Page:The Cornwall coast.djvu/381

MORWENSTOW 375 had manned their yards to greet the fulfilment of duty to a brother mariner's remains." Morwen- stow is really Morwenna-stow, Morwenna being a grand-daughter of Brychan, and thus belonging to a famous Welsh family of saints. The church is therefore a Celtic foundation, not Saxon as Hawker believed ; he was always a little shaky in such details. In some maps and old local sign- posts the name is still written Moorwinstow, and was anciently Morestowe. Probably the earliest relic in the church itself is the font, which appears to belong to the tenth century ; three typical Norman pillars support the northern arcade of the roof, and there is a very fine Norman door at the south porch. The Vicar loved to interpret the zigzag moulding as the " ripple of the lake of Gennesareth, the spirit breathing upon the waters of baptism " ; he was doubtless more correct in reading a symbolic meaning into the carved vine that creeps from the chancel down the church. On the furze and bracken-clad slope above the cliffs, not far distant, is the hut that Hawker himself constructed, building it of wreckage ; this was the sanctuary to which he loved to retreat for contemplation and literary work. It was here that he wrote his Sangraal poem, and the strong picture of its close might apply to this scene as forcibly as it does to its original. In this parish is Tonacombe, a finely preserved specimen of the mediaeval manor-house, its hall containing the old minstrels' gallery. This deeply interesting house has many memories of Charles Kingsley as well as of Hawker. Kingsley was a visitor here while writing his Westivard Ho I and Tonacombe figures in that book as " Chapel." Hawker met Kingsley at this time, and introduced