Bere Ferrers, Devon

As we arrived at St Andrew, open [Jenkins rating 2*], the heavens opened and this rather spoilt the visit for me; it was wet, grey and very poor light and this had a negative impact for me. That said it contains some fantastic glass, C14th and modern, two monumental effigies to Reginald and William de Ferrers and a crude font. It's a shame we visited on such a gloomy late afternoon.

ST ANDREW. Low down, close to the estuary of the river Tavy. A church of considerable interest in that it belongs essentially to a period earlier than nearly all South Devon village churches. It consists of nave, long transepts, and chancel, plus S aisle, S porch, and S chancel-aisle. Its building history has not yet been sufficiently elucidated. The style of all but the aisle and porch points to two dates, c. 1300 and c. 1330, and the principal recorded date is the foundation of an Archpresbytery with an archpriest and four priests in 1333. The N transept arch and the recess in the N transept (both of blue stone) appear earliest. Of the windows some are cusped lancets or two-light cusped lancets with a pointed quatrefoil above, others are clearly Dec. Cf. also the three Piscinas and the Sedilia, and the W tower, thin and unbuttressed. Only the S aisle and chancel aisle (see the A-type piers and  the depressed moulded arches) and the two-storeyed S porch with a handsome ribbed ceiling are later. - FONT. Circular, Norman, perhaps made up of two capitals. If so, they would be evidence of a previous Norman church. -  ALTAR-STONE. A curious blue stone plate behind the present altar, decorated with rose tracery on a honeycomb ground. Can it be part of the original decoration of the chancel? - SCREEN. Only the Wainscoting remains. - BENCHES. Many, and not only bench ends as usual. Decorated with large, i.e. one-tier, blank traceried arches. - STAINED GLASS. A specially precious possession of the church. In the E window part of the early C14 glass. Christ seated in the centre Light, the Ferrers donor and his wife kneeling in the outer lights. Also figures of saints, less complete, and smaller fragments in the tracery. The colouring still with the glow which later medieval English glass so often lacks. - MONUMENTS. Excellent original white limestone recess in the N chancel wall, with big cusped arch under crocketed gable - no ogee details. Under the arch in the recess the slender (alas, poorly preserved) figures of a cross-legged knight and a lady wearing a wimple. The cusps end in fine heads; in the gable two censing angels. Such angels appear in St James’ Chapel, Exeter Cathedral, about 1290, the head cusps in the Richard de Stapleton monument at Exeter Cathedral of c. 1320. The effigies at Bere Ferrers may represent Sir William de Ferraris and his wife Matilda. - In the N transept another original recess, the arch of blue stone with the effigy of a cross-legged knight. - Also a dark grey free-standing tomb-chest with shields in Early Renaissance wreaths, said to be for Lord Willoughby de Broke, d. 1522. In the churchyard the tombstone of the elder Stothard, the artist-antiquarian.

BERE FERRERS. Attractively set on the Tavy estuary, it looks across the water to lovely woods. Its chief attraction is by the river, a 14th century church with one great treasure and much of interest and beauty. One of its great features is a fine sequence of windows showing the development from the simple 13th century lancet up to the great windows of the 15th century, and down to the debased 16th century style, like a history of the rise and fall of tracery.

The porch has carved bosses in its flat roof and a room above it, and the old font looks like part of a carved pillar. There are the roughly carved panels of the old screen with blurred figures of saints; benches hewn 500 years ago, some with traceried ends and with the De Ferrers arms; a big peephole; an old priest’s tombstone once used as a cottage doorstep; and a Tudor fireplace in the north transept. The old altar stone (ornamented with roses) is now a stepping-stone to the altar; behind the altar is another big stone (with tracery and three medallions) which may have been a part of a tombstone.

There is a huge marble tomb, with panelled sides and shields in wreaths, of the second Lord Willoughby de Broke, who died in 1522, and under an arch lies all that is left of a cross-legged knight with a lion at his feet. He is a de Ferrers from the church that stood here before this, one of the family whose castle next door has vanished save for an ivy-covered wall on a farm.

Under the canopy of an Easter sepulchre with nuns and monks on the arch lies a knight with his sword and a lady in a wimple believed to be William de Ferrers and his wife Matilda. He restored this church 600 years ago, and fittingly enough we see him again in its east window, the chief glory of the church. This fine window has the only stained glass here; and it is the oldest glass in Devon outside Exeter Cathedral, which has very little. It shows Sit William kneeling in a brown gown, with the church in his hand and a shield below; Christ seated in glory with His wounded hands raised to bless; Lady Matilda with a veil and a shield; and three figures of unknown people. Above them all are nine little roundels on a red background, with figures too small to be seen; and below them is a red and brown saint with a blue hat.

The window is a fine possession for a village, yet there was a day when it brought a little tragedy to this place. It was in 1821, when the antiquary Charles Stothard (who copied the Bayeux tapestry and wrote about it) fell from a ladder while making a tracing of this glass, and was killed. He was laid to rest outside the window, and a brass plate marks the spot where he fell. A brass tablet on these walls tells of another tragedy a century later, when ten men from New Zealand, on their way to join their comrades on Salisbury Plain, were killed here while getting out of the train.

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St Germans, Cornwall

St Germanus, open [3* Jenkins rating], is essentially a Norman building although you are hard pressed to tell externally until you reach the splendid west door. The interior is, or was when we visited, gloomy, dank, atmospheric and reveals its Norman heritage. Unfortunately the combination of an overcast late afternoon and its position in a semi hollow meant my photographs of the Burne Jones east window all failed.

Processing my photographs showed what a complex building this is - more of a priory church than your run of the mill parish church. The highlights are the aforesaid chancel window, an early Rysbrack monument, an interesting font, the atmospheric interior and the west doorway and its fish handle.

St Germans with the adjoining Port Eliot is of outstanding interest in its architectural, historical, and picturesque aspects. The visitor to the church can appreciate only the first two of them; to appreciate the third would mean access to the private grounds of Port Eliot. The house stands on part of the site of the priory, separated from and further N than the church; in the Middle Ages the whole was one group. For the house, see Port Eliot.

ST GERMANUS. The church was the cathedral of Cornwall in Anglo-Saxon times. Bishops are known between 931 and c.1040, but no architectural fragments remain. In 1050 the bishopric, with that of Crediton, was merged in a new diocese, with its see at Exeter. Between 1161 and 1184 Bishop Bartholomew reorganized St Germans as a priory of Augustinian canons. Of this building, finally consecrated only in 1261, so much is still in existence that no other church in Cornwall can vie with it as an example of Norman planning. The Norman building had two W towers, a nave of 102 ft, two narrow aisles with lean-to roofs, and probably a chancel, but no transept and no crossing tower. Of the E part nothing is left. The W front, however, stands complete up to roof height. The aisle width and height can be read from traces against the E walls of the S tower inside and the N tower outside. Of the nave the first two s bays survive. It had a clerestory with windows in line with the spandrels, not, as usual, with the apexes of the arches (cf. the upper N wall of the S aisle), a motif which such Gothic churches as Fowey, Lostwithiel, and Callington in Cornwall, and North Petherwin in Devon took up.

