Church of St Mary

Mission church, of the type often known as a ‘tin tabernacle’. Constructed in 1898, windows replaced in C20, roof-covering altered in C21.

MATERIALS: stone plinth and supporting substructure, timber structure clad in galvanised corrugated-iron; pitched roof with box-profile sheet covering (possibly concealing the original).

PLAN: a small rectangular chapel (11.5m by 5m) orientated north to south, with small extensions to those elevations.

EXTERIOR: the church is set into the hillside to the north of Cadgwith cove, with the only access from a footpath from the public car park to the north into the village. It has four window bays north to south, with a porch at the north end and chancel bay to the south. The open porch has a pitched roof, above which on the north elevation of the church is a single bell on a timber frame, operated internally, with a rectangular louvre behind. Above this at the apex of the gable is a small timber cross, and behind this is a short spire with a square base and pyramidal top, surmounted with a further timber cross. Timber bargeboards to the gable end have simple circle decoration at their ends, obscured by the C21 roofing material. The east and west elevations are each of four equal bays, and each bay has a single timber-framed window with top-opening casement. The church has a substructure of five parallel rubble-stone walls which are exposed on the east side. The chancel bay on the south end has a pitched roof and is set in and down from the south elevation.

INTERIOR: the church is accessed via a timber door (donated in the C20 in memory of members of the local Jane family) and is one open space, exposed to the ceiling. The walls and ceiling are clad with painted timber matchboarding; the ceiling has trenched purlins and there are two wrought-iron braces. The floor is of unpainted boards. At the north end there is a vertically-boarded cupboard to the right of the entrance door, and at the south end there is a step up onto a painter timber dias, the width of the building. An arch to the chancel bay has a rectangular timber louvre above, and there is a further step up into the chancel, which has chamfered ceiling beams and plain timber altar rails. To the rear of the pews on the east side is a single chamfered timber post which may have been part of a screen; it has been adapted in the later C20.

A small Serpentine font, and the timber late-C19 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.