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En Route Attractions - Morwenstow

Morwenstow truly is as dramatic and timeless as it gets. Reached by walking inland along the 12th Century Ancient way, this is the first Cornish hamlet on the path since arriving from Devon and there is a wild outpost feel about the handful of dwellings, church and 13th century inn that make up the settlement. Trees here are permanently bent over at bizarre angles, this is a harsh, windswept and isolated spot many miles and years away from the towns and cities "upcountry".

Fascinating however, due in the main to one Parson Hawker, the eccentric opium smoking poet and vicar who was in charge here in the mid 1800's. The first vicar posted here for over a century, at a time when it was reported that the Morwenstow wreckers were happy to "allow a fainting brother to perish in the sea without extending a hand of safety." Hawker was fixated by the numbers of sea dead washed up on the rocks below the church and specifically the local practice of beach burial. Despite a healthy proportion of smugglers and wreckers in the pews he took to bribing them with healthy amounts of Gin to help him in bringing the dead back up the sheer cliffs to a proper Christian burial.

He built a small hut (Hawker's Hut) from driftwood clinging to the precipitous cliffs, where he spent his time writing his poems, smoking opium and keeping watch for the shipwrecks. This driftwood hut is now the smallest property in the National Trust portfolio and passed on the path as you leave for Bude. His antics included dressing up as a mermaid and excommunicating his cat for hunting mice on Sundays but he left his mark however as it was here he created a new service celebrated today all over the UK, The Harvest Festival.

In his churchyard you can spot a granite cross marked "Unknown Yet Well Known", marking a mass grave of 30 or more dead seafarers he had brought back up the cliffs by the villagers. From here look over at the nearby Gothic style vicarage with the towers he commissioned, one as a replica of his mothers tomb !

A wild and imposing place Morwenstow offers the modern walker two worthy points of shelter, the Bush Inn a place of refuge for travellers since 950AD when it was used by travelling monks. An appropriately atmospheric place which still has its leper's window in place where the needy were passed scraps, later used as a lookout by the wreckers and smugglers who operated from this alehouse. If that all sounds too intimidating, beside the church is the Rectory Tea rooms said to be one of the best (and certainly one of the most remote) in Cornwall.

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