The W front is uncommonly plain and powerful for its date. With the wide flat buttresses of the two towers it is more reminiscent of Franco-Norman work of a hundred years earlier (say St Etienne at Caen) than of the livelier Transitional which more central parts of England practised towards the end of the C12. Between the towers is on the ground floor a porch under a gable (with the rare feature of a cross), and on the upper floor three round-headed windows with the centre one higher than the others. These windows are provided with nook-shafts. Higher up the S tower has four small Norman windows towards W and E and otherwise Perp work. The N tower turns into octagonal shape on the second storey (cf. Jumiéges) and ends in a C13 octagon. The W portal under the gable is unrivalled in Cornwall. It is of seven orders, built of elvan from Tartan Down near Landrake. Three of the orders and voussoirs have uncommonly vivid zigzag; whether the innermost order possessed different ornaments cannot now be said, as the material has weathered very badly. The hood mould of the outer arch exhibits foliage decoration.

Inside, the ground floors of the towers were open to nave and aisles by transitional pointed arches of simplest design: two steps with an inserted roll moulding (cf. Morwenstow). The capitals of the clustered wall-shafts are mostly scalloped, but some also of a very primitive ‘Ionic’ kind. On the first floor the towers were connected by a gallery, as indicated by the two remaining doors. The staircase of the S tower is the only Cornish staircase of Norman date. In the nave, the two bays which are preserved have thick, short, circular piers, with square scalloped capitals and pointed arches of plain two-step moulding. The clerestory windows, which were discovered in 1904, have rich zigzag ornament.

With no more than these bays (and what has been re-used of Norman fragments in the other S bays after the collapse of the chancel in 1592) belonging to the original building of the C12 and C13, the interior of St Germans is now more interesting than inspiring. It is dominated by the late Middle Ages and the C19. The proportions, with the aisle 6 ft wider than the nave, are unhappy, the C13 chancel (consecrated 1261) went 55 ft beyond the present E wall, and the C19 roofs are disappointing. The N transept was built in 1803 for the Port Eliot pew. (But the transept arch has re-used Norman fragments.) The S aisle is a mixture of four styles: the Norman of the first bays, the interesting imitation-Norman of probably after 1592, the Dec of the E end, and the early C15 Perp of the rest. The E end must originally have been an E chapel attached to the narrow Norman aisle. It is of high aesthetic quality, derived in style from Exeter Cathedral. To get an impression of its pristine finesse of detail St Ive near Liskeard, consecrated in 1338, may be compared. It seems difficult therefore to connect the chapel with the transfer of relics of St German in 1358. The E wall of the chapel has two three-light windows with a niche for an image between (cf. the niches of St Ive). In the S wall are one original window and a recess with an ogee canopy. The S aisle itself can be dated by the arms of Bishop Lacy (1420-50) amongst the shields on the hood moulds of one of the windows. There are four such windows, all of four lights, three clearly Perp, the fourth (on the W) still reticulated, that is Dec. The aisle is battlemented outside (like the S tower) and has a handsome and original S porch with two entrance arches close to each other to W and S and a depressed tunnel-vault with a grid of thick granite ribs. Perp also the five-light chancel E window, which must have been put into the present E wall when the chancel was taken down. - FONT. Of Purbeck marble, c.1200; badly preserved. - WOODWORK. Only minor remains: one choir stall (misericord with a man called Dando, punished for hunting on Sunday), c.1375-1400; fragment of the rood screen; figure of St Anthony, indifferent, c.1500, brought over from Port Eliot. - STAINED GLASS. E window by Burne Jones, 1896. To see such work executed by Morris and Co. after the many other Victorian windows in Cornish churches brings home most forcibly the value of William Morris’s reform. Here are clear outlines, pleasing patterns, and simple colours in sufficiently large expanses to be taken in individually. No overcrowding, no competing with the art of painting, and yet a sentiment that is wholly of the C19. - Coloured wooden STATUE of St Nicholas. - MONUMENTS. John Moyle d. 1661. Large tomb-chest (in the vestry) with a heraldic device in bas-relief on a black marble slab (G. W. Copeland). – Edward Eliot, 1722 by Rysbrack, reclining on a sarcophagus, in Roman costume, with an allegorical figure on his l., mourning. Short pyramid in relief and putti in the background: a first-rate example of Rysbrack’s art and the most ambitious C18 monument in Cornwall. - First Earl of St Germans d. 1823, by R. Westmacott, a sad maiden seated by a tall pillar with an urn.

ST GERMANS. Its houses of golden-tinted stone climb the lovely wooded hillside by a creek of the Lynher. At one end is a quaint block of almshouses with six gables, an open balcony with gay flower-boxes along each of the two storeys, and an outside flight of steps to the upper floor. A little farther up the hill, in a bay of the road, by the lychgate, is a noble 19th-century gatehouse with oriel windows, pointing the way to a great house and a church side by side deep down below. With the fine park of 500 acres, it is a serenely beautiful situation for the fine home of the Earl of St Germans, and Cornwall’s rarest old church, the richest in the county for historical interest and Norman remains. Over the hill is the quay down by the tidal creek where boats come in to load stone. A great viaduct of 13 arches crosses the creek, and all round are the wooded hills.

Such is the 20th-century picture of a cathedral city of 1000 years ago, whose story and name go back to the 5th century, when St Germanus came to Britain to combat the heresy of the Pelagians and the Picts, landing at the creek here and making this the centre of his west country mission. The church and its monastery, and the early prosperity of the place, owe their foundation to this visit. It was the cathedral seat of the first bishops of Cornwall till the 11th century. At the time of Domesday Book half the parish was held by a body of canons, but of the church they served there are no certain remains, save perhaps here and there in stones. About 1185 these canons were suppressed for their worldiness, and most of the fine 12th-century work we see today comes from the Austin canons who took their place.

The massive west front (about 70 feet wide) is flanked by two towers, each Norman in its lower stages. The north-west tower has a 13th-century octagonal top with later battlements; its companion has a square top perhaps of the 15th century. The great spectacle of the church is between these towers, the wonderful weatherworn west doorway of the Normans, deeply recessed in a gabled projection; its arch is of seven orders, four of them zigzag, and there is zigzag between the groups of shafts at each side. The hood is enriched with carving, and round the doorway are five Norman windows. The door it frames is richly adorned with copper in the shape of hinges and a cross, all patterned with vine and grape, the fine work of a modern craftsman.

