Читать книгу Betjeman’s Best British Churches - Richard Surman - Страница 13
ОглавлениеST IVES: ST IA – one of four similarly styled angels in the roof of the church’s north aisle
Cornwall is a Duchy, separated from England by the picturesque Tamar Valley, and has more sea coast than anywhere else in Britain. The prevailing building materials are slate and granite. The granite bursts up through the slate and forms Bodmin Moor, which is mostly desolate except for prehistoric remains and the beehive cells of Celtic Christians. A district of half-granite and half-great white pyramids of decomposed granite, known as China clay, is near St Austell. Moorland covers the far western granite promontory between St Ives and Land’s End. The Scilly Isles, where the churches are small, simple and comparatively new, are the nearly submerged tops of granite hills, between which and Land’s End was the lost territory of the Lyonesse.
The rest of the county is slate, varying from bluish silver to deep green. The peninsula of the Lizard is made of coloured rocks called Serpentine. Tin mines have brought 19th-century industrial scenery, with its chapels and streets, to the districts around Camborne and Redruth. Visitors of our own generation have pocked the tremendous coast with bungalows, but they have also preserved the humble slate-grey fishing ports because of their picturesque qualities. The two most attractive inland towns in Cornwall are Launceston, a border fortress to which have been added Georgian houses, and Truro, where Pearson’s noble Victorian cathedral rises in the French manner out of the old houses and shops. Truro has its Georgian streets and so have Helston, Penzance and Falmouth. Calstock, on the border with Devon, is the least-known and most uninterruptedly Cornish town. The Duchy becomes its native self in winter, and that is the time to see it.
Inland, Cornwall is mercifully considered dull. The wooded valleys like those of the Allen, Camel, Inny, Fowey and Lynher, with their steep slopes of thin Cornish elms, carpeted underneath with spring anemones, their slate-hung houses, whose gardens in summer are bright with hydrangea, veronica and fuchsia, are remotest and loveliest Cornwall. The coast is awe-inspiring. Rocks fall sheer into the peacock-blue Atlantic and English Channel, and rock pools are full of many-coloured seaweeds and marine life.
Before Southern England was Christian, Cornwall had been visited by Celtic missionaries from Wales and Ireland. Their names survive as those of saints, though little is known about many of them. The Cornish are the same sort of Celts as the Welsh and Bretons, but the Celtic field system makes the Duchy look different from England. The Celtic saints were hermits who lived in beehive cells and are said to have recited the Psalms waist-deep in cold streams. The crosses of their age survive, and so does the siting of their churches, for the parochial system came late to Cornwall, and the church on the site of a Celtic hermit’s cell is often remote from the chief village in the parish. It is in the larger villages that one finds the chapels of Methodism, which has made as deep an impression on Cornwall as it has on Wales.
The old Cornish churches are rugged and windswept, and their charm is in their storm-resisting construction and their lichen-crusted texture. The Cornish historian T. S. Attlee (who contributed to an earlier edition of this book) thought that the rather unenterprising nature of Cornish churches, which were nearly all rebuilt or added to on the same pattern in the 15th century, was for two main reasons. The first reason was that the local stone was hard to work. Cornwall is deficient in lime and so the mason used mud, and walls had therefore to be kept low. Roofs had to be barrel-vaulted so as to distribute their weight evenly along the walls. This sort of roof suited a boat-building people and their tools – the adze and spokeshave. Hence Cornishmen never reached realization of wall and window, voids and solids, as a composition. They stuck at the stage of regarding them as an aggregate of lumps with holes left in it, as did their Celtic forebears. The second reason was that most Cornishmen made their living from the sea, so they saw no pattern in town and village, as for instance did sheep and wool masters who lived off the surface of the land. So the true village church can only be found far inland, as at Altarnun, Blisland, St Neot and Bodmin.
