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.
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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