchased the manor of Trenant near Fowey from the King after the Dissolution of the Monasteries. His two sons Robert and John founded the Rashleigh family of Fowey. The land on which Menabilly was built has been owned by the Rashleigh family since the 1560s. In 1589 the building of the first house at Menabilly was commenced by John Rashleigh (1554–1624), shipowner, MP for Fowey in 1589 and 1597, Sheriff of Cornwall 1608–9, who captained his own ship Francis of Foy against the Spanish Armada in 1588. The house was completed in 1624 by his son Jonathan Rashleigh (1591–1675), five times MP for Fowey and a Royalist during the Civil War. It was re-built between 1710 and 1715 by Jonathan Rashleigh III (1693–1764). In national politics the Rashleighs of Menabilly obtained a voice in parliament because of their power to elect members of parliament for the pocket borough of Fowey. The electors consisted of the portreeve and commonalty (or burgesses), and the family purchased several of the freehold properties in the borough to which the right to vote as burgesses was attached.