A HIDDEN GEM...

I like quiet places, away from it all.  Places that are hard to find and really should remain a bit of a secret.   On one of our many coastal walks in Cornwall last week, we came across a hidden gem.   I took the photo above (click on it for a larger image) on our wander back to the car park at St. Anthony`s Head at the very end of the Roseland Peninsula.   The photo shows the view across the meadow and down to Place, which looks out across to St. Mawes.

The hidden gem was the church of St. Anthony in Roseland set deep in the valley, close to Place House, the sprinkling of cottages and the quay where a ferry plies across to St. Mawes (summer only.)   There may well have been a little chapel founded on this site by Celtic missionaries as long ago as the 7th century but the building we see today is essentially a cruciform church of the 13th century with a rather stumpy tower at the west end of the nave.

I confess to having left Mrs. Snopper to look after Barney outside while I explored the interior of the church.   And what a glory it revealed in the crossing where the church`s  four symmetrical arches come together beneath the tower and the spire.   Here`s a photo I took (click again) laying flat on my back looking up at this beautiful, intricate, delicate but immensely strong feature:-

The church has much to commend it, Nickolaus Pevsner thought it `the best example in Cornwall of what a parish church was like in the 12th or 13th centuries.   But so too does the walk we took from St. Anthony Battery around the coast path past Molunan beach, around the headland at Carricknath Point with its sweeping views across Carrick Roads towards Falmouth, the Meneague and St. Mawes and back along the quiet lane to the haven of the Garden Cafe and our patiently waiting car.  

I guess I should have kept this little secret and kept it to ourselves but I`m reminded of the example that once you`ve found the Lost Gardens of Heligan, they`re not lost any more, so enjoy St. Anthony if you can find it....but please do it quietly.