St Neot's Well and Church, St Neot

The church and holy well of St Neot lie directly on the Mary and Michael Pilgrims Way, a cultural as well as a Celtic pilgrimage site

Highlights

• Masterpieces of stained glass
• Celtic crosses in churchyard
• Holy well 300m from church

Some claim St Neot as one of the last Celtic saints. If so he belongs to the very end of the era, when Celtic tradition was merging into Saxon, since he possibly advised King Alfred in the 9th century. We know a bit more about St Neot than most Cornish saints, thanks in part to stained-glass scenes of his life in this beautiful church.

According to later medieval accounts, St Neot trained at Glastonbury then came to Cornwall and founded a small monastery where his village now stands. He died here around 877. With an important saint’s shrine at its heart, the medieval church gained some of the best devotional art in Britain. His shrine has gone, but the stained-glass windows are intact.

As often in medieval churches, and even Canterbury Cathedral, the oldest images show the Creation. Adam and Eve are rarely mentioned in churches nowadays, but the east window of the south aisle shows Eden in all its glory, a bird fluttering off the end of God’s finger and a mischievous-looking Eve taking the apple from a serpent with a human head. The church guide describes the Creation window as its finest piece of artwork, dating from around 1500. Next to it on the south wall is a window depicting Noah, the scenes bustling with medieval seafaring activity.

The most celebrated window is the St Neot glass on the opposite side of the church. This depicts scenes from the life of the saint. He was a local king who decided to abdicate and become a monk. His holy well appears in several scenes, the saint shown with his feet in a font-like structure.

In written records he is described as reciting psalms while immersed up to his neck in cold water. Some cite this typically Celtic practice as evidence that St Neot lived earlier than the 9th century, but Saxon and even Norman saints practised immersion too (see Romsey Abbey or Finchale Priory). His shrine was kept in the chapel near his window, but destroyed at the Reformation. Four ancient stone crosses stand outside the church door, the finest of which has an interlace pattern and dates to the 10th century, no doubt installed by St Neot’s monastic school.

The holy well itself still flows, a short walk from the parish church. It is now enclosed in a little stone wellhouse. It is too shallow and cramped to follow St Neot down the stone steps into the small and rather uninviting pool. The bottom was covered with coins when I visited, and some little crosses made of twigs stood balanced against the back wall.

Many of the saint’s relics were also venerated in Cambridgeshire, in another town called St Neots, but they too were destroyed and nothing remains of the monastery there.

Directions

St Neot’s Church, St Neot, Liskeard PL14 6NA

www.saintneot.church

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GPS: 50.4823N 4.5583W church

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GPS: 50.4839N 4.5618W well

St Neot’s Church is at the eastern end of the village on the main road. The lane to the holy well starts in the middle of the village, opposite the shop and Post Office. It is marked as a cul-de-sac. Walk along here, beside the river, for 200m and you will see the wellhouse on your right, beneath a tree-lined bank.