Find a church

Of all the churches in southeast Cornwall, St Tallan contains perhaps the most surprises.

A hermit’s hut, chapel or church has stood on this site for at least 1500 years, and St Sampson’s lies on the ancient Saints Way along which many of the Celtic Saints came from Padstow to Fowey, thus avoiding a perilous sea route around Land’s End.

Our church, a fine Grade I listed building dating from the 14th century, contains 33 late medieval bench ends, including one depicting a dog preaching to a pig!

The story goes that St Wyllow, a Christian hermit, was living nearby in 596, legend has it that he was killed beheaded but that he brought the head here, thus deciding where the church should be built.

A church set in ‘Clay Country’ 600ft above sea level on the site of an Iron Age fort and looking out towards Newquay and the north coast of Cornwall.

This church is the first designed and built by the eminent Victorian architect George Edmund Street.