St Constantine's Well, Constantine Bay, Cornwall

Pilgrimage to this holy source was popular enough to merit the construction of a major stone wellhouse in this village, which is now on the Cornish Celtic Way

Highlights

• Holy well and ruined wellhouse of St Constantine

St Constantine’s holy well leaks out of the corner of a ruined stone wellhouse in the middle of the Constantine Bay golf course. A public footpath leads to the well, which is housed under a shelter, half buried in the grass.

The wellhouse is a tiny room with thick stone walls. It was presumably used exclusively for rituals involving the well water since there is a ruined church 70m away uphill, hidden amid bushes and scrub. It is impossible to enter the building now because of the algae and flowing water. The shelter itself is open on all sides with a modern stone wall around it. Inside the wellhouse are benches on either side. The entire floor is now wet, but there was once a channel through the middle that contained the flow. The building is twice as long as it is wide (3m × 1.5m), a good indication of early Celtic origins. Celtic Sites and their Saints record that it was still used in the 18th century by people who would sit and bathe themselves in the stream of water. Nowadays you can only run your fingers through the holy source as it emerges at one end of the shelter.

The St Constantine in question is not the great Roman emperor. Instead, he is a Cornishman, the leader of a local tribe who lived some time in the 6th century. Different legends survive, but he might be the rich man converted to Christianity by St Petroc, as recorded in the 12th-century Life of St Petroc. They met when the king was out hunting and St Petroc intervened to save the stag from harm. He is also remembered in the town of Constantine on the south coast of Cornwall, halfway between Falmouth and Helstone. His saint’s day is 9 March. There are other St Constantines in the Dark Ages, including a companion of St Kentigern who was martyred in Scotland. He is unlikely to be the same as the Cornish saint, but it is theoretically possible. There is a sarcophagus sitting in Govan Old Parish Church in Scotland which is said to be the Scottish St Constantine’s tomb.

Directions

In golf course: Trevose Golf Club, Constantine Bay, Padstow PL28 8JB

www.trevose-gc.co.uk

W3W: cushy.shocks.troubled

GPS: 50.5354N 5.0139W

As you drive into Constantine Bay, the road bends sharply left in the middle of town. Turn off straight ahead here, by the Trevose Golf and Country Club. Drive around the clubhouse for 250m until you see a track heading left through the middle of the golf course. Continue along the road for 60m and there is a small parking space for a maximum of two cars on the left. The footpath to the well starts here. The path wraps around the circumference of the course. The grey roof of the modern shelter housing the well becomes increasingly obvious, 5–7 minutes walk away, as you follow the path. Alternatively, you could walk along the track through the middle of the course, as it takes a more direct route almost past the well. The ruined church is 70m uphill from the well, hidden amidst the trees in the middle of the course.