The rest of the building is a mixture of styles. The two western bays of the arcade halving the lofty and light interior are Norman with their plain massive arches pointed, the work of the time when the old style was merging into the new. The similar arches of the towers rest on fine clusters of stout shafts. Over the western arches is a fragment of the 12th century clerestory.

In the 14th century Sir Nicholas Tamorze brought back from Auxerre Abbey some relics of Germanus (a small bone and part of his shroud) and to enshrine these the eastern end of the Norman south aisle was pulled down and a beautiful chapel built. Between its two lower east windows, with fine tracery, is a big canopied niche now filled with a statue of -the Good Shepherd. There is also a fine stone seat, and another canopied recess which doubtless held the saint’s relics in a silver reliquary. In the 15th century the west end of this chapel and the rest of the Norman aisle was taken down, the wide south aisle being then built. At the same time the south porch was built against a wall of the south-west tower; it has three open arches, star-patterned bosses in its round vaulted roof, and steps leading to the south aisle which is entered by a simple 12th-century doorway. In the porch is an old stone coffin.

After the Dissolution the 13th-century chancel became ruinous, the Champernownes using much of the walls in turning the priory into a private house, and building a brewhouse on the site of the high altar. The villagers made part of the nave into a chancel by building a new east wall, and luckily inserted the fine 14th-century window from the old chancel. About 20 feet wide and nearly twice as high, this transomed window wears its tracery like a crown. In 1592 a great part of the people’s chancel fell down, and in the re-building most of the Norman south arcade was replaced. Early in the 19th century the Norman north aisle was destroyed and a transept built.

The Norman font of Purbeck marble was restored a century ago, after having been broken up 50 years earlier. There is a battered niche by the side of a piscina niche, which has a rich arch on clustered shafts. In a collection of old relics are two querns, three old books, an old door ring, and some keys. Among old fragments of carved wood is a miserere showing a hunter carrying a hare on a stick over his shoulder, with six dogs in front of him and two on a lead behind. In the south aisle is an old wooden statue of St Anthony. The reredos is a carving of the Last Supper, with Judas holding the bag as he strokes his beard.

Carved on the ends of the modern stalls are scenes from the life of the patron saint. One shows him as a monk with his club with dead animals at his feet, reminding us that he was a great hunter. On another he is an old man on an ass, taking the reins of a warrior’s horse; it is said that when King Eocaric would have destroyed the Bretons, the saint met him and turned him back. In a third scene Roman soldiers are offering him a silver chalice sent by an Empress; in a fourth he is by the ass which, according to legend, he restored to life.

In rich Burne-Jones glass shining in the east window we see Christ holding the cross, with the Centurion, two Marys, the Four Evangelists, Paul, and Stephen. The Burne-Jones glass in a south window shows six Virtues: Faith, Justice, Hope, Charity, Praise, Joy. In old glass there is a 15th-century shield.

One of many memorials to the Earls of St Germans is a ponderous marble monument by Rysbrack to Edward Eliot of 1722 and his two wives, showing him in Roman dress reclining on a couch, one wife sitting by him with a book, and cherubs holding a medallion of the other. An inscription tells of Captain Granville Eliot who fell at Inkerman in 1854.

Port Eliot, their splendid embattled house with corner turrets, stands on the site of the 12th-century priory, which, with its grounds, passed to the Champernownes on the Dissolution, and in 1565 to the Eliots. It has been theirs ever since. The few scanty remains of the priory include some medieval windows, the house and the estate as we see it now being largely due to the first Lord Eliot, a patron of Reynolds and a friend of Dr Johnson. Some of his sayings are reported in Boswell. He once brought a book to the notice of Dr Johnson, who said: “I did not think a young lord could have mentioned a book on English history that was not known to me." Bentham said he was modest about his politics, but desponding; “he says he scarce ever looks into a paper, nor does he, for fear of ill news.”

Two men who were to win fame were bom at St Germans in 1592, Sir John Eliot and John Moyle. When at Oxford Moyle wrote to Eliot’s father telling him of his son’s extravagance, whereupon Sir John drew his sword and wounded Moyle in the side. Out of this unhappy incident grew a staunch friendship lasting for life.

The Immortal Martyr of the People

One of the greatest of all our Parliamentarians, Sir John Eliot stood shocked and anguished to see the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh. He had in him much of that courage by which Devon men made England mistress of the seas, though he spent it, not on the waters, but in public life at home. It was when he saw an expedition leave for Cadiz with rotten ships, bad food, tackle which had been used 40 years before against the Armada, and with men left to starve, rob, and murder in the ports, that he resolved to bend his energies to reform, and became a foremost voice in impeaching the incompetent and worthless favourite Buckingham.

As a young man in Parliament he stepped into the place vacated by the great Coke as champion of constitutional rights, and, having incurred the enmity of James, he incurred still further the wrath of Charles when he likened Buckingham to the infamous Sejanus. “He must, then, intend me for Tiberius,” said the King, and sent him to the Tower.

With the new Parliament Eliot was released, and manfully opposed forced loans. “Upon this dispute,” he said, “not alone our lands and goods are engaged, but all that we call ours. These rights, these privileges, which made our fathers freemen are in question. If they be not more carefully preserved they will render us to posterity less free, less worthy than our fathers.”

Again he was imprisoned and again released. After the King’s imposition of Tonnage and Poundage Eliot proposed the Remonstrance, which the Speaker refused to have read; but members held the Speaker down in the chair while the Commons passed the resolutions that “Whoever raises tax by tonnage and poundage shall be deemed a capital enemy to this Commonwealth; whoever pays such a tax shall be deemed a betrayer of liberty and an enemy of the Commonwealth.”

The whole mercantile community went on strike for six months, but Eliot, imprisoned in the Tower, was to suffer a four years martyrdom, the pitiless king keeping him there till consumption carried the captive to the grave. His son begged for leave to move the body down to Cornwall to be buried in his native village, but he begged in vain. “Let him be buried where he died,” said the King, and so to this day the bones of this patriot rest in the precincts of the Tower, one more great Englishman sacrificed for the Stuarts.

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St Austell, Cornwall

Holy Trinity, open, is rated one star by Jenkins which is odd since I'd say it was definitely a contender for the church of the day title. Having said that when he visited, at least ten years ago, he described it thus "the interior is unutterably gloomy....no detail can be seen without electric light". It may have been a brighter day when we visited but I found it tolerably light and not gloomy at all.

