The first time I encountered Morwenstowe on Cornwall’s north coast I was alone. It was early spring and the church wore a fresh skirt of primroses. As I crossed the stone stile next to the lych-gate, the churchyard inclining before me, I glimpsed beyond the sturdy grey church tower a triangle of greenish blue, a patch of sea tantalisingly held between the sides of the combe. The faint but undying roar of the Atlantic rolled in across the pastureland. Here was a scene of raw beauty preserved by isolation, a fortuitous harmony of landscape, architecture and perspective where something of the spiritual, the poetic undeniably lingered. Now in early autumn I return, greeted by rooks loitering by the gate like bored pall-bearers.
The name Morwenstowe breathes history; ‘stowe’ is old English for ‘meeting place’ and Morwenna — meaning fittingly ‘waves of the sea’ — was a Welsh saint who settled here in the 6th century.
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