My home page is updated regularly. It summarises living in Cornwall through events, news, myths and life.

Losing their Religion?

I'm one of those who thinks that scientific evidence is the way to find the truth. When it comes to religion, there's no evidence that God exists, faith and belief doesn't make it true; to be honest, I'm uncomfortable with the concept of worshipping an amorphous deity. I'm not a rabid atheist, I simply see religious conviction as, at best, opinion, and at worse, dogma, nothing more or less than that. So it's perverse that when I hear about little chapels, similar to the one in the hamlet of Ponsongath, where we lived for many years, not having a guaranteed future if membership declines, that I feel surprisingly sad.

It's a Methodist chapel and almost two hundred years old; it's built on a grassy slope, dense with wild cyclamen, primroses and forget-me-not at this time of year and is bordered by a stream, fed from springs rising out on the downs, The stream tunnels under a bridge and along the edge of the garden, carving out a valley that eventually reaches the sea. This was my boys' playground. It's where they learnt about nature. Their boots, full of water from adventuring up and down stream, constructing dams, catching newts and frogs, bringing home eggs and wild flowers and making camps on the river bank. If the chapel were to close, where will the echoes of decades of children's laughter resonate and who were the families before mine, that the chapel meant so much to in more God fearing times?

With the help of parish records, I found that Ponsongath had six houses in 1841 with a population of around 130, including the surrounding farmsteads at Gwenter, Poldowrian and Arrowan. I discovered a vibrant community; thatchers, farmers, fishermen, a miller, two cordwainers.... shoemakers to you and me, and a pauper. Today, even taking into account the in-fill of ubiquitous '70s bungalows, the population is about twenty, a mix of in-comers and descendants from some of the original families. The congregation would have filled the chapel to bursting as there was a Sunday School as early as 1833, with over 150 christenings in the mid 1800s. I can only imagine this remote, rural community being so resonant with life; its legacy, sadly, nothing more than a sleepy hamlet of mostly retired folk and couple of holiday lets.

story continues...

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