OUR CHURCHES - click on links for location

 St Mary & St Petroc in Bodmin

Bodmin, means 'home of monks' in Cornish (bod: abode, mench: monk).  A medieval Life of St Petroc speaks of a Saint Wron (or Guron) who was a hermit in Bodmin, who gave Petroc hospitality around the year 518.  St Petroc came to Padstow from Ireland where he founded a monastery.  After his death he was venerated as a saint and Padstow became a place of pilgrimage.  After a Viking raid in 981 the major part of the community in Padstow moved to Bodmin, bringing the saints relics with them.  In the 12^th century the Canons Regular of the Lateran, otherwise known as the Augustinian Canons, established a priory in Bodmin.  This became the largest religious house in Cornwall.  The priory was suppressed on 27 February 1538 and the buildings were destroyed and despoiled, with the exception of the parish church, which is now the Anglican church in Bodmin.  For 250 years after this the practice of the Catholic faith was officially illegal in England.The Catholic mission in Bodmin owed its beginning to Fr William Young.  This zealous priest, having already founded a mission in Penzance, moved to Bodmin where he enabled the Catholic Church to buy some land on which he built a presbytery and a church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin in 1845.  From that time the Bodmin mission was served periodically from Plymouth, a priest being resident only rarely.  From 1877 we know Mass was said on the second Sunday of alternate months by a priest from Liskeard.

The care of souls in Bodmin passed from the diocese back to the Canons Regular of the Lateran in 1881.  We have this letter from the superior of the Order at that time, Abbot Santini, in which he expresses his hope that he might see the Order re-established in England:   "Among the chief concerns of our office is the duty where houses of our Order have been destroyed they shall be restored to the glory of God and for the good of souls.  Since the Order once flourished in England and later ceased completely due to the injustices of the times, we, inspired especially by the nuns of our Order of Canonesses in the Diocese of Plymouth, and encouraged by the kindness of the Bishop of Plymouth, began to think of restoring our Order in that country."  Bishop Vaughan issued his decree of authorisation on 23 August of the same year:  "We receive you canonically in our Diocese of Plymouth and we give you the church of St Mary, with the house and adjoining land to serve your community on condition that you have the care of souls in Bodmin and the surrounding district.  We shall not cease to have your community at heart and we are certain that for your part you will endeavour to give every reasonable assistance in the evangelisation of Cornwall, which was the last county to give up the faith…"

The Priory at Bodmin was given the status of an Abbey in 1953.  The foundation stone of the present church was laid in 1937 but the war caused the building works to be delayed for many years, and it was not until 24 June 1965 that the church was consecrated by Bishop Restieaux.  It is a fine building of local stone, with a nave of three bays, sanctuary, choir and vestries.  The fenestration was designed and made by the monks of Buckfast Abbey in their distinctive style. 

The Catholic Church in Cornwall owes a huge debt to the Canons Regular, who were responsible for founding the great majority of the present Catholic churches in Cornwall.  Members of the community are buried in the Canons Regular cemetery in Bodmin on land adjacent to the church.  Fr Guy is the first diocesan priest to serve in Bodmin since 1881.

St Michael's in Wadebridge 

In 1926 the Bodmin Chapter authorised the foundation of the Wadebridge mission in so far as it allowed Sunday Mass to be said by one of its members in the coffee room of the Commercial Hotel.  It continued there till 1929.  By 1932 we know there was a resident priest in Wadebridge, supplied from Bodmin. The church of St Michael in Wadebridge was blessed and opened by Bishop Grimshaw on 23 July 1947.  Previously Sunday Mass had been said in the Town Hall, in the British Legion Hall and in Dunveth Farm

St Saviour & St Petroc in Padstow

The Padstow mission was commenced by the Canons Regular from Bodmin in 1909.  It owed much to the endeavours of Miss Eleanor Hunter and Miss Annie Chapman, a convert Padstowian.  Bishop Graham, on being approached by the former about the possibility of Sunday Mass being provided on a regular basis, suggested she sought the help of Prior Smith in Bodmin.  The sequel appears in the Prior's diary, under date 27 October 1909:  "I went to Plymouth to see the Bishop on the subject of the Padstow mission.  He gives sanction for us to try to do something there."  On 14 November 1909 Sunday Mass was said before 14 people, in the Long Room of the Ship Inn.  By the beginning of the First World War a timber church had been designed and built on a site in Church Street.  It cost £100 and was to remain in use for 60 years. 

By the 1970s the timber building had become inadequate to accommodate the holiday Sunday Mass attendance and in 1961 the local congregation voiced its concern in a letter to the Prior of Bodmin for 'the increasing need of a new church'.  The Chapter accordingly set in motion the procedures to obtain planning permission to build on a new site at the top of Church Street in Park Place which had been gifted by the late John Prideaux-Brune from the Prideaux Park Estate in 1958.  This was granted in 1973 and early in 1974 work commenced.  It was dedicated to St Saviour and St Petroc by Bishop Resteaux on Sunday 1^st June 1975.  

St Paul the Apostle in Tintagel

As far back as 1946 the Bodmin Chapter of the Canons Regular of the Lateran had agreed to purchase a site for a church in Tintagel.  This site, on which the church now stands, was acquired for £390 on 6 August 1946.  It was through the bequest of Robert and Daisy Lund, who had resided in Tintagel, that the building of a church there was made possible.  This gem of a church, dedicated to St Paul the Apostle, and building in modern style of local Cornish material after the design of Mr Vyvyan Salisbury, was opened by Bishop Restieaux of Plymouth on 23 February 1968.  "We all greatly admire the new church which, I think, is a great success", wrote the Bishop.  Visitors to Tintagel will notice the beautiful windows, made under the direction of Dom Charles Norris, OSB, of Buckfast Abbey.   