ALTARNUN: ST NONNA – two of the richly carved and highly characterful bench-ends; the one on the left shows a musician with a viola-like instrument, the one on the right portrays a jester
ALTARNUN † St Nonna
7m/11km W. of Launceston
OS SX222813 GPS 50.6046N, 4.5129W
Large, cathedral-like 15th-century church with lofty tower, it contains a fine display of 16th-century bench-ends by a known carver, Robert Daye. There is a huge Norman font of local type, 17th-century Communion rails extending across chancel and aisles, and a noble rood screen. Early 17th-century panels on the E. wall depict the Holy Communion and the Crucifixion.
BLISLAND † St Protus and St Hyacinth
4m/6km N.E. of Bodmin
OS SX100731 GPS 50.5270N, 4.6815W
The village of old granite and slate houses has a green with ash trees on it. The church, with a 15th-century tower made of enormous blocks of local moorland granite, looks out over a steep wooded valley. It has two transepts, a S. aisle and two chancel chapels. The old carved wagon roofs remain throughout, and the nave floor is of slate; the walls are white; a few old carved bench-ends survive; otherwise there are chairs. The Georgian wine-glass pulpit was restored by F. C. Eden, and virtually all the amazingly rich screen with loft which extends the whole width of the church, a blaze of red and gold and green and white, with a rood over its centre, is his. The screen gives to this weather-beaten village building, with its 15th-century S. arcade of granite sloping this way and that, an unforgettable sense of joy and mystery. Through the delicate tracery of the screen may be glimpsed splendid altars by Sir Ninian Comper and harmonious windows by F. C. Eden. As a restoration and even improvement on a medieval church, this holy and peaceful place on the edge of Bodmin Moor can hardly be bettered in the kingdom.
BLISLAND: ST PROTUS AND ST HYACINTH – the interior is a mix of the highly decorative and the rustic, the panels of the wagon roofs reminiscent of fishing nets stretching over the nave
BODMIN † St Petroc
26m/42km W. of Plymouth
OS SX073670 GPS 50.4714N, 4.7167W
The largest parish church in Cornwall, the lower part of the tower is Norman; otherwise the structure is mainly late medieval. Though the interior was much refurbished in Victorian times, it retains its old wagon roofs and a grand Norman font of local type, with severe-looking angels at the corners. Note the splendid table-tomb in black Catacleuse stone of Thomas Vyvyan, 1533, Prior of Bodmin and titular Bishop of Megara, a delightful blend of Gothic and Renaissance decoration.
BREAG † St Breaca
3m/4km W. of Helston
OS SW618284 GPS 50.1084N, 5.3320W
A fine 15th-century granite church, with buttressed W. tower carved with gargoyles. Medieval wall-paintings portray saints Ambrose, Christopher, Corentine and Hilary, and there is a Warning to Sabbath Breakers. A 3rd-century Roman milestone is preserved within the church, and in the churchyard is a badly weathered Saxon cross head.
CHACEWATER † St Paul
4m/6km N.E. of Redruth
OS SW750440 GPS 50.2538N, 5.1565W
A church was built here in 1828, repaired in 1886, greatly damaged by lightning in that same year, and entirely rebuilt (except the tower) by Edmund Sedding in 1892. The church is a few yards S. of the main Truro–Redruth road on a steep knoll. The tower, a gaunt shaft, bare of windows except in the uppermost of four lightly indicated stages, is impressive. Inside, the church is remarkable for the colour of the unplastered walls of local stone, buff, grey, yellow and brown setting off effectively the shallow seawater-green of the octagonal shafts of Polyphant stone and granite arches. The nave has a wagon roof, 43 feet high, the aisles lean-to roofs. An arched recess in the E. wall provides a bent eyebrow to the five-light E. window, whose bright stained glass comes from St Mary’s, Truro. There are lancets in the clerestory and square-headed windows in the aisle walls which have shallow recesses inside and corresponding projections without. A satisfying sense that Sedding here knew what effect he wanted to get; and got it.
