Lanreath, St Marnarch
Village church next to Court Barton manor house. A wonderful collection of art and wood carving from 16th and 17th centuries including:
Best painted rood screen in Cornwall of early 16thcentury date. Surviving panels restored more than once, but unusually high quality – like Flemish paintings with landscape backdrops – not usual stock figures. Thirteen survive starting with an exquisite Risen Christ dressed in green, holding an orb. He has a beard but no moustache – a fashion feature found on painted Cornish screens. Next comes King Henry VI with his white hart, a saint in waiting whose hopes were dashed when King Henry VIII married Anne Boleyn. On the south chapel door is a Visitation (SS Mary and Elizabeth), and St Ursula. Then Four doctors of the Church – Pope Gregory, St Jerome, St Ambrose and St Augustine and finally four female saints: St Apollonia, St Sitha (patroness of domestic servants so shown with her bunch of keys), St Dorothy and St Barbara, see Poundstock.
- Unusual Elizabethan pulpit, several painted wooden panels, early 17th century choir stalls with arms of Grylls and strawberry borders.
- Wooden tomb of Charles Grylls and his wife of Court Barton, 1623. Painted like stone – a rarity.
- Wagon roofs with unusual flat bosses in chancel (like St Neot).
- Norman font with Palmette design of popular Fowey and South Devon-type. Treasured like title deeds, many Norman fonts survive.
- More unusual is the incomplete Norman altar stone, much smaller than present day altars.
- Lanreath was last resting place of its saint Manac according to the travelling monk, William of Worcester in 1478. Manac is depicted as a bishop in St Neot windows, see also Cardinham.