The History and Mystery of The Famous Punch Bowl Inn

From the Punch Bowl Inn at Lanreath, comes the tale of a demonic black cockerel believed to have been the angry soul of an old rector of the parish who fell to his death down the stairs to his cellar whilst fetching a bottle of wine.

His guest for dinner that night was the new young curate who had fallen in love with the rector's young and beautiful wife.

Did he fall or was he pushed? We'll never know, but the very next day a large black cockerel suddenly appeared and began attacking everyone in sight.

Eventually the bird flew in through the window of The Punch Bowl Inn and straight into an old earthenware oven. A quick thinking kitchen maid imprisoned him inside it and a mason was duly called to cement it up for all eternity.

In 1620, the Punch Bowl Inn became the very first licensed public house in the Land. Parts of the building date back even earlier. The building has served variously as a courthouse, coaching inn and smugglers den.

During the Civil War, around 1644, the King, accompanied by his fourteen-year-old son (the future Charles II), his entourage and his Generals, stayed first in Liskeard and then at the great mansion of Boconnoc, four miles north of Lanreath. As the siege went on the area between the Fowey and Looe Rivers must have teemed with Royalists troops. Some were definitely quartered in Lanreath, and there is a tradition that on one occasion at least King Charles himself visited the village, spending an hour or so at the courthouse, now the Punch Bowl Inn.

Throughout the eighteenth century smuggling had been endemic in Cornwall and many country gentlemen became involved; among them one of the Rectors of Lanreath, Edward Pole. The Punch Bowl Inn was definitely a centre of activity, and when this kind of work was in hand the Rectory’s ‘secret passage’, originally constructed for other purposes, could have come in very handy.