GUNWALLOE: ST WINWALOE – tucked in among the dunes, the church appears to have been washed in with the tide; it houses an intriguing screen (above left), Byzantine in style
FOWEY † St Fimbarrus
8m/12km E. of St Austell
OS SX125517 GPS 50.3354N, 4.6357W
Built in the mid-14th century, it was greatly altered and enlarged in the 15th, when the clerestory was added – a rarity in Cornwall. The tower is the second tallest in the county. Inside is a wonderfully carved 15th-century wagon roof, an unfinished Norman font, a pulpit fashioned of wood salvaged from a Spanish galleon, and 17th-century Rashleigh monuments.
GOLANT † St Sampson
2m/3km N. of Fowey
OS SX120551 GPS 50.3663N, 4.6440W
This snug little church, consecrated in 1509, occupies an airy situation on height above the Fowey River; trim, stiff box pews, extremely uncomfortable, recall the fidgets of Gus and Flora in Henry Kingsley’s 1861 novel, Ravenshoe. There are three-sided altar rails and fragments of 16th-century glass.
GUNWALLOE † St Winwaloe
3m/4km S. of Helston
OS SW660205 GPS 50.0390N, 5.2690W
Romantically sited alone near the sea, with a detached tower built into the rock; St Winwaloe is 14th- and 15th-century and typical of the area. By the N. and S. doors are the remains of a screen with attractive tracery and figure-painting of eight Apostles depicted in a Moorish style (restored in 1977). The screen is said to have been made from wreckage wood of ‘The St Anthony of Lisbon (or Padua)’, which sunk off the coast in 1526 while en route from Flanders to Portugal. St Winwaloe is a gently restored, unforgettable place.
KILKHAMPTON † St James the Great
4m/6km N.E. of Bude
OS SS252113 GPS 50.8751N, 4.4851W
A large church in the village centre, it was mostly rebuilt in the 16th century, but retaining an elaborate Norman doorway. Lofty arcades of seven bays with tall granite monolithic columns; rich wagon roofs and the largest collection of carved bench-ends in Cornwall. The organ is by Father Smith, the nucleus of which is thought to have come from Westminster Abbey. The Grenvilles were responsible for the 16th-century restoration, and in the Grenville Chapel is a particularly grandiose monument to Sir Bevil Grenville.
LANDULPH † St Leonard & St Dilpe
3m/4km N. of Saltash
OS SX431615 GPS 50.4324N, 4.2104W
In a sylvan setting on the River Tamar between two inlets, the church has a well-carved rood screen, bench-ends, manorial pew of the Lower family, and monument to Theodore Palaeologus, descendant of the last Christian emperor of Greece. Plaster walls and slate floors remain.
LANEAST † St Sidwell & St Gulvat
7m/11km W. of Launceston
OS SX227839 GPS 50.6286N, 4.5069W
Laneast should be visited first among Cornish churches, as it gets one’s eye in for the general run of them. Originally 12th-century cruciform, the fabric was enlarged and refashioned in the 15th century. Set in a secluded nook not far from the Polyphant quarry, the church exhibits the standard Cornish arrangement at its best: four centered arches of arcade with a wagon roof. The pulpit has earlier 15th-century carved panels, and the bench-ends are mutilated. There are extensive if fragmented remains of 15th-century painted glass. In spring the surrounding churchyard is a mass of wild daffodils.
LANLIVERY † St Brevita
2m/3km W. of Lostwithiel
OS SX079590 GPS 50.3999, 4.7031W
Standing high with a lofty granite tower overlooking the Fowey Valley as it widens towards the estuary, and in spite of considerable renewal, this is one of the great churches of Cornwall. As usual, a cruciform fabric was refashioned in the 15th century, when an aisle replaced the S. transept. The masonry is granite ashlar masonry, there is an unspoilt wagon roof in the S. aisle, and a ringers’ rhyme board in the tower.
LANTEGLOS-BY-FOWEY † St Wyllow
1m/2km E. of Fowey
OS SX144515 GPS 50.3344N, 4.6083W
St Wyllow is difficult of access, both by the ferry across the Fowey River and the narrow, winding and precipitous lanes from Lostwithiel. It is a 14th-century church, refashioned in the 15th century. The font is 13th century, and there are early 16th-century bench-ends, and a 15th-century altar tomb with brass. The church is remarkable for the very effective arrangement at the W. end where the N. and S. aisles are prolonged to embrace the tower, to which they give arched access. Edmund Sedding gave a graphic description of the condition of the church before he undertook its restoration in 1909, and it remains an outstanding example of careful and conservative repair – the dilapidated roof with decay arrested, the leaning walls stabilized in the act. The panelling from family pews, removed from the E. end of the church and erected at the W., is interesting and unusual.
