Church Of St Petroc

Church of St Petroc, Bodmin

A parish church of Grade I importance, located on Priory Road. The building dates from 1469-72, with the exception of the tower which contains Norman masonry in its lower stage. The church has undergone restoration in 1814, 1867, 1888, and 1930.

The church is built of local squared and coursed stone with granite and freestone dressings, under dry slate roofs. The plan consists of a six-bay nave with three-bay chancel, north and south aisles, a north tower positioned at the junction between nave and chancel, and a two-storey south porch.

The exterior has been much retooled and refaced during the nineteenth century, though it retains outer granite frames of fifteenth-century windows and some fifteenth-century tracery. The west end was partly rebuilt in the nineteenth century when a Norman doorway was replaced with the present four-centred arched doorway. Above this stands a five-light Perpendicular-style window with a coped gable. Two flanking octagonal stair turrets flank the gable ends of the north and south aisles, each with large Perpendicular-style windows. The south elevation is embattled and features a two-storey porch at the second bay with a four-centred arched doorway, strings above the ground floor and below the parapet, and niches to the first floor. A priest's door is positioned towards the right. The central bay of the east wall was largely rebuilt in the late nineteenth century. The north tower displays Norman masonry at its lower stage with small windows.

The interior features a fifteenth-century waggon roof to the chancel aisle with the date 1471 painted upon it; the remainder of the roof was replaced in the nineteenth century. Tall standard A granite arcade piers support the building, with depressed two-centred arches and three basket arches between east and west ends, set against flat plastered walls. The porch retains remains of a stone fan-vaulted ceiling, a rare feature in Cornwall.

The church contains numerous fittings of note. A high-quality twelfth-century font features a deep granite bowl on a short shaft with slender corner shafts bearing busts of angels on capitals, decorated with carved foliage, scrolls, animals, and trees-of-life. Three piscinae are present, including a fifteenth-century octagonal cresset by the south door. Late fifteenth-century bench ends and rood screen panels have been incorporated into the rood screen, with some bench ends reused in the choir stalls and desk. A reredos of 1932, designed by Sir Charles Nicholson, incorporates some original panels of 1491 attributed to Mathley More. A carved oak pulpit with panels and a later embellished base, partly composed of choir stalls, is present. The church also contains an eighteenth-century elvan fragment of a former lantern cross, two circa 1500 double-sided German painted panels mounted on piers, a lectern incorporating fifteenth-century carved oak misereres, a seventeenth-century carved oak chair, and a fragment of fifteenth-century painted wood. The Bodmin Casket, a twelfth-century ivory casket set into the south wall of the south aisle, possibly contained the remains of St Petroc when they were returned to the Prior of Bodmin in 1177.

The monuments include a free-standing monument to Thomas Vivian, one of the last priors of Bodmin (died 1533), executed in black Catacleuse stone with a grey marble recumbent effigy on a chest decorated with figures of the Evangelists and cherubs with shields. A slate slab commemorates Richard Durant (died 1632), and another depicts Peter Bolt (died 1633) with his two wives and thirteen children. Further monuments commemorate Bernard Flamank (1658), Elizabeth Bernard, and Alice, daughter of William and Ann Webb of Altarnum (died 19 September 1833, aged three years three months), the latter by the sculptor Neville Burnard. Wall marbles include one to Michael Bennet (died 1821) by William Behnes and another to Captain Oakely (died 1835), also by Behnes. Numerous late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century wall marbles are present, including a group to the Gilbert family at the east end of the south chancel aisle.

Memorial glass includes windows dated 1859 (to John D Watkins and his wife Loveday), 1869-1884 (to Clara, wife of Walter Raleigh Gilbert), 1880, 1898, and one to William Robert Kirke (died 1868, aged 60), all to the south wall of the south chancel aisle. Additional windows commemorate the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, including one over the war memorial in the north aisle and one to Captain William Henry Liddle, with further windows at the west end.