© 2008 Treverbyn Vean Manor
Designed & Maintained by Pixel Print & Web Design Services
Designed & Maintained by Pixel Print & Web Design Services
The St. Neots fireplace, commissioned from the architect William Burges was one of two commissions from Col. Cocks - the other being the 'Wheel of Fortune' table made by J G Grace. The St. Neot Chimney Piece was sculpted by J B Philip. J Mordant Crook in his book ‘William Burges’ says of Treverbyn Vean and its Chimney Piece: "It must surely have astonished the gentry of Eastern Cornwall ..... surrounded by Flemish Tapestries, Turkish Hangings, Jacobean Chairs and sub-Pugin tables, it formed the centrepiece of one of the earliest interiors we can confidently label Burgesian".
Charles Cocks’ family background was formed by a fascinating enmeshment of Whig aristocrats and Bank owning landed gentry. An earnest and painstaking man, a high churchman, Cocks was also an enthusiastic amateur geologist. During the 1870’s he was Chairman of the committee selecting the stone for the building of Truro Cathedral.
Col. Cocks died in 1876 and is buried outside the main door to St. Neot Church where he was joined in 1926 by his wife. The pulpit of the Church, covered in designs relating to the Coldstream Guards is dedicated in memory of Col. Cocks. There was one surviving daughter from this marriage who lived at Treverbyn Vean until the mid 1930’s.
On the death of Miss Cocks, the property passed into the hands of Lord Beaverbrook and was used extensively during the second world war years by Beaverbrook, Churchill and Montgomery when devising their war plans. At that time, the surrounding countryside was open and hence provided a difficult security problem for the Liskeard Police. At the end of the war, Beaverbrook’s daughter, Mrs. Shand Kydd lived in the house and farmed the surrounding lands. By the late 1950’s the house had been allowed to fall into a state of disrepair and the surrounding lands forested with conifers. The house has since been restored and renovated by subsequent owners.
History
Treverbyn Vean was built by Colonel Charles Cocks and is itself largely Cocks’ design, begun upon his retirement from the Coldstream Guards in 1859. Cocks built a manor house with adjoining tiny chapel high on the hillside above St. Neots stream. The house was complete with linenfold panelled doors, hammerbeam ceilings and minstrel's gallery made of teak from the ‘Orinoco’ (on which Cocks’ battalion sailed to the Crimea), with cedarwood panelling cut from trees brought to Cornwall by Admiral Boscawen and a kitchen modelled on that of Cocks’ cousin’s house nearby - Lanhydrock. A number of contemporary sepia photographs of the interior survive including one of the St. Neots fireplace (J. Mordant Crook, illustration 118).