LAUNCELLS † St Swithin
2m/3km E. of Bude
OS SS243057 GPS 50.8243N, 4.4947W
In a wooded valley, this is the only Cornish church wholly undisturbed by Victorian ‘restoration’. Outside it is like other churches in the district, but the interior comes as a welcome surprise; old plaster on the walls, ancient roofs intact; the finest bench-ends in Cornwall; box pews, pulpit in Strawberry Hill Gothic, three-sided altar rails, reredos and organ case; granite and Polyphant arcades; Norman font with 17th-century cover.
LAUNCESTON † St Mary Magdalene
20m/32km N.W. of Plymouth
OS SX332846 GPS 50.6378N, 4.3601W
The church was erected by Sir Henry Trecarrel in the early 16th century; the tower is older. It is chiefly remarkable for a profusion of carved ornament on its exterior – painstaking work in inappropriate material, because granite, with its coarse and conglomerate structure, does not allow precision in delineation. A recumbent figure of St Mary Magdalene in a niche under the E. window may be seen to be covered with pebbles thrown up by the local people. The vicar says that the old custom is to stand with your back to the figure and try to throw a stone so that it will land on the back of the recumbent figure. This is supposed to bring you good luck for the rest of the week. The scraped interior has an early 16th-century pulpit, easily the best in Cornwall; elsewhere are 17th- and 18th-century monuments, carved with Royal Arms, and the organ case is early 18th-century.
LINKINHORNE † St Melor
8m/13km S. of Launceston
OS SX319735 GPS 50.5376N, 4.3728W
The noble 16th-century granite tower of this spacious church, set in a remote village, is one of the highest in Cornwall. Inside the church are wagon roofs (that of the nave with some original colour), a large wall-painting of the Works of Mercy, mural monuments of 1688 and 1735, and memorial slate slabs of local type. A holy well in late medieval granite structure can be found in a nearby field to the southwest of the church.
LAUNCESTON: ST MARY MAGDALENE – rugged Cornish granite, carved in a rustic, no-nonsense style
LOSTWITHIEL † St Bartholomew
5m/8km S.E. of Bodmin
OS SX104597 GPS 50.4074N, 4.6691W
Both the tower and the body of the church are different in character from the usual Cornish type. The tower and lantern spire – of Breton influence – make a most satisfying composition when viewed from the S.W. There are short, stout buttresses to the lowest stage; narrow lancets in the next; little louvred openings just below the transition by bold set-offs from the square to the octagon; and, at the junction of tower and spire, eight traceried, gabled, unglazed window-like features, which successfully carry the vertical lines of the tower into the pyramid of the spire. Inside the church, the arcade on piers without capitals lacks emphasis, and the little irregularly spaced clerestory windows are insignificant. But the great five-light E. window is fine. (Some historians consider the church French, both in style and in stone employed.) The c. 13th-century Pentewan font is outstanding.
LAUNCELLS: ST SWITHUN – thankfully overlooked by the restoring eye of Victorians
MADRON † St Maddern
2m/3km N.W. of Penzance
OS SW453318 GPs 50.1316N, 5.5647W
The mother church of Penzance looks at its best in hydrangea time, when it stands amid a blaze of colour looking towards St Michael’s Mount. Though now mainly late medieval, its core is far older; on the whole it has fared better than many of its neighbours, and the interior is quite atmospheric. Wagon roofs; a rood screen richly carved with 16th-century base and modern upper part; carved bench-ends; a coloured alabaster panel from a reredos; early 17th-century brass and 18th-century altar rails.
