CORNWALL 2017: The St. Mawgan and St. Eval Parish Churches

Believe it or not, this is my last Cornwall  2017 post before I go back to Venice and Verona.  Or did you think I had also finished our Italy trip????  HA!

As you may recall, we had off-n-on rain our entire time in Cornwall except for that beautiful Sunday in Tintagel (King Arthur's legendary birthplace) and Boscastle.  But that didn't stop us from getting out to see something of interest.  And because Pauline knows we love the parish churches, she picked two that are geographically close to each other.

As you can see from the inset, we drove to the north coast of Cornwall, 

approximately 17 miles from our St. Austell home base.

We first went to Mawgan Porth beach where we got the lay of the land...

and the Atlantic Ocean!

(It's also where we ate our lunch that day.)

From the beach we drove 2 miles to visit our first parish church of the day...in the rain.

This is the St. Mawgan in Pydar parish church from the 13th century.

Usually the churchyards are every bit as interesting to me as the church interiors.

There's an old thorn tree associated with the legends of Joseph of Arimathea...

a memorial to the 10 men who froze to death while at sea in 1846 (center-right)...

and a lantern cross carved around 1420 (top-left and bottom-right).

Look at how the gravestones circle the church, from front to back!

It was a Monday when we were there, but there were bell ringers...practicing?

Wouldn't we all love to ring the bells!

We did indeed feel welcomed, even though much of the space was dark, without the lights on.

The font is 15th century, Norman style, made of Pentewan stone.

The pulpit is from 1533, Dad.  And I know you'd love to play that wee organ, Mom.

And should any of us require a kneeler, there are plenty to go around.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

From St. Mawgan we drove the 3 miles to the St. Eval parish church, also from the 13th century.

It happens to sit out in the middle of nowhere, visible for miles around,

surrounded by the disused RAF (Royal Air Force) runways of the WWII command airfield.

See the sundial over the entrance?  "We shall Die."

Besides the church itself, 21 war graves are maintained here by the RAF.

The RAF ties to this church after the war are very strong, as you'd imagine.
It was their church while stationed nearby.

It was another dark church that rainy afternoon, but you can get the gist of it.

The bench end (top-left) is from the mid-16th century.

The "plain" font is also from the Norman times.

Pauline is always on the lookout for green men in these old churches.

These are from the high-up ceiling in bad camera light, but, again, you get the gist.

Besides, Pauline often tells us green men don't like being photographed. :)

Back down on terra firma, there is "World Peace!"

And a reminder that the RAF is covering our back.

In fact, Pauline's dad, from Squadron 612 (top-right), used the base back in the war.

Thank you!

And thus ends this 6-day stint in a very special place:  CORNWALL, England.

We'll never forget it.

VENICE 2017: The San Michele Island Cemetery

So, after lunch on Murano (last post), we hopped on the vaporetto for the 1.5 km. ride to the San Michele island, which we had passed that morning.

See how close it is, halfway between Venice and Murano.  (Wiki image)

But how many tourists ever visit San Michele???

You can actually see the island easily from the northern coast of Venice.

What you see is a walled island...and what's inside is a cemetery.

Have you ever heard of an island that is a cemetery?

It became a cemetery in 1807 "when under French occupation it was decreed that burial on the mainland...was unsanitary." 

The Church of San Michele from 1469 is the main landmark of the island,

the first Renaissance church in Venice.

See how close the Murano lighthouse appears behind it (top-right).

In fact, on our way to Murano that morning, look what we saw leaving the cemetery stop.

There had just been a service, after which the casket was being transported back to Venice.

Because of increasing lack of space, most bodies are now buried on the mainland.

But later, there's the Murano lighthouse again, when we left after lunch,

and then quickly rounded the church on our way to the San Michele vaporetto stop.

The entrance through the wall is immediately there upon disembarking.

And then?  Where to begin!

Because it was right there, we decided to start with the church,

passing through the 15th century cloister.

We wondered if the flowers were from the morning's service?

