Madron

The part 14th century St Maddern’s Parish Church was once the mother church to Penzance and inside can be seen a Trafalgar or Nelson Banner, placed there during the events that followed the news of Trafalgar and Nelson’s death. Close to the village centre, down an overgrown path, lies the source of St Maddern’s Well that was thought to have curative powers, especially to those with rickets who tied a rag to the small thorn tree growing here. It was also used for divination, showing that the well had pre-Christian origins. Young women would tie two pieces of straw together in the form of a cross, and stick a pin in it. They would then place it on the water; the number of bubbles rising as it gradually sank indicating how many years it would be until they married. Further along the path are the remains of St Maddern’s Cell, the place where the saint, who lived in the 6th century, was said to have baptised villagers and which was destroyed by Cromwellian soldiers in 1646.

North of Madron, the landscape of granite and hilly moorland is an apt setting for the cluster of enigmatic relics of Cornwall’s prehistory scattered about there. In particular, there is Lanyon Quoit and the granite Men-an-Tol, a holed stone that was originally the entrance to a tomb chamber. For centuries, this granite ring was thought to have curative powers and naked children were passed through its centre nine times to cure all manner of diseases. A few miles from Men-an-Tol, is Chun Quoit – one of the most dramatic of Penwith’s quoits. Chun resembles a giant mushroom; a ‘capstone’ is poised on top of four upright slabs, together enclosing a chamber within which bones of ancestors may have been laid.

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