6/19 & 20: A LOOK AT A NAVE AND MORE TINTAGEL WANDERINGS

6/19 WAS ANOTHER OF THOSE Rainy Sundays…but I am making bunches of progress on my book…so didn’t do a lot and Monday was better, but just hung about Tintagel on the 20th…

I am enjoying myself here and write and take it easy when it rains and am out and about when it doesn’t…..it’s a much slower pace than I’m use to an I am actually enjoying it which is something that surprises me…but it shouldn’t as a couple of weeks in the Keys use to do the same thing to me.

The country here is a rogued beauty of stark landscapes, barely covered with a thin disguise of green….there are beaches but many are guarded by these towering stone buttresses that challenge the waters for the space. On the other hand only a short distance inland you have grazing cattle (that here actually seem to outnumber the sheep—which are mostly kept for mutton) set on green rolling pastures set on rolling hills, for no where have I found the country flat for any distance.

The people are friendly and the greeting here is “You Alright?” or “You OK?” Strangers are welcome and they are for the most part a people that enjoys a good laugh, and a good pint.

As I enter my last week I wander how I will cope returning to London’s constant din or Florida’s constant heat….we shall see.

But now let’s return to St, Materiana—an early Parrish Church of Tintagel:

THE NAVE

THE FONT. One of the first things you see when you enter is this Norman Font. Fonts are large containers often stone (as this is) which held water for baptisms—usually for infants as adult baptisms would need a bit more space.

This Font is Norman in Origin and according the guide book I purchased at the church and contains 4 head (you can see one in the picture) with serpents between, with their heads curved upwards “representing the evil spirit expelled by grace. One of the corners of this primitive piece, is patched with pieces of a Norman carving from another source, and evidently was knocked over or dropped sometime in the distant past.

Also in the Nave is this figure:

This s the figure of Christ the King which is on the north wall…carved by Faust Lang, late of Oberammergau, and was given in 1948 in memory of John Cherry Cotton, sometime churchwarden.

These windows are obviously old and less finished looking than their more modern counterparts.

Three of the Norman windows (though none of the original glass) remain, two primitive ones on the north and one larger on the south.

A lot of the history of the people of the church appears on plaques of dedication and rememberance….as these to members of the Radcliffe family witness to.

Obviously one of the new window settings.

The large south window is of St. George and was given to the parish in 1903 in memory of Lord Wharncliffe, th last of his line to be involved with the parrish thought the family in the past owned the majority of it for 200 years

Such a lovely OLD church.

The saddest thing it the walls-in medieval times they like most churches of the time were covered with a mural painting, mostly of Norman arcading in various colours, briefly exposed in 1851. The
“restorers” covered them over again with ‘wash’ and later the plaster wall hacked away so that hardly a trace of the precious painting remain.

This organ from 1988 replaced an earlier pipe organ

The Memorial Stone lying on the south side of the central space bears no inscription but is evidently that of a priest. It is of the time of Edward I, 1292. It is of unusual length and has a beautifully-carved foliated cross.