St Buryan

This village is home to one of the finest churches in the county, St Buryan’s Parish Church. The first church was built by King Athelstan in the 10th century. Having subdued the Scilly Isles, he returned to the mainland and founded a collegiate church, that is, a church with a college of priests rather than monks, and dedicated it to St Buriana. She was said to be the virgin daughter of an Irish king who landed at St Ives in the 5th century. The church is packed with interesting features, such as misericords, a fine font, a chancel screen and a 14th century tower that dominates the landscape and provides a daymark for shipping around Land’s End. Apart from the Celtic crosses beside the porch, the most interesting feature in the graveyard is a stone that reads:

‘Here lie John and Richard Benn
Two lawyers and two honest men.
God works miracles now and then.’

To the north of St Buryan is the Boscawen-Un Stone Circle which, though not the most impressive in the country, certainly has much appeal; the circle is in fact an oval made up of 19 stones, and its central standing stone - an attractive 8 feet tall leaning pillar of sparkling quartz, was deliberately placed so that it leaned at an angle, its tip only being 6 feet from the ground.