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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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