For more details about the church in Tintagel, click on this link.

We are grateful to Fr Ambrose Whitehead CRL whose book 100 Years in Cornwall, a History of a Canon Regular Ministry (1991) provided much of the information given above.

Below is a short account of the life of St Petroc - one of the Saints of Cornwall and Patron of our churches at Padstow and at Bodmin - and also of St Boniface, Patron of our diocese.

St Petroc, one of the most well-known Cornish saints, came to Cornwall from Ireland early in the 6^th century.   He was said to have been the son of a Welsh king or chieftain.  As a young man he resolved that he would not seek earthly glory but, rather, the Kingdom of God.  With a number of his friends he became a monk and they travelled to Ireland to benefit from the education and piety flourishing in the monasteries there.  They stayed for about 20 years, possibly as disciples of St Eugenius.  According to tradition, when Petroc found that he knew as much as his master, he led his group to Cornwall to spread the Gospel.  The county, though already partly converted to Christianity, was still predominantly pagan.  They travelled in the same boat which had taken them to Ireland - a large wicker-built craft with a leather sail.  The winds were against them, but their ship 'was borne along by the fear of God with great rapidity'.  They landed on the salt flats in the Camel estuary close to the settlement of Lanwethinoc, later to be renamed Padstow (Petrocstow).  The story goes that, on arrival, they were refused water by a party of reapers they met working in the fields.  Petroc thereupon struck the ground with his staff, and a spring appeared!

The missionaries founded a monastery in Padstow, where they led a life of strict asceticism.  St Petroc fasted assiduously, but on Sundays, 'out of reverence of the Lord's Resurrection he tasted sparingly of a little pulse, so as not to become so enfeebled in body as to be unfit for the Lord's service'.  He also regularly immersed himself in cold water, as a form of penance.  Many miracles were attributed to him.  He died near Padstow and was buried there.  Near to his tomb, so an ancient account tells us, was a spring which healed eye troubles and inward complaints, 'if there be faith'.   His relics were venerated from the time of his death and were taken to Bodmin after the Viking raids of 981 when the major part of his community moved there.  Bodmin became, as a result, a major pilgrimage centre.  In 1177 his relics were stolen.  We have this fascinating account of their recovery:  "In 1177 a certain canon of the abbey of Bodmin in Cornwall, by the name of Martinus, secretly took away the body of St Petroc; fleeing with it, he passed beyond the seas, and carried the body to the Abbey of St Maen, in Brittany…Roger, Prior of Bodmin…went to Henry (II), King of England…that by his powerful aid they might again get possession of the body of St Petroc, of which they had been fraudulently deprived.  The king…commanded…the Justiciary of Brittany that without any delay he should cause the body to be restored…(The Justiciary) came with a powerful and armed band to the abbey and ordered that the body should be given up.  And when the Abbot and monks were unwilling to comply, he added threats, that unless the body were yielded immediately, he would use force and take it; which when they heard, they feared to incur the displeasure of the King of England, and therefore restored that blessed body to the before-named Roger…The Prior of Bodmin, returning with joy to England, brought the body of the blessed Petroc, closed in an ivory shell, to the city of Winchester.  And when it was brought into the King's presence, the King having seen and adored it, permitted the Prior to return in peace with his holy charge to the Abbey of Bodmin."

Through the saint's remains are now lost, the ivory casket in which Prior Roger brought them back to England can be seen in the Anglican parish church in Bodmin.

From: The Saints of Cornwall, Catherine Rachel John, 1981.  The Domesday Book, England's Heritage, Then & Now, ed. Thomas Hinde 1985.

St Boniface was born into a Christian family of noble rank, probably at Crediton in Devonshire, about the year 680.  He baptized with the name 'Wynfrith' which means 'Friend of Peace', possibly because his father was a Saxon and his mother English, to show that the two peoples had come together.  Having been inspired from a young age to become a monk, he entered a monastery at Nursling (near Southampton), where he taught for a number of years before being ordained a priest at the age of 30.  Despite having a bright future assured for him in the Church, he found growing in his heard a passion for the foreign mission field.  His abbot released him into this work in 716 and he set sail for the Netherlands full of enthusiasm and zeal.  However, the opposition that he encountered there was so great that he retreated back to England, realizing that he needed to prepare himself better.  He dedicated the following two years to getting ready to go out again.  In 718 he set sail for Rome where he sought a blessing from Pope Gregory II who renamed him Boniface.  From Rome he crossed the Alps and spent the next 35 years of his life preaching the Gospel in Germany.  In 722 the Pope appointed him bishop responsible for the whole of Germany to the east of the Rhine.  In the authority of this role Boniface decided to take on the hostile pagan religions so prevalent in Europe at this time.  With hostile tribesmen watching on, he famously chopped down a sacred oak tree before which Thor (the god of thunder) was worshipped and so won over the people that a church was built on the site.  In 728 the Pope appointed him Archbishop of all Germany based in Mainz.  Even when he was nearly 80, Boniface refused to retire but embarked instead on a return mission to the Netherlands.  He set off with 52 companions but on Pentecost Sunday 755 he and his whole team were ambushed and slaughtered by marauding pagans.  Boniface held up his Bible to protect his face as the blows reigned down on him, but the sword pierced the Bible and he was killed.  "Eternal God, may we live as in your presence, and love the things that you love and serve you in our daily lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord."  (St Boniface)

From an article in Bible Alive June 2008