Churches of the British Isles

The Church of St Anne, Hessenford, is just off the A387, with the village to the east of Widegates. The church is on the northern side of Church Hill, close to the village centre. Built in 1832 as a chapel-of-ease in St Germans parish, it was consecrated in 1833. It was rebuilt as a church in 1871, in the early English style and has a fine barrel-vaulted roof. It did not contain a bell, so the church became renowned for its shotgun weddings because a volley was fired in lieu of a peal.

Hessenford Wesleyan Methodist Chapel sits to the south of the village centre, on the western side of Hessenford Road, about a hundred metres south of the A387 junction. The chapel was built in 1860, becoming Hessenford Methodist Church at the Methodist union in 1932. It had an associated school room during its use as a church. Accounts can be found which cover the period between 1861-1987 which suggests a closure date. It is now a private residence.

St Anne's Old Chapel is thought to have been located to the north of the A387, and to the east of Hessenford, alongside the stream in the wooded valley shown to the foreground here. This is about three hundred metres east of the parish church, between Church Hill and the A387. Maps mark a spring in this location. The chapel was maintained by St German's Priory (see 'related links'). Many of the stones from the ruined chapel were used in the building of Deviock School.

Downderry Reading Room is on the south side of Main Road in this coastal town, a little way east of Seaton in Cornwall (not to be confused with Seaton in Devon - see links). Front Road sits on its western flank. It was erected at a cost of four hundred pounds sterling to a design by Mr Sansom. It opened in 1891 as a reading room for the village, although the popularity of church-based reading rooms had faded by the early 1900s. It is now Downderry & Seaton Village Hall.

Downderry Mission Room is also to be found on Main Road. Its precise location is difficult to determine, but this is likely to have been diagonally opposite to the village hall (reading room - above). The mission room is marked on the earliest maps but is gone by the time of the post-1900 maps. It preceded both the 1890 Methodist chapel (see links) and the Anglican church of 1883. Possibly it was on the site of what is now the Blue Plate, or The Conch Restaurant and bar (2023).

Four photos on this page copyright © Derek Harper, Mervyn R Body, Neil Chadwick, and Trevor Harris, all via Geograph, reused under a cc licence, and one copyright © Downderry Village Hall.