Devon - Holiday on the North West coast and Cornwall (2)

Just two or three days left on this amazing coast. So onto Mowenstow beach and then the Church of St Morwenna and St John the Baptist.

But first the beach.

One of my abiding memories of the beach here, is the waterfall over the cliff edge onto the beach. The first image is from the top of the cliff, and then from beach level.

Then a couple of images of general beach views - left and right.

There are many rocks on the beach here and it is interesting to se the wave breaking around them as it receds.

The church of St Morwenna and St John The Baptist

Having not heard of St Morwenna, I looked in the guide book and also online.

Online , the story is:

Morwenna first appears in a 12th-century life of Saint Nectan that lists her alongside Endelient, Mabyn and Menfre (among many others) as a daughter of the Welsh king Brychan.

She was trained in Ireland before crossing over to Cornwall. Morwenna made her home in a little hermitage at Hennacliff (the Raven's Crag), afterwards called Morwenstow (meaning "Morwenna's holy-place"). It stands near the top of a high cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, where the sea is almost constantly stormy, and from where, in certain atmospheric conditions, the coast of Wales can be seen. She built a church there, for the local people, with her own hands. It is said that she carried the stone on her head from beneath the cliff and where she once stopped for a rest, a spring gushed forth to the west of the church.

However, the Church guide book says that the number of versions about her are many! So, almost impossible to know who she really was, or if she even existed.

The Norman doorway to the Church

The church itself is Grade I listed and features a Norman porch, a wagon roof, and a rood screen added by Parson Hawker - (more of him later). The earliest church preceded the current building by several centuries. Probable a Saxon church and even earlier than that, possible a Celtic church of 6th Century.

The font is believed to be from the late Saxon or Early Norman period, possibly dating back to the 11th or 12th centuries. It was originally located at the west end of the nave and was moved to its current position when the new organ was installed in 1977. The font is considered a significant historical artifact and has intrigued visitors and researchers for years.

The Altar and Reredos of dark oak were designed in 1908 by Edmund S Sedding, a well known architect and designer.

Another of the church features is a set of well-known and historically significant carved wooden bench ends. These bench ends are dated to around 1575 and are known for their intricate designs and imagery. They depict a variety of scenes and figures, including mythical creatures, Roman-inspired motifs, and depictions of wealth and trade.

The bench ends are a notable example of the decorative woodwork found in many West Country churches. They are characterized by their tracery designs, wyvern beasts, and quatrefoil patterns. The bench ends have survived for centuries, but their existence is a testament to the enduring nature of these historical artifacts, despite the potential threats from changing fashions and church restoration efforts.

One of the Church`s most famous Priests was R S Hawker, born in 1803, the son of a Cornish curate. The family was very hard up and Robert paid for his own education at Oxford by marrying a woman with a private income who was 20 years older than himself. He was ordained a priest in 1831, and was more than happy when the Bishop of Exeter offered him the rectorship in 1834 of Morwenstow Church. He had been there as a child, and loved the remoteness of the place, with the sea crashing on the rocks below the church. He served as vicar to the smugglers, wreckers and dissent of the area for the next forty years.

When Hawker arrived at Morwenstow there had not been a vicar in there for over a hundred years. Smugglers and wreckers were apparently numerous in the area. A contemporary report says the Morwenstow wreckers "allowed a fainting brother to perish in the sea without extending a hand of safety"

Hawker was a legendary eccentric. He is known to have dressed up as a mermaid and excommunicated his cat for mousing on Sundays. He dressed in claret-coloured coat, blue fisherman's jersey, long sea-boots, a pink brimless hat and a poncho made from a yellow horse blanket, which he claimed was the ancient habit of St Pardarn. He talked to birds, invited his nine cats into church. He kept a huge pig as a pet.

One of his big concerns was that the bodies of drowned men received a Christian burial, and would scramble down the cliffs, and carry back the bodies for a church grave. Until Hawker they were often buried on the beach where they were found, without Christian rites, as the belief was that it was not possible to tell if they were Christian or not.

In the early autumn of 1842, the Caledonia, a 200-ton brig from Arbroath in Scotland, was carrying a cargo of grain from Odessa to Gloucester, via Falmouth. On the night of September 7th she was caught in a gale off the north Cornish coast and driven onto the rocks at Sharpnose Point: of her crew of nine only one man survived. According to Hawker’s most frequently quoted account of the incident, published in 1865 in Charles Dickens’ periodical All the Year Round and later included in Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall, he was awoken by a young member of his household on 8th September at around daybreak with the news that there were ‘dead men on vicarage rocks’. In this version, written more than twenty years after the event, at a time when he was beset by financial worries and with a growing family to support, Hawker describes the terrible scene in vivid detail: the waters of the bay ‘tossing and seething with a tangled mass of rigging, sails, and broken fragments of a ship’, the billows rolling up ‘yellow with corn’, the bodies of two dead sailors lying ‘stiff and stark’ on the sand, and the frightful way in which ‘ever and anon there came up out of the water, as though stretched out with life, a human hand and arm’. For the reader the horror is mitigated slightly by the fortunate discovery of a lone survivor, collapsed on the ground at a place ‘just where a brook of fresh water fell towards the sea’. Hawker’s description of how, ‘He opened his eyes at our voices, and as he saw me leaning over him in my cassock-shaped dressing gown, he sobbed with a piteous cry, “O mon père, mon père!”‘ is almost convincing: the dressing gown certainly sounds plausible, though it might have presented a significant encumbrance during the climb down the ‘frightful descent of three hundred feet to the beach’. Writing anonymously for a London magazine, without mention of Morwenstow, and with so much time elapsed since the episode in question, Hawker was in fact providing an artistic and somewhat fictionalised version of what actually took place: the survivor, Edward Le Dain, was found not by Hawker as he later claimed, but by a Mr John Adams of Stanbury, and was cared for at Stanbury as well as at the Vicarage.