The chief attractions here are the tower statuary and carving, a fantastic font with cover and what appear to be redundant bench ends in the tower. Also what I mistook for a benefactions board turned out to be "a letter to the inhabitants of the county of Cornwall" from Charles I dated 1643.

The town grew out of a village during the C18 in consequence of the development of Cornish mining. So what now appears a prosperous town-church served at the time when it was built a village and a large parish extending as far as (and including) Pentewan and its quarries.

HOLY TRINITY. The most noteworthy feature of the tower is its enrichment on all four faces by figure sculpture in niches. On N, E, and S are four apostles each, on the W is a pyramidal group of the Trinity at the top, Annunciation below, with the lily as an isolated motif between the two kneeling figures, and the risen Christ between two saints at the foot. The style is that familiar from C15 alabaster work, rather hard and stocky. The top of the tower, with the usual pinnacles, has four strips of ornament of the type as found at Launceston or St Mary Truro, or Fowey.* The tower can be dated by the coat of arms of Bishop Courtenay (1478-87). It is faced with Pentewan stone. Interior of nave with five bays, chancel with two bays, N and S aisles, two-storeyed S porch. Mainly C15. Of earlier buildings the following fragments or parts can still be seen: the circular pier of the S chancel arcade, the two responds of the arches, and the double-chamfered arches themselves are early C13 ; the N chancel arcade is also E.E., but later, with a handsome octagonal pier with four slim attached shafts in the diagonals, a motif which comes from Dartmouth and its neighbourhood; the chancel E window and N aisle E window with intersecting tracery and pointed quatrefoils look c.1300, and it is quite probable that they and the N chancel aisle can be connected with the date c.1290, recorded for the endowment of a chantry chapel of St Michael. The nave is disappointing inside, much restored in 1872 (by G. E. Street. The alabaster reredos and pulpit are his). The piers are slender, of standard Cornish section, with moulded capitals and on the s side some decoration of the abaci. The aisles have wide Perp windows giving an even light. The old wagon roofs are original; they rest almost immediately on the arcades. Outside, the church is much more attractive, with battlemented aisles and a battlemented, buttressed, two-storeyed S porch with a curious doorway with openwork tracery: an ogee arch inscribed into a round one (cf. Mylor, St Just-in-Roseland; the motif really originated at Gloucester and is to be found, for example, in tomb canopies at Tewkesbury). There are also carved shield-holding angels, and shields with carved Instruments of the Passion, Resurrection, Ascension, and Christ in Glory. - FONT. Norman, of Bodmin type, with faces at the corners, ‘trees of life’, and dragons. - PILLAR PISCINA. Norman, and of interesting design. - BENCH ENDS. Only a few are preserved; and only a small part (on the S) of the ROOD SCREEN. - CLOCK FACE outside the W tower, with twenty-four bosses for the hours; probably C16. - OAK CHEST. 1669. - PLATE. Two similar gilt Cups, with strapwork decoration, London, 1573-4; also pieces of 1707, 1708, 1751, 1753. - MONUMENT to Joeseph Sawle d. 1769, by Isbell. Free standing, about 6 ft high; black urn on a square base.

* Mr A. L. Rowse calls this a Somerset type of tower - a class which extends in a band all the way across the West Country from Cornwall to Oxford. The elaborately carved stonework of the topmost stage is typical. (St Austell, H. E. Warne, 1960.) 

ST AUSTELL. We may wonder at the sight of something like a range of snowcapped peaks as we come to it on a summer's day, but here they are, apparently eternally, the work of a Quaker who turned St Austell upside down, changing its green valleys to white hills.

For centuries the neighbourhood has been famous for its tin, now it is famous for white clay. It was here that William Cookworthy found his first examples of the clay which was to give Cornwall a new industry. He found it here before he discovered the huge deposits at Carclaze mine, one of the sights of Cornwall two miles away. Open to the day, the great Carclaze mine has been quarried for tin from time immemorial. It must have been yielding tin when the Phoenicians came this way. It astonishes us by its immensity, a mile round and 150 feet deep, a match for the great slate quarry at Delabole. From it go pipes to Charlestown, .the liquid clay running along them to be dried and shipped for the Potteries.

The moors are honeycombed with mines and quarries. There is a wishing well on the Bodrnin Road, an old stone by the church where tradition says a witch was burned alive, and a stream hereabouts that yielded a rare treasure for the British Museum behind which is a queer story. A thousand years ago, when the Vikings were harrying Cornwall, a Saxon priest hid his treasure in a heap of loose stones under a slate. His chief treasure was a silver chalice of King Alfred’s day and small ornaments and a silver wire with a glass bead at the end. Slowly the earth covered the hoard till it was 17 feet deep, and at last the tin miners of St Austell brought it to light. The silver wire with the bead at the end is known as a scourge, and is said to be the only complete one of its kind.

The fine church in the heart of this busy town stands among palm trees, rising from a lovely lawn. We see its tower from far away standing on a hillside among the trees. Five centuries old and 90 feet high to its battlements, it is one of the finest towers in Cornwall, with rich pinnacles, and grotesques on the walls looking as though they would leap down. On three sides of the tower are the Twelve Apostles and on the west wall are sculptured groups showing souls in Abraham’s bosom, Gabriel bringing the good news to the Madonna, and figures of our Lord, a bishop, and a priest. The clock above all these has a 24-hour dial; centuries before the BBC tried to make us count in twenty-fours this was a 24-hour clock, and is the only clock in Cornwall mentioned in an inventory of Tudor days.

The porch, with an upper room, a pelican over the doorway, and a stoup with a grotesque head, brings us into a spacious interior with three fine old black and white roofs with painted bosses, Norman stones in the chancel arcade, and glowing windows with 12 saints, 4 figures representing the virtues, and scenes of the Annunciation and the Nativity. One of the windows is interesting for having flowers and faces hidden in the cusps of its tracery.

The alabaster pulpit, new last century, has 34 figures carved on it, among them the Good Shepherd, Paul preaching, and the Sermon on the Mount. There is a little pulpit carved in one of the 20 old bench-ends fixed on the walls of the tower; it shows a fox preaching with one paw over the pulpit, the fox having his eye on a lady kneeling near by. We noticed on this old panelling a miner’s spade and ladle, and a dragon’s head.

Perhaps the rarest single possession of the church is its massive Norman font, the bowl carved with extraordinary creatures and resting on columns ending in human faces. Its magnificent cover is like a little dome-crowned temple with Mary and Joseph inside with St Anne and Simeon receiving the Child in the Temple. Round about are four guardian angels, one with a boy, one with a maid, one with a fish, and one with a pitcher, and the balancing weight is a golden dove. The setting of the font is very striking, the baptistry having panelled walls and an alabaster mosaic showing the Baptism in Jordan and mothers bringing their children to the Master. Above is a glowing Jesse window. A fine piece of work, the baptistry was given in memory of Elizabeth Shilson, who died in 1922, her husband hurrying on the work so that he might see it finished before he died. He lived just long enough to have his wish.

