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Morwenstow is a glorious, easily missed little village just across the border from Devon into Cornwall. For centuries this was a wreckers’ village, a place that made much of its living by salvaging ships that foundered in the rough seas off the coast. It has often been said that the law of salvage, which allowed goods to be taken by locals only if all those on board the ship had perished, led to dreadful acts of murder, and no doubt, in desperate times such acts were committed here.

Today, those visitors who stumble across this delightful place come in search of lovely walks along the cliffs to Duckpool, or they explore the coves and bays of this lonely coast.

This is the parish once made famous by the Reverend Stephen Hawker (1803–75), who invented the harvest festival ceremony that most churches and schools now celebrate each year. He was also a poet and an eccentric, who clambered down the most dangerous cliffs to collect the bodies of drowned sailors and make sure they were properly buried.

Hawker had something of the medieval hermit about him, and the tiny hut where he contemplated the world – and, no doubt, eternity – still exists. Parson Hawker wrote ‘The Song of the Western Men’, the hymn that has become the Cornish national anthem. Its stirring verses begin: ‘And shall Trelawney die? Then twenty thousand Cornishmen shall know the reason why.’

SECRETS

While you’re there

Visit the VICARAGE where Hawker commissioned a local builder to make his chimney stacks in the shape of church towers!

Secret place to stay

BELL BUOY COTTAGE, Morwenstow 0844 847 1115. This 18th-century thatched cottage enjoys its own secluded south-facing garden, and has been tastefully refurbished to retain beams, low ceilings and an inglenook fireplace.

The vicarage at Morwenstow has an array of unusual chimneys.