Crantock Monastery

St Carantoc’s Church stands in the village of Crantock, Cornwall, on ground first used for worship in the 6th century. The present building mixes Norman, medieval and Victorian work, with a three-stage west tower, north and south aisles, transepts and a south porch. The tower shows angle buttresses and an embattled parapet, while the nave arcades still carry some Norman arches. The churchyard contains a 19th-century granite cross on an older base and a set of 17th-century stocks under a modern gabled roof. The site began as a monastic college founded in the mid-13th century by Bishop William Briwere of Exeter. At its height the college had a dean and nine canons supported by four vicars choral, though funds were always short and residence was rare. Repeated collapses of the tower in the 14th and early 15th centuries led to indulgences being sold to rebuild it. After the dissolution the church fell into ruin until 19th- and early 20th-century restorations gave it the appearance praised by Charles Henderson in 1925. Inside, the 12th-century font and 17th-century communion rail survive alongside 19th-century fittings such as the carved rood screen and stained glass. A silver chalice from 1576 and parish registers beginning in 1559 are kept in the church. Six bells hang in the tower, three cast in 1767 and three in 1904. The lychgate at the south entrance and the medieval stone coffin in the churchyard add to the quiet interest of the place.