You know how much we love these places of worship...

like museums to us who view them without a Roman Catholic upbringing.

Then we started to wander about.

There are three different cemeteries on the island and this is the Roman Catholic section.

We hate seeing the graves for children, of course...or for anyone, for that matter.

But we knew famous foreigners were also buried there:

Ezra Pound, Sergei Diaghilev and Igor Stravinsky, for example.

We found the latter two, with their tell-tale signs of music and ballet, in the Greek Orthodox section.

As you'd expect, we often came to the wall's perimeter of the cemetery 

and had to turn into a new direction....

leading us to sections totally different from the last,

like to the 7 war graves from WWI.

This is the Protestant section of the cemetery.  Can you tell?

This San Cristoforo church originally belonged to San Cristoforo della Pace, 

another island that was eventually merged together with San Michele for the cemetery.

The original church was demolished and rebuilt in the mid-19th century,

but we did not visit it.

Lining the walls to the church were more tombs...

and then the other end of the cemetery.

I'm sure we missed a lot but we got the gist, which is what we had come to see.

As we left, we had a better view of the floating statue we had seen earlier:

It's the Barque of Dante created by Georgy Frangulyan in 2007.

"The composition is based on the episode from The Divine Comedy in which Dante and Virgil

cross the river Acheron, and the water boils with damned souls.  Virgil of bronze shows Dante

to the island of San Michele, where the famous Venetian cemetery is situated."

Supposedly it's the only statue in the world standing in the water.

It was created for the 52nd Venice Biennale but will now remain there forever.

A fitting close to an afternoon at the San Michele cemetery!

VERONA 2017: The Cemetery

The big challenge after every trip like this is where to start!  Usually it makes sense to start at the beginning and walk through the trip as it happened.  But this time, in the context of Holy Week, I find it appropriate to start at the end of our Venice/Verona trip with the cemetery.  Besides, it's also fresh in my mind.

Verona is a city on the Adige river in the Veneto region of Italy.

Our B&B was just outside the walls of the inner city, with foundations going back to Roman times.

In the far-off distance we could see the alps (top-right), known as the Dolomites.

We crossed the Aleardi bridge and looked back at the Navi bridge on our way to the cemetery.

The circled spot in red is the cemetery.

At the entrance to the cemetery are two lions:  a Tear and a Smile.

So appropriate for a cemetery, we both thought.

Because the sun wasn't shining on the entrance side (middle-left and center) then,

it wasn't until we went through the colonnades that we saw the expanse of the place in sunlight.

And I mean through the colonnades!

Even there, in the broad spaces, were grave stones out on the open floor.

That's where we saw what I'm calling Family Trees.

Have you seen anything like it in a cemetery?

Look at how creative they are, up close and personal.

With 8 kids in my family of origin, I can just imagine the Hart Family Tree!

Many of the grave sites had cameo portraits displayed in one way or another.

While still inside, walking downstairs and along the corridors, we saw the wall tombs.

A nearby chapel was bright and accommodating.

Roman Catholics don't cremate their dead, so the stone plaques fronted coffins along the wall.

The boy (top-left) barely reached his 5th birthday; the girl (bottom-right) reached her 1st.

Once outside, there were plots for the nuns and the soldiers...and the children.

But it was the section of the tombs/mausoleums that took our breath away.

Who needs a family tree when you can have a house/castle, right?!

(Notice the scale with Astrid in the top-left image.)

They say you can't take it with you, but...did they get the memo?

It was like a mini-town, walking around and finding our way.

If you couldn't afford a mausoleum, maybe you could afford a large statue?

I'm sure each one has its own story.

Don't you wonder?

Those protected inside or along the colonnade were covered in years of dirt/dust.

We wondered if cleaning them was futile because of exposure to the winds of time?

So many lives.  So many stories.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

As we walked back to our B&B, we ate the "last supper" out of our Venice/Verona trip,

reminding us again of how much we learn about a people and culture by their cemeteries...

and their food!

It's a reminder, while we are alive, to EAT PRAY LOVE.