MAWGAN-IN-MENEAGE † St Mawgan
3m/4km S.E. of Helston
OS SW709250 GPS 50.0817N, 5.2029W
A glorious situation above colour-washed cottages on the slope of a beech-covered vale; the church is of granite, 13th–15th-century with a three-stage tower topped with fine finials; a good wagon roof covers the nave. The recumbent crusader effigy in the S. transept is a member of the Carminow family. Also in the S. transept is a hagioscope. Other monuments include those to the Vyvyan family.
MAWGAN-IN-PYDAR
† St Mawgan and St Nicholas
4m/7km N.E. of Newquay
OS SW872659 GPS 50.4547N, 4.9987W
This mainly Perpendicular church stands in a picture book setting on a slope running down to the River Menalhyl. The embattled tower with stair turret stands to the S., adjoining a broad S. aisle that runs the full length of the church. The carved screen separating the S. aisle and nave from the chancel bears the Arms of Arundel quartering those of Carminow. Set in the chancel floor is a brass effigy of a vested priest, and at the E. end of the S. aisle are brasses depicting George Arundel and his wife Elizabeth. In the churchyard, mounted on a stout base, stands a lantern cross, whose square head contains bold carvings of the Annunciation and the Crucifixion. Behind is a memorial in the shape of a boat’s stern to 11 seamen “who were drifted ashore in a boat frozen to death, at Beacon Cove”. Butterfield restored the church well in 1861–2.
MORWENSTOW
† St Morwenna and St John the Baptist
6m/10km N. of Bude
OS SS205153 GPS 50.9093N, 4.5545W
Near cliffs high above the sea: the poet R. S. Hawker was vicar here from 1834 to 1875. The N. arcade is Norman, with crude but strong carvings of heads, both men’s and animals’; the S. porch and doorway are also Norman, and interestingly carved. The walls are scraped. The arcade arches bear carved spandrels including an antelope, a monk and a hippopotamus. The carved and painted rood screen was re-assembled by Hawker from fragments of 16th- and 17th-century carving and given cast-iron tracery. A short walk takes one to Hawker’s driftwood hut, where he spent time with Charles Kingsley and Alfred Lord Tennyson.
MULLION † St Mellanus
5m/8km S. of Helston
OS SW678192 GPS 50.0276N, 5.2421W
Set on a windy hill above the cove, long and low in the Cornish manner, this is a mainly late medieval church. The inside was restored and adorned by F. C. Eden, who designed the screen and loft, S. aisle, glass and altars. There are wagon roofs and many old bench-ends.
MYLOR † St Mylor
2m/3km N. of Falmouth
OS SW820352 GPS 50.1770N, 5.0542W
Delightfully set just above a creek, St Mylor is Norman in origin and refashioned later; it was ‘restored’ by Victorians. There is a 16th-century carved screen and pulpit. The best that happened during the Victorian restoration was the discovery of a 17-foot Celtic cross, in use at the time as a makeshift flying buttress. The churchyard is full of seafarers, and in a separate area, a graveyard for men and boys from the training ship HMS Ganges, moored nearby for 30 years, and a byword for harshness.
PAR † St Mary the Virgin
By St Blazey Gate, Biscovey
4m/6km E. of St Austell
OS SX058535 GPS 50.3502N, 4.7309W
This is G. E. Street’s first church, 1848–9, when he was just 24, and among his most successful. Early English predominates in a dramatic square tower with broached octagonal belfry and stone spire, perhaps inspired by Lostwithiel, which early called forth Street’s admiration. Simple materials and the starkest lancet style give this church a freshness all its own. Inside there are vistas, depth and mystery, and delightful Wailes glass.
PROBUS † St Probus & St Grace
5m/8km N.E. of Truro
OS SW899477 GPS 50.2920N, 4.9510W
The magnificent early 16th-century tower is the tallest in the Duchy; Somerset rather than Cornish in character. Emphatically moulded at the base, its soaring lines have a firm foundation. Lavishly ornamented on granite, there is enough plain surface to escape any impression of over-elaboration. The interior, though without clerestory, is more lofty than most. The arcades between nave and aisles are composed of slender and graceful piers, delicately moulded between shafts and crowned with chaplet capitals. The three great E. windows are impressive, and, on turning to the W., one is delighted by the lofty arch into the tower and the vision of the tall window through it: there is an early 16th-century brass and mural monument to Thomas Hawkins, 1766.
