St Carantoc's Church, Crantock

St Carantoc’s Church stands in Crantock, a village on Cornwall’s north coast. Built mainly of slatestone and granite rubble, the building shows signs of earlier use on the site. Its plan includes a west tower, nave with aisles, transepts, chancel and south porch. The tower rises in three set-back stages with buttresses and a corbelled parapet. Norman work survives in the arcades and a blocked 12th-century doorway. The church is worth visiting for its long history and surviving fittings. A church existed here by the 6th century, and the present structure contains Norman features. After collapses and repairs in the 14th and 15th centuries, Victorian restorers in the late 19th century revived the building. Charles Henderson called it ‘the best adorned church in Cornwall’ in 1925. Inside are a 12th-century font, 17th-century communion rail, 19th-century pulpit and rood screen carved by Mary Rashleigh Pinwell. Visitors find plastered walls, a slate floor and a ring of six bells. The south aisle holds a 19th-century piscina, and fragments of medieval glass survive in the sacristy. Outside, the churchyard contains a medieval stone coffin, a 19th-century granite cross on an older base, 17th-century stocks under a gabled roof, and a late 19th-century lychgate.