Four names we noticed here: Stephen Hugo, an 18th-century vicar for 62 years and Richard Hennah, vicar for 50 years till Waterloo; Samuel Drew who worked as a boy here for twopence a day, became a shoemaker, smuggler, and a Methodist preacher, and is remembered as a philosopher; and John William Colenso, the Bishop of the Zulus. who was bom here in the year before Waterloo.

Friend of the Zulus

HE was a Victorian, dying in 1883, but the story of his life might belong to the age of the great persecutions.

The way in which, as a poor youth, he secured an education, attaining the highest rank as a mathematician and nobly repaying to the last farthing those who had supported him at Cambridge, is a shining example of self-help. A disastrous fire at Harrow beggared him, but his losses were recouped by his books on mathematics, and it was as a man of some substance that he went to Africa as Bishop of Natal.

He threw himself with enthusiastic energy not only into the conversion of the Zulus but into their education. He took boys from the jungle and made scholars and craftsmen of them, so that, when he translated English into Zulu and Zulu into English, these reclaimed sons of the wilds were his printers and literary assistants. It was while he was translating the Bible for his sable flock that certain disquieting doubts penetrated the bishop’s mind.

As his converts read his story of Genesis they would ask him: “Is this all really true?” and he wrote: “My heart answered in the words of the Prophet, Shall a man speak lies in the name of the Lord? I dared not do so.” He was fifty years ahead of his time, and the bishops and clergy of Africa, supported by religious societies at home, fell fiercely upon him.

The conflict was long and embittered. As volume after volume of his writings appeared, the storm increased in vehemence, until an ecclesiastical court calmly pronounced excommunication against him. On Colenso’s appeal to the Privy Council the arrogant pronouncement was at once swept aside, and the bishop continued his ministrations, to the unabated satisfaction of his diocese. But the campaign raged in other parts of Africa and in certain circles at home, with the result that religious societies diverted their contributions to another see, and finally the trustees of the Colonial Bishoprics Fund refused to pay his episcopal income.

Again the Civil Law of the Empire was invoked, and again the bishop was vindicated and the conduct of his enemies sternly reprehended. Not less furious was the resentment against him aroused by his support of the cause of the natives oppressed by white men. Once more he triumphed, and was growing daily in success and authority when death laid him low, but left his name secure in fame.

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Probus, Cornwall

St Probus, open, was on the way to Exeter and Jenkins gives it two stars, presumably on the basis that it is Cornwall's tallest tower and an exemplar of "carvings known as hunky punks" [grotesques to you and me]. He goes on say that "Probus has one treasure, enthusiasts must penetrate the vestry, here lies Thomas Hawkins d. 1766".

This is, of course, bollocks for the casual visitor - the vestry is locked and the chances of gaining entry must be extremely remote [this is also bollocks since it's not in the vestry after all]. Discarding his excitement over the hunky punks, which are, after all, run of the mill grotesques, and that it sports the tallest tower in Cornwall [willy waving] I would give this a miss - except for the vainglorious tomb of Christopher Hawkins [he died in 1829 but is supported by four civil war cavaliers] - it's ludicrously glorious.

I forgot the, to me, quite rare James the Second Royal arms which emphasise the Royalist sympathies both in the Civil War and the Glorious Revolution - we'll see more evidence of this soon.

A quick Google seems to show that even the Catholic church is not sure who St Probus was and I wouldn't take Mee's word for it.

ST PROBUS AND ST GRACE. The glory of the church is its tower, although its interior is also surprisingly generously spaced. The tower, the tallest in Cornwall, is 123 ft 6 in. high, of three stages, and lavishly decorated, though with more tact and taste than in the Trecarrel buildings in and around Launceston. The leading squire here was John Tregian of Golden, and work was in progress in 1523. The tower has a plinth with the not unfamiliar quatrefoil decoration, and mother strip of ornament above. The hood mould of the W door is the upper moulding of this second strip conducted round. On the N and S sides the ground floor has three niches each for statues. The first stringcourse is again ornamented; so is the second; so are the buttresses, set back from the angles (with pinnacles in relief). The second stage has windows with narrowly decorated sound-holes. But on the third stage are two windows on each side, again with the same ornamentation of the sound-holes. Above them are another eight little blind windows and then the decorated battlements and the pinnacles, each with four little sub-pinnacles, a most satisfying fullness of orchestration. The ensemble is not at all Cornish; it is entirely Somerset, especially similar to North Petherton. The body of the church has two aisles of identical design, buttressed, with not specially interesting side windows, and more elaborate E windows, no transepts, but N and S porches. The arcades are tall, unifying the spatial effect of the church, which is in itself by no means tall. They are of seven bays and have the same Devonshire section of the piers as St Ives of the same date - instead of the usual hollow between the two attached shafts a wavy curve, and an exceptionally complex moulding of the arches. The tower arch also is very tall and has responds with large panelling. The church was restored by Street in 1851. - ALTAR SLAB with five consecration crosses. - BENCH ENDS of no unusual quality or design worked into the rood screen, N parclose screen, and tower screen. - MONUMENTS. Brass to John Wulvedon d. 15I4 and wife, two figures with inscription beneath, as usual. – Thomas Hawkins d. 1766, a very good epitaph with a seated mourning figure holding a medallion with Hawkins’s portrait, a flying angel above, the whole against the usual pyramid. Sculptor not recorded. - In the churchyard monument to the Hawkins family, with four kneeling pall-bearers at the corners, as in the Villiers monument in Westminster Abbey; 1914.

PROBUS. It lies by the busy way from Truro to St Austell, its thatched houses and its church gathered round the little square, its two old houses a mile or two away. In the fine park is Trewithen, home of the Hawkins family, with monuments in the church; the home of the Wulvedons is the farmhouse now called Golden, which has turned its old chapel into a stable, and has still in its walls some of the structure of the days when Cuthbert Mayne was found hidden here. He was a priest who suffered death at Launceston, one of the first martyrs of the Elizabethan persecution which followed Mary Tudor’s reign of terror. For harbouring a priest here Francis Tregian and his wife were taken to London and imprisoned in the Fleet where 11 of their 18 children were born.

From this house they brought John Wulvedon to rest in the church in 1514; we see his portrait in brass in the floor of the aisle standing at prayer bare-headed, with a girdle round his mantle, his wife at his side in a long gown with fur cufis, embroidered girdle, and a wired headdress.