TREBETHERICK: ST ENEDOC – pleasantly sunk into the coastal landscape, in the middle of a golf course, Betjeman’s final resting place has fitting eccentric charm
ST ANTHONY-IN-ROSELAND
† St Anthony
On the opposite side of the R. Percuil estuary
from St Mawes
OS SW854320 GPS 50.1495N, 5.0040W
Churches Conservation Trust
St Anthony’s stands behind Place House, home to generations of the Spry family, tucked down below the headland in a wooded cave, looking across the creek to St Mawes. Despite an extensive 19th-century restoration, the church has retained its original medieval cruciform form. Pevsner thought it “the best example in the county of what a parish church was like in the 12th and 13th centuries”: the Norman doorway is from Plympton Priory. The amateur architect the Rev. Clement Carlyon oversaw the 19th-century restoration, rebuilding the chancel, installing wooden roofs, floor tiling and stained glass. The carved ‘woodwork’ at the top of the walls is tin stained to resemble wood. The N. transept contains monuments to the Spry family.
ST BURYAN: ST BURIANA – the rood beam is a riot of wild animals and imaginary beasts
ST BURYAN † St Buriana
4m/6km E. of Land’s End
OS SW409257 GPS 50.0750N, 5.6224W
Its lofty tower rising above the village square is a landmark; the church is mainly 15th-century reconstruction. The rood screen, of Devon type, stretches the width of the church, with a richly carved rood beam above that graphically depicts animals and mythical beasts hunting, fighting and devouring one another. The screen, which has traces of original colour, had been taken down during an early 19th-century restoration, but was gradually pieced back together – the central section between 1880 and 1909, the Lady Chapel section a few years later by Belgian refugees; the northern end was restored in 1922 in memoriam to the dead of the First World War. A 13th-century font rests on a 15th-century base.
ST CLEMENT † St Clement
2m/3km E. of Truro
OS SW850438 GPS 50.2557N, 5.0167W
Whitewashed cottages with bushes of mauve and pink hydrangeas form two sides of a little forecourt and hold in the angle a slate-hung lych gate. On the walls of the lych gate, inside, are fixed slate headstones, and in the churchyard are many others, all worth scrutiny. Their lettering is free and sinewy, diversified with endearing errors in spelling and spacing. Most have ornament, fanciful and cut with precision. Inscriptions show originality in sentiment and rhyme. The church was reconstructed (except the tower) in 1865; and it was very well done. The roofs of nave and aisle are carried on 32 arch-braced principals four feet apart. The E. part of the nave roof is top-lighted by a course of glass instead of slate each side of the ridge; an unusual expedient. The glazing of the windows is all of the same character – clear glass leaded in elaborate geometrical patterns with borders and lozenges of emerald-green, hot red, midsummer-sky-blue, gold and violet. While a single window may strike one as garish, the sparkle and shimmer of the whole is extremely pleasing. The device of the Foul Anchor, which the Admiralty shares as an emblem with St Clement, appears more than once in windows and walls, appropriate to two admirals and a naval lieutenant commemorated in the church.
ST COLUMB MAJOR † St Columba
6m/10km W. of Newquay
OS SW912636 GPS 50.4358N, 4.9403W
In the 19th century Butterfield drew up plans to turn St Columba into the cathedral church of Cornwall, but the church was pipped at the post in 1876 by Truro. Nevertheless this remains a fine church, if much, and not altogether well, altered. The tall Perpendicular tower is imposing, with the first stage pierced by two archways, possibly to allow access to the nearby medieval college. Interesting carved 15th-century bench-ends depict a variety of figures, including a dancing bear and a musical monkey. The screen is Victorian, replacing an earlier Tudor screen removed at the whim of an incumbent. Inexplicably, a fine 16th-century pulpit was replaced in the early 20th century. The overall external impression is elegant, with fine Perpendicular and Geometric tracery in all the E. windows.
