Church Of St Gerrans

Church of Saint Gerrans

This is a parish church with 13th-century origins, though tradition records the first rector in 1260. The building was significantly extended in the 15th century and underwent substantial restoration in 1850-51 following a fire in 1848.

The church is constructed of slatestone rubble with granite and freestone dressings. The roofs are of dry Delabole slate with wide eaves courses and granite coped gable ends. The plan comprises a nave and chancel under one roof, a west tower with a north transept, a vestry to the north of the chancel, a south aisle, and a south porch.

The 15th-century tower is of two stages and features diagonal granite ashlar buttresses, a battlemented parapet, and a tall octagonal granite ashlar spire topped with a weather vane. The spire was restored in 1636. A moulded granite west doorway with pointed arch hoodmould and relieving arch sits below a Perpendicular three-light window also with hoodmould and relieving arch. Granite ashlar walling adorns the west side of the tower only, ending two courses above the string dividing the stages. Clock faces were added to the north and south walls in 1911, positioned just above this string. The second stage contains a two-light Perpendicular window with trefoil-headed lights, quatrefoil tracery, and slate louvres on each side. A string below the parapet and another about halfway up the spire feature a frieze of quatrefoils.

The north wall of the nave is mostly 13th century and includes a 14th-century moulded freestone doorway with pointed arch on the left, and two original freestone lancets on the right. The 13th-century north transept was partly rebuilt in the 15th century and contains a two-light granite window with cinquefoil freestone tracery, hoodmould and relieving arch, set within a coped north gable end with a cross finial. A three-light 13th-century freestone window was reset to the east wall in the 15th century. The north wall of the chancel features a two-light, square-headed granite window with freestone tracery, positioned between the transept and vestry.

The vestry, added around 1850, incorporates a blocked pointed arch to its west wall and a single-light 15th-century window to the east gable end. A large external lateral stack with an octagonal stone shaft and granite weatherings extends from the north wall. The chancel east window has an outer granite frame but contains 15th-century freestone tracery and glass of 1906. Both the chancel and south aisle gables display cross finials to the apex of reset granite coping. The 15th-century east window of the aisle features monolith granite jambs, Perpendicular freestone tracery, and glass of 1893. The south wall windows to the right of the porch retain original 15th-century moulded granite outer frames but have 19th-century freestone tracery with quatrefoils. The walling above impost level was rebuilt in the 19th century. To the left of the porch is a 15th-century two-light window with trefoil-headed lights and hoodmould, while a two-light 15th-century Perpendicular granite window adorns the west gable of the aisle.

The porch features a reused pointed segmental ordered granite arch to the doorway and reset granite kneelers with carved fleurons supporting a coped gable. Within the porch are reused 15th-century oak wallplates with trailing vine carving under the eaves. A stoop with a damaged granite bowl and freestone trefoil head with ogee arch survives within. The inner south doorway has a pointed arch with moulding similar to standard A Cornish piers, as classified by Pevsner.

The interior retains a 19th-century roof structure throughout, though it incorporates reused timber with curved bracing to the common rafters. A seven-bay granite arcade displays an unusual moulding of eight engaged shafts to each pier, with dice capitals and four-centred arches. An ordered pointed segmental arch leads to the north transept, and a pointed arched doorway and crudely built steep rubble arch provide access to the tower. Rear arches frame four south aisle windows and the east windows of both chancel and aisle. Built-in stone benches, now with wooden coverings, survive in the north transept and south-west corner of the aisle. An aumbry recess adorns the north wall of the chancel, and a trefoil-headed piscina recess is set into the south wall.

Furnishings include a Norman font with a square top decorated with four-bay blind arcading on each side, its round bowl supported on a heavy central round pier with slender round corner shafts, all standing on a base. Six early 16th-century carved oak bench ends feature quatrefoils, tracery, and shields, two of which are carved with pomegranates, the device of Catherine of Aragon, Queen from 1509-1536. Otherwise, the church contains 19th-century pews, a polygonal oak pulpit with blind tracery, and choir stalls with open tracery.

Monuments include a 13th-century sepulchral coffin slab of greenish-black stone with a quatrefoil-headed cross to its lid, bearing a double cavetto moulded border within an arched recess set into the north wall of the transept. It is said to have been moved from the chancel in the 19th century. A fine Baroque marble memorial adorns the north wall of the south aisle at its east end, commemorating Edward Hobbs and his wife Jennifer, erected by his nephew John Thomas of Nanshutall in 1732. This ornate monument features carved male and female figures flanking a Latin inscription within an oval border, beneath a crown-like baldachino with a round arched hood featuring a moulded cornice and cherubs over acroteria with an urn over the central acroterion. A cartouche with a coat of arms appears below, flanked by skulls.