St. Just in Penwith Parish Church is a parish church

Parish church

A parish church , in Christianity, is the church which acts as the religious centre of a parish, the basic administrative unit of episcopal churches....

 in the Church of England

Church of England

The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...

 located in St Just in Penwith

St Just in Penwith

St Just is a town and civil parish in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The parish encompasses the town of St Just and the nearby settlements of Trewellard, Pendeen and Kelynack: it is bounded by the parishes of Morvah to the north-east, Sancreed and Madron to the east, St Buryan and Sennen to...

, Cornwall

Cornwall

Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...

, UK

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

.

The church is Anglo-Catholic and under the care of the Bishop of Ebbsfleet

Bishop of Ebbsfleet

The Bishop of Ebbsfleet is a suffragan bishop who fulfils the role of a provincial episcopal visitor for the whole of the Province of Canterbury in the Church of England....

 rather than the Bishop of Truro

Bishop of Truro

The Bishop of Truro is the ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Truro in the Province of Canterbury.The present diocese covers the county of Cornwall and it is one of the most recently created dioceses of the Church of England...

.

History

The church of St Just is medieval. There are no remains of the early medieval church and only part of the chancel remains from the church built in 1334 which was dedicated on 13 July 1336 by the Bishop of Exeter

Bishop of Exeter

The Bishop of Exeter is the Ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Exeter in the Province of Canterbury. The incumbent usually signs his name as Exon or incorporates this in his signature....

, John Grandisson

John Grandisson

John Grandisson was a medieval Bishop of Exeter.Grandisson was born at Ashperton near Hereford in 1292. His father William, Lord de Grandisson, was a Burgundian in the household of Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, brother of King Edward I of England. He studied theology at the University of Paris, and...

. The current building dates from the 15th century. In 1355 the church was given to Glasney College

Glasney College

Glasney College was founded in 1265 at Penryn, Cornwall, by Bishop Bronescombe and was a centre of ecclesiastical power in medieval Cornwall and probably the best known and most important of Cornwall's religious institutions.-History:...

 by Sir John de Beaupre together with the church lands of Lafrowda. In 1478 the bones of St Justus

Justus

Justus was the fourth Archbishop of Canterbury. He was sent from Italy to England by Pope Gregory the Great, on a mission to Christianize the Anglo-Saxons from their native Anglo-Saxon paganism, probably arriving with the second group of missionaries despatched in 601...

 the Martyr were believed to lie in the church. Medieval chapels in the parish included a chapel of St Helen at Cape Cornwall

Cape Cornwall

Cape Cornwall is a small headland in Cornwall, UK. It is four miles north of Land's End near the town of St Just. A cape is the point of land where two bodies of water meet and until the first Ordnance Survey, 200 years ago, it was thought that Cape Cornwall was the most westerly point in...

 and a chapel of St Michael

St Michael

St Michael was a brand that was owned and used by Marks & Spencer from 1928 until 2000.-History:The brand was introduced by Simon Marks in 1928, after his father and co-founder of Marks & Spencer, Michael Marks. By 1950, virtually all goods were sold under the St Michael brand...

 on Chapel Carn Brea.

Description

The church is large and built of regular granite blocks. Both the body of the church and the tower are of the 15th century and the tower is of three stages. The aisles are built to the same design with alternating windows of two different patterns. The arcades have limestone piers. The font is modern but has been described as 14th century in date. Two medieval wall paintings remain but they are both heavily restored; one portrays St George and the other a warning to breakers of the Sabbath.

Antiquities

The Selus Stone is thought to date from the late 5th or early 6th centuries. It bears the Latin inscription Selus Ic Iacet (Selus lies here). This is thought to refer to Salomon of Cornwall

Salomon of Cornwall

Salomon was a late 5th century Cornish 'warrior prince', possibly a King of Cornwall.St Levan according to the Life of St Kybi was a Cornishman and the father of Kybi. In the department of Morbihan are four places probably connected to the same saint, who probably lived in the 6th or 7th century...

, otherwise known as Saint Selevan.

Langdon (1896) recorded the existence of six stone crosses in the parish, including two at the vicarage and two at Kenidjack

Kenidjack Valley

Kenidjack Valley is a steep-sided valley in Cornwall, United Kingdom.The Tregeseal River flows down the valley and discharges into the Atlantic a few hundred metres north of Cape Cornwall , half-a-mile north-east of the village of St Just.The valley was an important area of tin mining and the...

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