I've been a bit lax with reports of excursions on here of late for which my apologies. I tend to put a few pictures over on Instagram <<<< and move on without really paying more attention to the finer detail, so expect a few day trips to feature again here.
Apart from meeting some wonderful people, one of the things we have loved most about sharing our little corner of the Tamar Valley with visitors to Tinker's Cott this year has been sharing some of our favourite places too. Over the years we have accumulated a great repository of guide books and information which we have put on the shelves for our guests, because our location on the boundary between Devon and Cornwall makes exploring both counties on day trips entirely feasible. We can offer suggestions and ideas if people want them, and also good stopping places along the way...witness this trip.
Bookhound and I have been making the most of the fine autumn weather and quieter roads to get out and about, and on Friday we headed up to North Cornwall with Alex Woodcock's book King of Dust in hand, to explore a church or two. There are umpteen routes north, either faster roads or country lanes, but perhaps the 'best' (from my point of view) is the road past Cowslip Workshops. As we turn left for Egloskerry at the top of St Stephen's Hill in Launceston it's time to sow the seed...
'We could stop at Cowslip for coffee/lunch if you fancy it...' I suggest.
This allows just enough time for Bookhound to realise it is an excellent idea before we see the Cowslip Workshop sign at the top of the farm lane and down we go.
Suitably fortified, and with a browse in the shop and catch up with Emma who works there (and whose baby that I used to put on my scales as a newborn is now doing his A Levels) we headed off the beaten track, along leaf-strewn country lanes and through tiny Cornish villages towards Bude, and then further north along the Atlantic coast to the tiny church of Morwenstow. I'm sure I've taken you there before, but that was in a previous life when the Romanesque was dead to me whilst now of course, thanks to Alex Woodcock, I am an expert.
There can be no more beautiful setting for a church than that of St Morwenna.
Set in a wooded hollow with a deep valley leading seductively to the Atlantic ocean beyond, the South West coast path winding up the side of the cliff, and on a day when there is ne'er a cloud in the sky, it is quite breathtaking.
It is said that back in the day of sailing vessels, if a ship was caught inside Hartland Point with an off-shore wind it was doomed to founder here (thank you to Philip Martyn's excellent little history of the church for that nugget) and the churchyard at St Morwenna's is a sad testament to that. The eccentric but much-loved Reverend Hawker, incumbent from 1834 - 1874, took it upon himself to recover the bodies and provide a Christian burial to any sailors who drowned along the coast and there are indeed many graves to 'unknown sailors'. I can just imagine the atmosphere here in the teeth of gale, but can't begin to imagine the terror of being out at sea in one.
We wandered around the outside before going in through the Romanesque porch...
...stopping to admire the Romanesque font before looking at the Romanesque carvings on the Romanesque columns and I have to admit I was seriously impressed.
The font, dating back to 950 AD, and all I could wonder was 'how many babies'. Water for christenings is still drawn from the nearby St John's Well, as it always has been...
Then the columns, quarried from the local cliffs and dating to about 1130, glistening a sort of Neptune-y-sea-blue-green in the Cornish sunlight..
And then the twenty-six beakheads for which St Morwenna's is celebrated.
Bird and animal heads carved from the stone and looking for all the world as new and as crisp now as they day they were worked in the twelfth century. 'A dizzying array' as Alex Woodcock suggests...
Alex Woodcock also debates notions of the primitive, observing that the simple lines of these carvings could suggest a lack of sophistication and with it the assumption that rugged backwaters may know no better, nor command superior workmen. It is Alex Woodcock's own experience as a stonemason that swiftly puts such a notion to bed; mistakes are much easier to hide in the highly decorative and the ornamental than in the straight lines, flat surfaces and precise symmetrical curves of these carvings. Suggestions of a hippopotamus hiding somewhere led me here...though even I'm not quite sure how they knew of them in twelfth century Cornwall. Someone will tell me.
Patterns everywhere and almost a thousand years of history to embrace, and all encased in a single building; this visit was certainly a welcome escape from the news, an antidote to modern times and a reminder that we are but a speck...
It is good to see that churches like this are still living buildings...there were the service sheets for a thoroughly modern wedding wedding held last Saturday. The bride walked down the aisle to Eianaudi, the congregation sang One More Step, the couple walked out to Say a Little Prayer For Me, the church breathes on in new and creative ways. I'm guessing that quite soon the harvest celebrations will follow and so the round continues. There's nothing to beat a good belfry either (this looking upwards) and with a peal of six bells, just imagine that wedding day at St Morwenna's and all those that had gone before.
The guide book (thank you E.W.F. Tomlin) suggests that church towers often doubled as look-out posts during the middle ages and were especially important 'in sea-girt' parishes, though they could also be seen as a risk by the powers that be for the assistance they could provide to hostile shipping, or to summon rebels (a sort of medieval Facebook I suppose). Following the Cornish Rebellion of 1549 (Prayer Book issues) when 4000 Cornishmen were killed as they marched towards Exeter, a very close eye was kept on the Morwenstow bells. It seems the bells stayed but minus their clappers (a bit like confiscating your phone charging cable). All six bells are inscribed but perhaps Reverend Hawker's Treble speaks the truest...
'Come to thy God in time
Come to thy God at last'
Plenty of stained glass to please the eye too, and on a sunny day can the sight or the colours be bettered...
Opposite the church is the famous Rectory Farm Tearooms, and we had fully intended afternoon tea as a sort of late anniversary early birthday treat (I'll be the bingo caller's 'Clickety-Click' later this week), except neither of us felt we could do it justice having already 'done' Cowslip. No matter, this will still be a wonderful day out on a cold winter's day, because seeing these places in all seasons is always fascinating and tea will always be waiting.
Meanwhile, if you've had a good day excursion lately we'd love to know about it...
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