A letter written by Hawker and dated September 22, 1842, provides a far more sobering account of his immediate responses to the disaster and of the care which he took in carrying out what he saw as his Christian duty towards the dead men. To a bereaved relative of David MacDonald he writes:

The corpse was prepared for Burial by a very motherly woman, my Sexton’s wife. I did not suffer any of the bodies to be gazed at by the Common People, but they were treated with as much respect and decency as if they had died at home. The four found up to this date lie buried side by side in my Churchyard, and their graves have been dressed, as the custom is with us, with flowers. The Figure-head of their ship stands fixed in their midst. I have sent to the owners by this post le Dain’s statement of the voyage and wreck, to which I refer you for information. You will find much in it which should be a comfort to you. Le Dain frequently speaks of David, who with him used to attend on the Captain in the cabin more than the rest. He constantly says to me, ‘David was a good quiet lad as could be in a ship.’ I think the crew perished about half-past three on the morning of the 8th of September…

Life and Letters (p. 162)

For over a hundred and fifty years the figurehead survived in its position beside the graves, outlasting other similar monuments which had once been a feature of churchyards along the Cornish coast. However, in the autumn of 2004 a detailed inspection revealed serious internal damage caused by rot and decay, and a small team led by one of the UK’s leading conservers of carved wooden artefacts, Hugh Harrison, was commissioned to carry out a complete restoration. The project took several years to complete and although Morwenstow Parochial Church Council had at first hoped to return the restored figurehead to the churchyard, it was eventually decided that because of its fragility it should be mounted inside the church where it would be protected from the weather

The original figurehead.

If you walk along the coast path from the Vicarage today, you will find one of the National Trust's smallest buildings, Hawker's Hut, a small hut Rev Hawker had constructed of driftwood. Hawker is said to have spent much of his time there contemplating,writing poetry, and smoking opium. There are magnificent views from the hut down the coast to Cambeak, Tintagel, and Pentire, with Lundy Island visible in the distance.

Excentric to the last, lying paralysed in bed, Hawker sprang one last surprise on the Church of England. After years of doubts about the authenticity of Anglican orders, he was received into the Roman Catholic Church just before he died.

Last places we visited were around Hartland - first being Hartland Abbey itself.

Hartland Abbey is a former abbey and current family home to the Stucley family. It was built in 1157 and consecrated by Bartholomew Iscanus in 1160.

Hartland Abbey boasts a rich history spanning from its founding as an Augustinian monastery in 1157 to its current status as a lived-in family home. It was the last monastery in England to be dissolved by Henry VIII in 1539, who then gifted it to his Sergeant of the Wine Cellar, William Abbot.

The Abbey has undergone extensive remodeling, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, showcasing a blend of medieval, Queen Anne, Georgian, Regency, and Victorian styles.

It has served as a filming location for various productions, including BBC's "Sense and Sensibility" and Rosamunde Pilcher's "The Shell Seekers".

St Nectans Church, as seen from the Abbey grounds

Hartland Quay

It experiences some of the roughest seas in winter and is a former harbour.The harbour dated back to the time of Henry VIII until a storm led to the complete destruction of the pier head and later the whole pier wall in 1887. Parts of the old formation stones can be seen at low tide, as well as evidence of a counter pier.

St Nectans Church, Stoke near Hartland.

Saint Nectan was one of many Celtic hermits and missionaries associated with early Christian sites in south-west Britain, South Wales and Ireland in the fifth and sixth centuries. A well 100 metres from the church is the reputed site of his hermitage.

The history of the area is obscure; however, the first recorded building here was a collegiate church served by twelve secular canons founded ca. 1050 by Gytha, Countess of Wessex (mother of King Harold). Traditionally the church was founded in thanksgiving for the preservation of her husband's life in a storm at sea; a better tradition associates her husband Godwin, Earl of Wessex and holder of the royal manor of Harton, with the foundation.

Nothing is known of the earliest building nor whether it was rebuilt or enlarged when the collegiate church was replaced by a house of Augustinian regulars at Hartland Abbey in the twelfth century.

The current building, believed to date from 1360, replaced the earlier church on the site, of which only the font still remains and is thought to date from 1170. The 128 ft tower, rising in four stages, claimed to be the highest in Devon, has for centuries been a landmark to sailors at sea. It was built about sixty years after the rest of the church.

The statue depicts St. Nectan as a bishop, although the head of the statue is a later addition.

So that is it! Holiday over, now back to Suffolk.

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