Qualla: St Materiana's Church, Tintagel

St Materiana's Church, Tintagel: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Loz Pycock, CC BY-SA 2.0. Park at the gate. The church stands by itself on Glebe Cliff, half a mile west of the village of Tintagel, on a grass headland that drops straight into the Atlantic. There is nothing around it but wind, gorse, and the ruins of Tintagel Castle visible on the next headland. The walls are Norman, possibly with Saxon foundations. The font is carved with snakes. Built into the south transept is a Roman milestone bearing the name of Emperor Licinius, who died in 324. Outside, in the unusually large churchyard, lies a fourteen-year-old Italian sailor named Domenico Catanese, washed up here after a shipwreck in 1893, beneath a wooden cross marked with the lifebuoy that failed to save him.

Image: Loz Pycock | CC BY-SA 2.0

St Materiana's Church, Tintagel: Materiana

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 4.0. The church is named for a saint barely anyone has heard of - and that is part of the point. St Materiana, sometimes identified with Madryn, a sixth-century princess of Gwent in what is now South Wales, has just two churches dedicated to her in the world, both in this corner of Co...

Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 4.0

St Materiana's Church, Tintagel: What's Built Into the Walls

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1889 a Roman milestone was discovered built into the western gateway of the churchyard wall. The inscription reads I-mp C G Val Lic Licin, referring to Emperor Licinius (died 324). The stone has been moved inside, into the south transept; it sits there in plain sight, a fourth...

Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 4.0

St Materiana's Church, Tintagel: The Tower and the Bells

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Zaian at English Wikipedia, Public domain. The tower at the west end was built in the fourteenth century, with battlements added in the fifteenth. It holds six bells. Five are old - cast in 1735, 1785, 1828, and two more in 1868 - and one was added in 1945, the year the Second World War ended. The tenor weighs seven hundr...

Image: Zaian at English Wikipedia | Public domain

St Materiana's Church, Tintagel: The Sailor Boy

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Row17, CC BY-SA 2.0. The churchyard is unusually large for Cornwall and has been extended three times. The earliest pre-Victorian gravestones, all of local slate, date from 1690 to 1710. Among the most striking memorials, on the east side, is a simple wooden cross marking the grave of Domenico Catane...

Image: Row17 | CC BY-SA 2.0

St Materiana's Church, Tintagel: What the Land Remembers

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Joshua Albers, CC BY-SA 2.0. Excavations in 1990 and 1991 turned up early graves to the north-west of the church, dating to between 500 and 1000 AD - confirming that people have been buried on this headland for fifteen centuries. The Trecarne Lands to the north-east, ploughed in the 1950s, gave up more early...

Image: Joshua Albers | CC BY-SA 2.0