With his death, the property passed to
some distant cousin in the North, who seldom visited Cornwall.
This cousin leased the Scawns acres to a farmer alongside of whose
fields they marched, and the farmer, having no use for the mansion,
gladly sub-let it. The county authorities, having acquired the
lease, did indeed make certain structural adaptations, providing
tolerable quarters for the local constabulary, with a lockup in the
cellarage (which was commodious), but apart from this did little to
arrest the general decay of the building. In particular, the
disrepair of the old dining-room, where the magistrates now held
Session, had become a public scandal. The old wall-paper dropped in
tatters, the ceiling showed patches where the plaster had broken from
the battens, rats had eaten holes in the green baize table-cloth, and
the whole place smelt of dry-rot. From the wall behind the
magistrates' table, in the place where nations more superstitious
than ours suspend a crucifix, an atrocious portrait of the late
Squire Nicholas surveyed the desolated scene of his former carousals.
An inscription at the base of the frame commemorated him as one who
had consistently "Done Right to all manner of People after the Laws
and Usages of the Realm, without Fear or Favour, Affection or
Ill-will.
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