Betjeman’s Best British Churches. Richard Surman
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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