The Day of Saints - Day 4, More from Morewenstow

After visiting Hawker's Hut it was time to backtrack and look for Morwenna's Well. In this I failed miserably and will look again some other day. It is located at a now inaccesible part of the cliffs, but remained invisible to me. I may need to work on my observation skills!

The Church of St Morwenna and St John the Baptist, is the parish church of the northernmost Anglican parish in Cornwall. It sits some two hundred yards from the coastline, and overlooks the sea. Built first in the 13th century on the site of an earlier Saxon church, it was extensively restored in the time of R.S.Hawker, who also initiated the first modern-day Harvest Festival there in 1842.

The dedication to St Morwenna is an early one, though perhaps centuries after she herself lived. She is "an obscure figure whose cult has not been traced elsewhere for certain" (Orme, 196). According to Geraldus Cambrensis (b.c.1147) Morwenna, was the daughter of a Welsh king (or prince), Brychan (5th or 6th century?), making Morwenna a sister to numerous saints including Nectan and Endelient. (Morwenna's name is first mentioned in a 12th century life of Nectan.) She was trained in Ireland before becoming one of the Welsh saints who crossed over to Cornwall. Morwenna made her home in a little hermitage known as Hennacliff (the Raven’s Crag), which was later renamed Morwenstow, meaning 'Morwenna's holy-place', (stow being a Saxon word for a dwelling).

A modern carving depicting the patron saints of the Morwenstow church

According to legend, Morwenna built a church for the local people with her own hands, carrying stone on her head from beneath the cliff. The well I attempted to find is said to have sprung up from the earth at a point where she once stopped to rest on the journey back and forth.

Shoreline rocks below the site of Morwenna's Well

Early in the sixth century, while she lay dying, her brother, St. Nectan, came to see her, and she asked him to raise her up so that she might look once more on her native shore. (The coast of Wales is sometimes visible in good weather conditions from the cliffs). She was buried at the church in Morwenstow, it is said, though there is no solid evidence of this.

In the weeks ahead I will be writing a poem to accompany Morwenna, but that for now must wait.