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A peaceful Cornish church wrapped in mystery - dedicated to a saint about whom almost nothing is known, yet still quietly at the heart of parish life after centuries of prayer, pilgrimage and story.

Of all the churches in southeast Cornwall, St Tallan contains perhaps the most surprises.

A hermit’s hut, chapel or church has stood on this site for at least 1500 years, and St Sampson’s lies on the ancient Saints Way along which many of the Celtic Saints came from Padstow to Fowey, thus avoiding a perilous sea route around Land’s End.

Our church, a fine Grade I listed building dating from the 14th century, contains 33 late medieval bench ends, including one depicting a dog preaching to a pig!

The story goes that St Wyllow, a Christian hermit, was living nearby in 596, legend has it that he was killed beheaded but that he brought the head here, thus deciding where the church should be built.

A church set in ‘Clay Country’ 600ft above sea level on the site of an Iron Age fort and looking out towards Newquay and the north coast of Cornwall.

This church is the first designed and built by the eminent Victorian architect George Edmund Street.

St Cubert was a Welsh missionary who came over in the 7th century, together with his companion St Carantoc.

The site upon which this little church is built has been holy ground for some 1400 years and it is known that around 550AD Saint Mevan and Saint Issey busied themselves in this neighbourhood organising the early Celtic church.

At St Ewe village the road widens just a bit at the market cross and mounting steps, through the gate you'll see the camellia developed by Mr Tregunna of Caerhayes and named St Ewe.

The patron saint of Creed is first recorded as St Crite in the 10th century and may well have been a Cornish saint and possibly the daughter of either King Mark of Cornwall or an Irish king.

Visit the church with the tallest tower in Cornwall and see the highly decorative mosaic reredos and both of the well known Hawkins memorials, the marble one inside the church, and the ‘Cavalier’ tomb in the churchyard.