ST ENDELLION † St Endelienta
4m/6km N. of Wadebridge
OS SW997786 GPS 50.5733N, 4.8301W
The church stands almost alone on a hill-top, a long way from its nearest village, Trelights, and its nearest town, Port Isaac. One steps down from the lichened granite exterior into a light and airy building with two aisles, slate floors, grey walls and light oak benches of a modern and impressively simple design. There are three single altars, that in the S. aisle being a 15th-century table-tomb of blackish-blue Catacleuse stone, possibly the shrine of St Endelienta. The font is Norman. The glass is unstained; the old roofs survive. Indeed, the church gives the impression that it goes on praying day and night, whether there are people in it or not. St Endelienta’s touching hymn by Nicholas Rosscarrock, c. 1550, is pasted into the hymn books. In the tower is a Georgian ringers’ rhyme on a painted board. It is a prebendal church which somehow escaped all reformations. The low slate houses for the prebendaries survive around the church.
ST GERMANS † St Germanus of Auxerre
8m/12km S.E. of Liskeard
OS SX359577 GPS 50.3967N, 4.3096W
Different from other churches in Cornwall, it is of monastic origin and was attached to an Augustinian priory founded in the 12th century; earlier St Germans was the seat of the bishops of the S.W. before Crediton and Exeter. It consists of the nave and S. aisle of what must have been an imposing structure. The W. front has a magnificent Norman doorway with Art Nouveau ironwork by Henry Wilson, and is flanked by two towers. The N. tower is 13th-century and octagonal, and the S. tower 15th-century and four-sided. Interior scraped and refurbished by St Aubyn, 1887–94, and interesting rather for its architecture than its contents. Inside is a monument to Edward Eliot, 1722, by Rysbrack, dramatically lit, and a fine Burne-Jones ten-light window at the E. end.
ST IVES: ST IA – on the harbour’s edge, the church stands proud in the pleasant seaside town, its tower one of the tallest in the county
ST IVES † St Ia
St Andrews Street
OS SW518405 GPS 50.2125N, 5.4799W
Built in 1410–34, St Ia is a prominent landmark among the narrow roads that make up the heart of St Ives. Like the town itself, it bustles with visitors in the summer. It has a rather lovely interior, with good carving throughout: on the capitals of the sandstone piers, as well as in the woodwork – deeply carved on the bench-ends, more delicate in the choir stalls and the 1930s parclose screen. Best of all is the wagon roof, decorated with vines and other patterns and populated by sculpted figures of saints, apostles and angels. Much of the woodwork was painted and gilded in the 1960s, with some further restoration to paintwork in the 1990s. In the Lady Chapel is Barbara Hepworth’s Madonna and Child, a tender sculpture created in memory of her son Paul, who was killed in active service with the RAF in 1953.
ST JUST-IN-PENWITH † St Just
4m/6km N. of Land’s End
OS SW371314 GPS 50.1247N, 5.6788W
St Just-in-Penwith is a mostly 15th-century Perpendicular church, with stout square tower, battlements and pinnacles – a no-nonsense church for a town rooted in tin mining. The heavily restored interior, back to uneven stone walls, contains an early wall-painting of St George and the Dragon. Good atmosphere, though: the light a salty haze across the cool, gloomy interior.
ST JUST-IN-ROSELAND † St Just
2m/3km N. of St Mawes
OS SW848356 GPS 50.1821N, 5.0150W
A 13th-century church overlooking the tidal creek of the R. Percuil, more to be appreciated for its setting than anything else. The churchyard slopes steeply down: it is adorned with luxurious sub-tropical plants, and the path is lined with granite slabs bearing biblical quotations.
ST JUST-IN-PENWITH: ST JUST – a sea-salty air pervades the interior, which, though scraped, has a compelling atmosphere that seems part of the windblown landscape on the western headland
ST KEVERNE † St Keverne
9m/15km S.E. of Helston
OS SW791212 GPS 50.0507N, 5.0867W
Dominates the village square, with its good tower and spire. The spacious 15th-century interior has a wall-painting of St Christopher on the N. wall. There are many memorials to local families who served in the Honorable East India Company, early 16th-century bench-ends, and in the churchyard the Mohegan Stone, an engraved Cornish cross.