The Hawkins monuments are indoors and out. The indoor one has a woman leaning on an urn with cherubs hovering round her in the fashion of the 18th century; the outdoor monument has four kneeling figures in armour bearing up the corners of the tomb. In it lies Sir Christopher of 1829, something of an inventor and a pioneer of industry in Cornwall. He used the first portable agricultural engine ever made, one of Trevithick’s inventions now in the British Museum. He would know the old stocks still in the porch.

The tower of Probus is the highest in Cornwall, and is perhaps unsurpassed in beauty in the Duchy. Its people all seem to have helped to build it by carrying the granite from the moors 400 years ago. It rises 129 feet and has lofty pinnacles, canopied niches, heads and figures and dragons, and great belfry windows with tracery, transoms, and quatrefoils.

Worthy to rank architecturally among the splendid towers of Somerset, this tower has been described as one of the eight best towers in England. It is crammed with the very best craftsmanship of the medieval builders, hundreds of feet of carving running round it in bands. Its twelve great windows have six divisions of fine quatrefoil, hundreds of them in all; there are three canopied niches north and three more south; the elegant buttresses climb up to the top all crowned with leafy pinnacles; the battlemented parapet has 40 pinnacles bunched together in eight groups; and eight dragons look down on the world around. Near the ground we may trace among the carving foxes and hounds. In this great tower, which has stood as we see it since 1523, rings what we believe to be the heaviest peal of bells in Cornwall, the tenor weighing over a ton. There are six bells and 134 steps leading up to them.

It is believed that there was a church in Probus before the Conqueror came, and that this 15th-century successor may stand on its site. It has lofty arcades, an old altar stone with five consecration crosses, a Norman pillar piscina, fragments of old carving, and a fiine modern oak pulpit in which Our Lord is sitting with the disciples, a child looking up at his feet. In the windows is a gallery of about
20 prophets and saints, among them St Probus and St Grace, who are believed to lie under the altar here. Two skulls found last century are supposed to be theirs.

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Truro Cathedral, Cornwall

Earlier this year a friend and I made plans for a tour of the west country with the main intent of visiting three Cathedrals [Truro, Exeter and Wells - whilst I've never been to any of them he'd been to the first two but was new to Wells]. I put together a wildly ambitious travel route between the three Cathedrals using Jenkins' Thousand Best and last week we carried out the trip.

I knew from our initial conversation that Truro is a Victorian build and I was, therefore [perhaps predictably], expecting to find it disappointing - despite his assurances that it was of merit. To my surprise he was absolutely correct and I found it to be of considerable merit. It doesn't contain as much interest as an older cathedral and the glass is poor quality but it is well designed and executed - even if it is stylistically all over the place which I think adds to its charm. Oh and the Tinworth panel is extraordinary.

CATHEDRAL. Designed by John Loughborough Pearson in 1880, the E parts built before his death, the nave and central tower between 1898 and 1903, and the W towers between 1903 and 1910, all by F. L. Pearson, Pearson’s son, to the father’s design. The building is in the E.E. style, with the exception of the spires, which are Normandy Gothic (cf. Coutances). It is strange that so sensitive an architect should have chosen this craggy sharpness for a county of whose churches nothing is more characteristic than the absence of spires and the long lowness of naves and aisles. Once one has got over the shock of this compressed, upward-pointing, and yet somehow neat silhouette, however, the merits of the design can be appreciated. The interior is in many ways a beau idéal of the E.E. style, perfected as against the proportions of, say, Salisbury, and purged of the many lovable irregularities of the others. The cathedral is vaulted throughout. Pearson knew better than any other architect of his generation how necessary stone vaults are to Gothic perfection. In the nave, oddly enough, he has chosen sexpartite vaults, a French rather than an English tradition. Otherwise English characteristics are evident everywhere: the gallery (which France in the C13 had given up), the straight E end with its lancets, the double transepts, the moulded capitals. The E parts have more decoration; the nave is almost bare. Architectural sculpture, wherever it appears inside and outside, is of a regrettably dull quality. Specially successful architectural motifs are the tall W tower halls opened towards the nave, the niches in which the aisle windows are placed, and the circular BAPTISTERY, E.E. at its richest and most compact.

Of the parish church of Truro, ST MARY, Pearson allowed the S aisle to remain, while the rest (with a spire of 128 ft, rebuilt in 1768) was pulled down. The aisle, of 1504-18, is indeed one of the most ornate Gothic structures in Cornwall, probably by the same masons as Probus tower. It has the same decoration of the plinth in two tiers, the same use of niches for statuary, the same decorating of the buttresses. The window spandrels have tracery, and the battlements also are adorned with quatrefoils. The S windows are large, of four lights, the E window of five. The interior had its arcade with piers of standard Cornish design with plain capitals and arches nearly semi circular. Some of the roof timbers are still to be seen, and a few bits of old glass.

The new FURNISHINGS of the cathedral are on the whole not fortunate. Artists of conventional tastes have been used, not those of stronger individuality. STAINED GLASS by Clayton & Bell, except on the S side of the old aisle, where there is good glass by Warrington (1840s;TK). - CHOIR STALLS and BISHOP’S THRONE designed by Pearson himself. - PULPIT. Of a comfortably bulgy shape and with inlay of local workmanship. - PLATE. Gilt Chalice and Paten by F W (see Holy Trinity, Hull, and Batford St Martins, Wilts.), 1619-20; two similar Flagons, 1623-4; several C18 pieces; gold Chalice and Paten designed by Pearson; all the rest also C19. - MONUMENTS. In the crypt two lifesize kneeling alabaster figures of c.1620, not well carved. - Richard Robarts d. 1614 (‘of his age seventy or thereabouts’) and wife, a large affair with the two effigies reclining stiffly and behind each other, double columns l. and r., and on their entablatures two very good smaller figures of Father Time and Death. The carving of the larger figures is by no means good. - Some late C18 and early C19 monuments to Vyvyans, too high up to be seen.

I don't have any of the relevant Pevsners for this trip and so, for the Cathedrals, will use The Cathedrals of England by Batsford & Fry originally published in 1934.

