Churches of the British Isles

Alterations were made by G F Bodley in the late Victorian period. The oldest surviving item is the carved Norman font, while the roof substantially remains a fifteenth century construction. The most striking memorial is an ornately-carved wooden monument to Charles Grylls and his wife, which was crafted in 1623. The early sixteenth century screen is accounted as being one of the finest in Cornwall, with painted figures of saints set against landscape scenes.

The building comprises nave and chancel without any structural division, together with west tower, a north transept, and an independently-gabled south aisle and chapel, also without any structural division but with an adjoining south porch. The three-stage tower with battlements and crocketed pinnacles is supported by thin set-back buttresses. The bell-openings are two-light. The windowless south porch has a four-centred outer doorway which bears a crudely carved wave.

Lanreath Wesleyan Methodist Chapel sits on the south-western side of Meadow Road, thirty metres or so to the west of the junction with Court Meadow and a direct connection to St Marnarch (above). Lanreath is noted on the 1867 register of Methodist chapels, although this particular chapel with its attached Sunday school only appears on OS maps after the 1880s, which implies an earlier meeting place once stood here. It became Lanreath Methodist Church in 1932.

To find the former Mount Pleasant Wesleyan Methodist Chapel continue along Lanreath's Meadow Road and turn south-west at the t-junction. The chapel stood here, about two hundred metres to the south-west of the junction, on the western side of the road. It is shown only on early maps, and the chapel was likely at the north-east end, shown on maps as a rectangular building. There are very few references to the chapel and the entire site is now private housing.

Polperro is on the coast, all the way to the south of Mount Pleasant. Polperro (Second) Bible Christian Chapel was built on 'The Coombe' in 1877, but records of pew rents from 1869 imply a previous building. An earlier chapel stood on Talland Hill (see links) and there is confusion between their histories. Between 1907-1932 this one became Polperro United Methodist Church, and then Ebenezer Methodist Church in 1932. It closed 1933, and was sold in 1934.

One photo on this page by Jo Lewis, three kindly contributed by Roy Reed (two) and Rex Harris via the 'History Files: Churches of the British Isles' Flickr group, and one copyright © Tony Atkin via Geograph, reused under a cc licence.