Qualla: St Petroc's Church, Bodmin

St Petroc's Church, Bodmin: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Dixon, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1177, someone stole the bones of Saint Petroc. They were recovered, eventually, and returned to Prior Roger at Bodmin, and the ivory casket that held them - small, intricate, made far away - is still here, eight and a half centuries later. The church around it has been Catholic, then Anglican, then a monastery, then a priory, then a parish church again; it has been raided by Danes, suppressed by Henry VIII, lost its spire to a lightning strike in 1699, and been restored three times by Victorian and twentieth-century architects who could not quite agree on what it should look like. Until Truro Cathedral was finished in 1910, St Petroc's was simply the largest church in Cornwall, and even now its long nave, fifteenth-century walls, and surviving Norman tower make it the most architecturally layered building for many miles around.

Image: David Dixon | CC BY-SA 2.0

St Petroc's Church, Bodmin: The Town the Monks Built

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Simon Cobb, CC0. The place-name tells the story before the history does. Bodmin comes from a Cornish phrase meaning house of the monks - which means the name itself dates from after the monastery was founded, not before. Tradition assigns that foundation to Saint Petroc in the sixth century, a mi...

Image: Simon Cobb | CC0

St Petroc's Church, Bodmin: Stones from Many Centuries

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Garlick, CC BY-SA 2.0. The current church dates from 1469 to 1472, but very little of any building is purely one age. The tower on the north side is the oldest visible element - Norman at the base, fifteenth century above - and until 1699 it carried a 150-foot spire that drew the eye from miles away. T...

Image: Michael Garlick | CC BY-SA 2.0

St Petroc's Church, Bodmin: Prior Vyvyan's Tomb

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mutney, CC BY-SA 4.0. Of all the monuments inside, the one that stops people most often belongs to Thomas Vyvyan, the second-to-last prior of Bodmin Priory. He lies in effigy on a chest tomb of black Catacleuse stone and grey marble, carved with the careful realism that Cornish stonemasons were perfec...

Image: Mutney | CC BY-SA 4.0

St Petroc's Church, Bodmin: The Long Restoration

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrewrabbott, CC BY-SA 4.0. By 1868 the church was in trouble. Robert Jewell Withers, a London architect, was commissioned to survey the building and estimate what restoration would cost. Fund-raising stretched on for sixteen years; the structural work alone came to £1,850, the full project over £3,000. On ...

Image: Andrewrabbott | CC BY-SA 4.0

St Petroc's Church, Bodmin: What Remains

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Garlick, CC BY-SA 2.0. The churchyard is extensive and sloped. In its south-eastern corner sit the ruins of the Chapel of St Thomas Becket, a fourteenth-century building reduced to a roofless shell. At the western entrance is St Guron's Well. In the tower, eight bells still hang; the tenor weighs more ...

Image: Michael Garlick | CC BY-SA 2.0