Truro Cathedral is probably the last considerable work of imitative Gothic to be built in England, having been consecrated in 1887 and only finally completed in 1903. Its architect, the late  J. L. Pearson, R.A., designed it in distinctive version of the style of the thirteenth century, tinged with a French influence that is apparent in the general loftiness of its proportions inside and out, and in the attenuation of its towers and spires; and there is not a feature that has not its precedent somewhere in this country or in Northern France. To the modern eye, this unyielding literalism is the chief defect of the design, and the plan has all the intricacies of its thirteenth-century prototypes, and accordingly bears little relation to the requirements of English Protestantism. Ranking in its dimensions with Wells or Norwich, the spacious interior is treated with an admirable restraint and mastery of proportion, and the incorporation of part of the fabric of an old Perpendicular parish church to the south-east, adding a third aisle to the quire, results in some fine vistas. Generally speaking, there can be little doubt that Pearson's work is among the most impressive achievements of the later Gothic Revival, but despite its technical cleverness, its conception is inevitably anachronistic, and it never rises to the dignity of living architecture.*

TRURO. In the heart of the city the stately cathedral pile soars grandly to the sky as if to get away from the streets and buildings gathered all too closely round it. Cramped on its site so that good views of it are difficult near by, it is a striking picture from the mill-pool on its north side, from the main bridge over the river, and from the great railway viaduct, 100 feet high. But there is no lovelier view of it than the bishop has from his palace at Kenwyn, a picture free to us all from the neighbouring churchyard. Here are seen the elegant towers and spires rising majestically from a deep hollow, shining reaches of the river with boats sailing to the sea, all in a ring of wooded slopes.

Built mostly of local granite and stone, the cathedral stands on the site of the old church of St Mary which had been made new early in the 16th century and still survives in part. The architect was John Pearson, RA, his son Frank continuing the work after his father's death in 1897. Its style is Early English, with something of a French influence about it.

Three fine towers, seeming to be all windows, have spires wreathed with gabled dormers and pinnacles like traceried spirelets. The central steeple, climbing 250 feet (a foot for every mile the city is from London) is Cornwall’s memorial to Queen Victoria. The two western towers and spires, 204 feet high, are known as the Edward the Seventh and Alexandra Towers, and are a memorial to Mr H. T. Hawkins, a benefactor. It was Edward the Seventh who, as Duke of Cornwall, laid the foundation-stone of the cathedral in 1880. In the north-west tower hang the peal of ten bells.

The west front, looking all the loftier for being comparatively narrow, faces a little square, the name High Cross recalling a cross that once  stood here. Between the flanking towers is a gabled projection with square turrets, a great rose window and lancet windows, and a porch with double entrance--all richly adorned with carving and statuary of kings and queens and bishops associated with the cathedral. Victoria, Edward the Seventh, Alexandra, and George the Fifth are here; Bishop Temple (in whose episcopate the ancient see was revived), and the first three bishops of Truro, Edward White Benson, George Howard Wilkinson, and John Gott. Under rich arches of zigzag over the doorways are scenes of Christ preaching the miracle of the loaves and fishes. On the southern of the two west doors a new bishop knocks for admission to his cathedral.

Wonderfully rich is the shallow porch to the south transept with its mass of carving outside and in. The three entrance arches in a row have flowers and leaves in their mouldings; within their gabled hoods and in medallions on the spandrels are sculptures of the Madonna and Child, the adoring Wise Men and Shepherds, Mary and Gabriel. In gabled niches on the buttresses (crowned by pinnacles above the handsome parapet) are figures of notable Cornishmen and builders of the cathedral - Sir Humphrey Gilbert with a quadrant, his kinsman Bevil Grenville, Canon Phillpotts who gave the porch, John Pearson the architect, Lord Mount Edgcumbe, chairman of the Building Committee. Sculptures of Peter and Paul, Christ as the Good Shepherd and as the King of Glory surrounded by saints, are set between the doors.

In spite of the grandeur of the modern cathedral, the most captivating part of the exterior to many of us will be the fragment of the old church of St Mary, which nestles under the wing of the rest like a chicken under its mother’s wing. It is the old south aisle of the church pulled down to make way for the cathedral, and is on the south side of the chancel, rather like a little church in itself, for between it and the transept has been built a tower with a spire of Cornish copper, its bright green conspicuous against the rest of the grey pile. The plinth of this 16th century aisle is richly adorned with bands of quatrefoils and dainty flowers. The windows have traceried spandrels, and the charming buttresses between them climb to the battlements. At each side of the east window is a fine niche, and on the south-east corner of the aisle is a fine modern pelican feeding her young. The aisle is linked to the south choir aisle by an ambulatory, but it keeps its own old granite arcade, the double row of arches giving it a beautiful view of the chancel. It has its old wagon roof, its old font of Caen stone carved with foliage and heads, and the 18th-century pulpit by John Bone of Truro, inlaid with quaint scenes of the Crucifixion and the Ascension. The old almsbox has quaint figures and rich panels, and a copy of Charles Stuart’s letter is under the tower. A sculptured figure in the tower, and one of Nicholas with three children in a tub (on a pillar of the ambulatory), both of dark old stone, came from Brittany. There are fragments of old glass, the east window has Kempe glass showing the Madonna and Child and the scene in the Temple with Simeon, and the reredos is a modern triptych with paintings of the childhood of Jesus.

A beautiful glow enriches the walls of cream stone when the sun streams into the noble interior, its length from east to west about 300 feet, its fine vaulted roofs looking down on a striking array of arches borne by stately clustered columns. Particularly fine are the arcading and the richly carved vaulting of the choir and the round Baptistry - which is the gem of the cathedral. It is a lovely memorial to Henry Martyn, the Truro missionary, and the windows glow with scenes from his life and Cornish saints above them. The floor is of marble mosaic. The great font of rich porphyry, carved with a border of leaves and resting on eight pillars, and a central shaft, was given by the Sunday schools of the diocese. The traceried spire-like cover was the gift of students. A charming thing to remember is the sight of the central tower as we stand beneath it, wearing its lovely vaulting like a crown above the windows and the traceried stone balcony.

The choir has a floor of various marbles and lapis lazuli, and screens of delicate ironwork are in the bays of its arcades. The rich stalls have pinnacled canopies like spires and pillars, with saints in them, and are carved in Burmese teak. So too is the splendid Bishop's Throne with its three divisions - the bishop’s seat under an elaborate canopy and a chaplain’s seat at each side. On the front of the desk are figures of Dr Benson, Dr Temple, and Dr Wilkinson, and above them are the Four Latin Doctors as poppyheads. St George and St Michael are on the ends of the desks, which have dragons for poppyheads.

Stone screens with canopied seats on each side of the sanctuary are a mass of rich carving of saints and scenes of the Resurrection. The reredos of Bath stone has an amazing wealth of sculpture, showing what seems to be a countless host of figures in niches and canopied scenes. The middle panels have groups of the Crucifixion and Our Lord in Majesty, with nine angels below and angels and Evangelists on each side. The side panels have other groups, and figures of apostles, prophets, and saints.

The rich mosaic of glass lighting the east wall throws a fine light on this array of stone carving in the choir. The space behind the reredos is the chapel of All Saints, and here the story of the glass in the two tiers of lancets is seen complete. In the three upper windows is Our Lord in Glory surrounded by the Company of Heaven and saints from all over the world. In the lower row are the Incarnation, the Passion, and the Resurrection. It is the climax to the whole scheme of glass in the cathedral, which illustrates God's dealings with mankind "through His word and spirit in the lives and characters of His servants.”