ST LEVAN † St Levan
6m/10km S.W. of Penzance
OS SW380222 GPS 50.0423N, 5.6602W
Possibly 13th century, the church is cut into the slopes above Porthchapel. The two-stage tower is 15th-century, embattled and pinnacled. The six-bay arcade is supported on monolithic rough cut granite pillars, and the roof has gilded and painted bosses. The Victorian pews made use of older bench-ends with shepherds, eagles and a hatted jester. J. D. Sedding did the Victorian restoration.
ST MINVER † St Menefreda
3m/4km N.W. of Wadebridge
OS SW964770 GPS 50.5580N, 4.8747W
In an attractive wooded church-town, the church is mainly 13th–15th-century, with a tall octagonal spire; the octagonal slate pillars and arches of the N. aisle are Norman. The granite pillars and arches of the S. aisle date from the 15th century, when the church was enlarged. The tower and spire were there before this, but became dilapidated and were rebuilt in 1875. The porch was built in the 14th century and probably rebuilt in the 15th. The carved bench-ends are 15th-century too – mostly secular figures, and one of Henry VIII. The rich Victorian E. window is by Michael O’Connor.
ST NEOT – filled with richly coloured medieval glass, this north aisle window depicts 12 scenes from the life of St Neot
ST NEOT † St Neot
5m/8km N.W. of Liskeard
OS SX186678 GPS 50.4824N, 4.5582W
A slate and granite village in a wooded valley below Bodmin Moor and dominated by the church with handsome Decorated tower and buttressed 16th-century double-aisled exterior. This is the Fairford of the West and has 15 windows of medieval glass sensitively renewed by W. Hedgeland, 1829; the most interesting show the lives of St Neot and St George. There are old roofs and a rood screen. The walls are scraped.
ST WINNOW † St Winnow
2m/3km S. of Lostwithiel
OS SX115569 GPS 50.3824N, 4.6522W
A lovely situation on the Fowey River, which laps the churchyard wall. There are woods in tiers across the wide river, an old stone boathouse and, by the church, a farm that was once the rectory. There is a fine early 16th-century rood screen restored by E. H. Sedding and a splendid E. window to the S. aisle filled with 15th- and 16th-century glass, whose wealth of imagery may well occupy the wandering attention of the congregation. The old stained glass depicting the Crucifixion, in the E. window of the chancel, is to be noted; also the shape of the arches of the arcade – slightly stilted.
TINTAGEL † St Materiana
4m/6km N.W. of Camelford
OS SX050884 GPS 50.6630N, 4.7597W
All alone on the open cliffs above the Atlantic, it still retains an atmosphere of early Christianity. A large Norman cruciform church refashioned in the 13th century and later, it retains its original plan. The scraped interior contains a late 15th-century rood screen and Norman font decorated with grotesques. The iron hinges to the N. door are 12th-century, and there is an ancient stone altar in the vestry.
TREBETHERICK † St Enedoc
By the mouth of the R. Camel, near Trebetherick, 6m/10km N.W. of Wadebridge
OS SW931772 GPS 50.5582N, 4.9216W
A small, crooked 13th-century spire peers myopically through the grassy hillocks on the golf course, and over Daymer Bay. St Enedoc is the place where John Betjeman himself is buried, his grave marked by a delightful slate headstone beside the gate. The church is 12th-century, but most is now from the 15th century. The restored interior, dark and ancient, was rescued from drifting sands in the 19th century.
TUCKINGMILL † All Saints
1m/2km N.E. of Camborne
OS SW657407 GPS 50.2201N, 5.2855W
A strong church suitable for this former tin-mining area, it was built for the Bassett family, in Romanesque style, by J. Hayward of Exeter, 1843–5. A whitewashed stone interior, with large granite chancel arch and arcade form a rather plain interior. The glass is by Robert Beer of Exeter.
