The church of St Hilary is dedicated to St Hilary Bishop of Poitiers and has been a place of worship for many centuries. It is built in an Early - English style and parts of it date back to the 13th century. It is a grade I listed building.
There was possibly a Celtic church on the site even before the withdrawal of the Romans from Britain. The beautiful 13th century tower and broach spire - a most unusual feature on a Cornish Church building - was previously whitewashed to serve as a landmark for ships, since it was visible from both coasts.
All but the the tower and spire of the church is Victorian, since most of the earlier church was destroyed by a disastrous fire on Good Friday, 25th March, 1853. The remainder of the church was rebuilt two years later by William White.
A Roman milestone was found in the foundations of the church in 1854, and it is now fixed in the south aisle. The inscription, Imp Caes Flav Val Constantino Pio nob Caes divi Constanti Pii F[el] Aug[usti] filio, refers to the Roman emperor Constantine the Great . The churchyard contains both British and Roman crosses.
Father Bernard Walke was made Vicar of St Hilary in 1912; he was the priest from 1913 to 1936. Although the medieval St Hilary Church was rebuilt in 1853, it lacked interior decoration. Annie Walke, the vicar's wife, and some of the couple's artist friends from the Lamorna Group of the Newlyn School were commissioned to decorate the church with altar pieces, panels and other works. Some of the works depicted the lives of saints from Cornwall.
One of Annie's works for the church was a Joan of Arc painting that was placed just inside the south door of the church. Ernest Procter made a work that depicts St Mawes, St Kevin and St Neot for the pulpit and a reredos of the Altar of the Dead. Annie, Dod and Ernest Procter, Gladys Hynes, Alethea and Norman Garstin and Harold Knight all made paintings for the sides of the stalls in the church. Phyllis ("Pog") Yglesias made the north wall's crucifix and nearby is Roger Fry's reredos. 12 year old Joan Manning Saunders made the painted pictures for a chancel screen.
Bernard Walke's play, Bethlehem, was first broadcast from the church by the BBC on Christmas Eve 1927 – the BBC's first outside broadcast. Its original popularity made St Hilary fashionable, almost famous; Bernard Shaw was one of a number of notable visitors to the church, some more welcome than others.
The parish became notorious in the 1930s after a mob of fifty extreme Protestant agitators broke into the church on 8 August 1932, and removed or destroyed many of the fittings and furnishings that had been installed by Bernard Walke.
St Hilary church is also the burying place of John Carter Richards, the son of the notorious smuggler John Carter, dubbed the King of Prussia, due to his fascination with Frederick the Great.
The tower and spire were built in the 1Ath century
The church was destroyed by fire on BCth March 1D53
The 1st BBC outside broadcast was on EFth December 1927
The church was sacked on Gth August 1H32
Stand facing the church door at the listing co-ordinates. There is a plaque at ground level on your left.
The four digit number on the plaque is JK0L.
M=B+C
N-G-J
P=H-E
The cache is hidden at N50 0M.NPD W005 2L.KAF
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