The rose windows of the west front and of the two transepts represent the Creation and Pentecost, a Jesse Tree showing the genealogy of the Second Adam. There are scenes in the life of Christ, saints and great churchmen, apostles, martyrs, doctors, poets, evangelists, missionaries, and pastors, many of them with scenes from the times in which they lived. In this glowing gallery come Boniface cutting down an oak with an axe, Anselm confronting William Rufus, the coronation of Charlemagne, Dante meeting Virgil, Thomas a Kempis meditating, Colet and the children of St Paul's School, the execution of Charles Stuart, Margaret Godolphin leaving the court of Charles the Second, John Wesley preaching at Gwennap Pit, Newton, Butler, Handel, St Louis of France, Joan of Arc, Catherine of Siena, Keble, Martyn, Morris, Queen Victoria with Gordon and Tennyson at her feet, and Edward the Seventh as Prince of Wales laying the foundation stone of this cathedral. He is wearing complete masonic robes, and with him are Queen Alexandra and Bishop Benson. There is a curious error in a north aisle window which shows King John signing Magna Carta with a quill pen.

The west window of the south aisle shows the guardian angel of fishermen, and a picture of the fishing fleet working in Newlyn harbour. Another has the guardian angel of miners, lamp in hand, pick on shoulder, with a scene at Dolcoath Mine, Carn Brea in the distance. This is in the Jesus chapel at the west end of the north aisle of the nave, where there is a striking unconventional painting of a youthful Christ blessing Cornish industries - farming, market-gardening, mining, and fishing. We see angels on the ploughed land, men and women gathering cabbages, a woman at her cottage gate, workers off to the tin mines, a church and a fishing village, a ship loading china clay. It is all under a golden canopy with a vine border, and is the work of Ann Walke of St Hilary.

In the Jesus chapel is a huge alabaster memorial with busts of three Cornish statesmen in dress of their day: Sir John Eliot of 1632, immortal champion of the liberties of Parliament; Sidney, Earl of Godolphin, 18th century Secretary of State and Lord High Treasurer; and Sir William Molesworth, 19th century Secretary for the Colonies. The altar in this chapel has a wonderfully vivid painting of Our Lord.

In All Saints chapel are rich bronze plaques with figures of Dr Wilkinson and Dr Gott, second and third bishops of Truro. In St Margaret’s chapel are brass portraits of Arthur James Mason, first Canon Missioner, and Arthur John Worlledge, Canon and Chancellor of the cathedral till 1919. A stone in the east wall of the chapel marks the resting-place of Dr Stubbs, the fourth bishop. 

Of Archbishop Benson, Truro’s first bishop, there is a magnificent brass in the floor of the Baptistry chapel, showing him in rich robes under a canopy with three saints. The south transept was built as his memorial, and in it is the jewelled staff used for all enthronements and on other occasions. It was given to Dr Benson by the students he had trained at Lincoln. The glass of the rose window was given by the boys and masters of Wellington College where he was headmaster for many years. A beautiful 17th-century pastoral staff with a richly carved ivory head of leaves encircling the Madonna was given by Mr Passmore Edwards. Here, too, is a case of Benson relics, his watch, the letter from Mr Gladstone offering him the archbishopric, and a copy of the Dream of Gerontius, belonging to General Gordon, whose sister gave it to Dr Benson. In the floor of this aisle is the fine canopied brass portrait of Augustus Blair Donaldson of 1903 in his robes; he was the first precentor. Another memorial keeps green the memory of Sister Emilie, who was drowned in an attempt to rescue two girls in danger at Crantock. A thank-offering for the safe return of two sons from war is a terracotta panel on the north wall, a sculpture by George Tinworth showing a crowded and animated scene of Our Lord going to Calvary. At one end are Pilate and his wife, the Centurion, and Barabbas being greeted by friends after his release from prison; in the middle is Our Lord turning to speak to the women, and Simon carrying the cross; at the other end are the two thieves.

West of the choir gates hangs the fine banner of the diocese embroidered by the Royal School of Needlework at South Kensington. Round the arms of the diocese are those of the ancient monasteries of Bodmin and St Germans, and the badge of that of Crediton, as well as figures of St Piran the monk, Athelstan the king, Henry Martyn the missionary, and Bishop Benson. In the north transept is a memorial set up by Dr Benson in memory of John Couch Adams, the Cornishman who by almost incredible ingenuity found the uttermost of the planets. Another has the bust of the first Baron Vivian, a famous soldier born in this town and buried here, who fought with Sir John Moore at Corunna and with Wellington at Waterloo. Here is the fine Jacobean monument of John Robartes of 1614 and his wife, startlingly lifelike as they recline on shelves under an elaborate canopy, Time with a scythe and a skeleton with an arrow standing on pillars each side. John holds a book; his wife, wearing a pretty bodice and farthingale of delicate blue, has a rose in one hand and rests her head on the other. A fine marble tablet with the portrait bust of Thomas Agar-Robartes who died of wounds received while carrying water to a comrade (for which he was recommended for the VC) is in the south aisle, by the desk on which lies the Book of Remembrance with the names of some 4000 Cornishmen who fell in the Great War. Their epitaph has the words:

True love by life, true love by death is tried,
Live ye for England, we for England died.

There is an oak fragment brought from the ruins of Ypres cathedral, and under the south tower is the South African War Memorial with bronze statuettes. A wall inscription pays tribute to an old chorister who went down in the Titanic.

Down in the crypt are two alabaster kneeling figures which were part of a 17th-century monument. There is an interesting stone here with an inscription to Owen Phippen, brother of one of the rectors, who was taken prisoner by Turks and was for seven years a slave in Algiers. In 1627 with ten other Christian captives “he began a cruel fight with 65 Turks in their owne ship, which lasted three hours, in which five of his company were slain; yet God made him captaine and so he brought the ship into Cartagena. The King sent for him to Madrid to see him; he was proffered a captaine’s place and the King’s favour if he would turn Papist, which he refused. He sold all for £6000, returned into England, and died at Lamorran 1636.”

All who are interested may see the vestments and the cathedral plate, which includes a 17th-century chalice and flagon, a gold chalice and flagon with rich chasing and repoussé work, and the bishop’s chalice of gold and silver inlaid with gems. The fine organ of 1887 was built by Henry Willis. The pulpit, of Hopton stone, has canopied figures of “preachers of righteousness,” from the earliest days to Paul. The lectern is a brass eagle with detached standards supporting figures of the Evangelists.

* I think they are overly harsh and that if they visited today they would write a very different review.

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