Extract from the 1875 Ordnance Survey map showing Lescudjack area; to the far left is Lescudjack House.
Lescudjack
This fort was in the strongest sense in that it commanded from a hill an area of land, from which those that built it had no fear of being seen or of being over-run. Lescudjack [1284 known as Lanscoedek, 1302 Lanscoisek, 1327 Lancoegek, deriving probably from “shielded enclosure”] is a large Iron Age castle; in Cornwall the Iron Age began around 550 BC with the arrival of the Celtic Invaders and their new technology; the area of the fort is three acres; it is most likely that the original entrance was on the northwest side, as Hals in 1870 records that it had outer works to that side, but these have been destroyed, with outer and inner works now being marred by housing development and allotments. In 1814 however, Lescudjack, then named Lescaddock, is described as having a treble entrenchment, not the presently described single entrenchment. Apiece of scandal surrounds the area, as in 1690, a solicitor’s apprentice Thomas Connock, illegally sold lands at Lescudjack; the sherrif of Cornwall was called in to make restitution of those lands, the sale of which resulted in sufficient funds for Thomas Connock to leave Cornwall and settle in Spain. He was not heard of again. In 1797 the land was owned by John Rogers, of a family of Helston connection and later the Penrose estate. In 1843 the surrounding fields were owned separately by Thomas Simon Bolitho and Thomas Foster Barham, together with The Rev John Rogers; Castle Field and The Castle Lands were owned by Rev John Rogers alone.
