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Trethevey Chapel &
Holy Well
Tintagel |
North Cornwall
NGR: SX 07660 89171 |
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On the road between Tintagel and Boscastle is the hamlet of Trethevey.
Standing at the heart of this ancient settlement is an interesting
group of monuments, including a Roman milestone, a mediæval chapel
dedicated to St Piran and a holy well.
The Roman milestone was discovered here in 1919, in use as a
gatepost. It stands in the garden of a house called St Piran and
permission must be sought to see it. This stone is one of only five
Roman milestones found in Cornwall; with another at Tintagel Church
it must indicate a maintained Roman trackway (rather than a metalled
road) in the neighbourhood. The inscription which reads: C DOMI N
GALLO ET VOLUS, ‘For the Emperor Caesars our lords Gallus and
Volusian’, dates the stone to the brief reign of these emperors, in
251-3 AD.
St Piran’s Chapel and Well are situated close together in the centre
of Trethevey. The present Trethevey chapel is a rebuilt structure on
the original foundations of a chapel recorded in 1457 when John
Gregory, Vicar of Tintagel, was granted a licence to celebrate Mass
there. Despite this late record, the chapel almost certainly had
much earlier origins, and according to a strong local tradition
recorded by the Revd Canner, a former vicar of Tintagel, it also had
a graveyard. The original building was probably converted into a
farm building at some point after the Reformation but enough remains
to indicate its ecclesiastical origin. A lancet window survives in
the east wall, a piscina on the south, and the remains of an oak
door frame in the west entrance. The building was restored with
simple pitch pine furnishings and a 20th century stone altar, and
rededicated as a mission chapel in 1942.
A trefoil window discovered in a local garden wall was presumed to
have come from the chapel and a gravestone dated 1707, found in a
nearby farmhouse wall, may provide support for the tradition of a
graveyard. Tradition also states that the chapel once had stone
seating around the walls, whose slate slabs were lifted and used to
cap the drains seen beside the lane, below the holy well.
The holy well is a simple pyramidal structure of slate with a small
square doorway. In its present form it is unlikely to be mediæval
but must sit on the site of an ancient spring. In the 19th century a
pump, whose remains can be seen at the back of the building, was
inserted into the well-house, to provide a more accessible water
supply for the hamlet. A granite cap on top of the well’s roof,
surmounted by an iron cross, is of uncertain origin. Some say it may
be the remains of a simple early font; others that it might be a
corn bushel or a mortar.
Domesday Book records the existence of a manor belonging to St
Piran’s monastery near Trethevey in 1086, which must explain the
dedications of the chapel and holy well, so far from the main places
associated with St Piran, in Perranzabuloe in the west of Cornwall.
Sources
Canner, AC, 1982. The Parish of Tintagel: some historical notes.
Meyrick, J, 1982. A Pilgrims Guide to the Holy Wells of Cornwall. |
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Ground & Aerial photographs |
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