Exploring the Cornish Religious Landscape

Article

By Trevor James, published 31st May 2007

The Cornish religious landscape shares one particularly significant feature with its Welsh neighbour to the north. The Celtic tendency to dedicate churches to very local saints is very strong in both Cornwall and Wales, with the church dedications frequently being mirrored by the place name. This similarity is, to an extent, generally masked by the use of two different languages but the pattern is the same. St Ives is named from St Ia’s church in just the same way as Llanidloes is named from St Idloes’ church. Such is the correlation between saintrelated place names and the church dedications that, when the pattern is broken, as at St Austell where the church is dedicated to the Holy Trinity, it can generally be concluded that an earlier matching dedication has been lost. Norman monarchs...

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