Church of St Mary

The Church of St Mary is a mission church, frequently referred to as a ‘tin tabernacle’, built in 1898. Later alterations include replacement windows in the 20th century and a changed roof covering in the 21st century.

The church is constructed from a stone plinth and supporting substructure, with a timber frame clad in galvanised corrugated iron. The pitched roof is now covered with box-profile sheet material, potentially concealing the original roof.

The building is a small, rectangular chapel measuring 11.5 metres by 5 metres, oriented north to south, with small extensions to its sides. It sits into a hillside north of Cadgwith Cove, accessible via a footpath from a public car park. The church has four window bays along its length, with a porch at the north end and a chancel bay to the south. The open porch has a pitched roof. Above the north elevation is a single bell on a timber frame, operated internally, with a rectangular louvre behind. At the apex of the gable is a small timber cross, surmounted by a short spire with a square base and pyramidal top, also topped with a timber cross. Timber bargeboards on the gable end feature simple circle decoration, now partially obscured by the later roofing material. The east and west elevations each have four bays, each containing a single timber-framed window with top-opening casement. The church sits on a substructure of five parallel rubble-stone walls, exposed on the east side. The chancel bay on the south end has a pitched roof, set into and lower than the elevation.

The church is entered via a timber door (donated in the 20th century in memory of the Jane family). The interior is a single, open space exposed to the ceiling. The walls and ceiling are clad in painted timber matchboarding; the ceiling features trenched purlins and two wrought-iron braces. The floor is of unpainted boards. A vertically-boarded cupboard is located to the right of the entrance door at the north end, and a step up to a timber dias, the width of the building, is at the south end. An arch to the chancel bay has a rectangular timber louvre above, and a further step leads into the chancel, which has chamfered ceiling beams and plain timber altar rails. A single chamfered timber post, possibly originally part of a screen and adapted in the late 20th century, is located behind the pews on the east side.

A small serpentine font, a timber late-19th century lectern, prie-dieu, simple bench pews, and altar are not fixed. One pew at the rear of the church is a repurposed school bench with a cast-iron frame.