Phillack

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Phillack
Cornwall
Over the Black Bridge - geograph.org.uk - 578331.jpg
Over the Black Bridge to Phillack
Location
Location: 50°11’43"N, 5°24’47"W
Data
Local Government
Council: Cornwall

Phillack is a village in western Cornwall, about a mile northeast of Hayle and half-a-mile inland from St Ives Bay on Cornwall's Atlantic Ocean coast. The village is separated from the sea by a range of high sand dunes known as The Towans.

There is some dispute over the origins of the village's name. In the 17th century, Phillack was believed to refer to the Irish St Felicitas who is said to have founded Phillack church in the 6th century. However, a 10th-century Vatican codex mentions a Saint Felec of Cornwall who is believed to have lived about the same time and may be dedicatee of the parish church[1]

Parish church

Phillack parish church

St Felicitas and St Piala's Church, Phillack was originally the parish church also of Hayle: it was built in the 15th century and rebuilt in 1856 by William White but the tower is original. It is part of the Godrevy Team Ministry [2] The font is probably not mediæval; half a coped stone is in the churchyard.[3]

Antiquities

Two early stones have been found embedded in the original village church. One bears a 'Constantine' form of a Chi-Rho cross which may date to the 5th century; it was afterwards rebuilt into the wall directly above the apex of the arch of the doorway of the new church. The second is simple memorial stone bearing the name of 'Clo[tualus] [son of] Mo[bra]ttus', dated between the fifth to eighth centuries, and now stands in the churchyard.[4] Arthur G. Langdon (1896) recorded the existence of six stone crosses in the parish, including two in the churchyard.

Across the River Hayle to Phillack

Outside links

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("Wikimedia Commons" has material
about Phillack)

References

  1. Information on Phillack  from GENUKI
  2. Phillack Church
  3. Nikolaus Pevsner: The Buildings of England: Cornwall, 1951; 1970 Penguin Books ISBN 978-0-300-09589-0
  4. See the discussion and bibliography in Elisabeth Okasha, Corpus of Early Christian Inscribed Stones of South-west Britain. Leicester: University Press, 1993, pp. 201-207