Betjeman’s Best British Churches. Richard Surman
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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,