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History of St. Keverne Church
by
Frank Curnow
Sometimes,
words have a way of floating
around like airborne seeds
waiting for the right time,
the right place
and the right person
before settling in the right soil..........
George Griffiths
Over eighty years ago, a Vicar was appointed to St.
Keverne, a man who loved words and who came to love the
village. He undertook to compile a history of the
parish taken from many and varied documents. When he
left in 1913, his work was still unfinished, and it was
left in the care of Mr. P. D. Williams of Lanarth.
For years it remained forgotten in a cupboard - it
seemed no-one was interested in all those carefully
written words. Finally they came into the hands of
Frank Curnow, and over the past years he has referred
to many of the individual articles in the collection of
manuscripts, when writing one of his essays for the
Parish magazine.
When I came to live in St. Keverne, being a keen
amateur historian, I began to ask many questions. Most
were answered in the following way, "Ask
Frank."
I soon discovered what nearly everyone else in the
village takes for granted, Frank nearly always does
know, or knows someone else who does. Frank was born in
the village and has lived here all of his life. One can
easily detect that the words 'village' and
'life' in Frank's personal dictionary are
one and the same. He is a generous, open-hearted
Cornish gentleman, always with time to spare to answer
any questions. Throughout his life he has made
scrapbooks of newspaper cuttings, recorded village
events with his camera, meticulously made notes and
remembered minute facts.
When the appeal was made for the renovation of our
Church spire, it presented just the opportunity to
bring Canon Diggens'work into the public eye for
the benefit of his Church. He intended this word
picture to be a comprehensive one, so together, Frank
and I, have enlarged on his original notes. We have
added memories of older villagers, some who remember
him in the long off golden days of their childhood - we
are sure he would have approved. He died at Saltash on
the 15th April,1916, perhaps saddened by the fact that
one of his ambitions had not been fulfilled.
So this is a miscellany of words, words used in
official documents, parish poor accounts, history
books, private letters and notebooks, recorded
conversations and essays. Words that tell of sorrow,
work, play, happiness and fear - words of a Cornish
village.
We hope for these words - the time is now right.
Jill Newton. March 1981.
This file is in Microsoft Word format (.doc
270Kb)
History of
St. Keverne Church, by Frank Curnow, Churchwarden
for 29 years.
To download the History of St.Keverne
Church as a .zip file (86Kb)
click here
