This small, upland church that you find yourself visiting today is perhaps the sixth or seventh sacred building to be erected on this hilltop site. The 'Saints' who set out from Ireland or Wales in the dark post-Roman centuries, in order to reconvert Anglo Saxonised Britain to Christianity, cared little for the creature comforts of the Flesh. It, the Flesh, was to be mortified, after all. So, provided there was drinkable water handy (and the friendly owners of the Wenn Manor Hotel will show you St. Wenna's Well right there in the Bar!), the sites they chose, could be as windswept and unsheltered from Atlantic storms as anywhere to be found in Cornwall: witness the many hilltop Cornish churches that later became landmarks for travellers - and several of them also for mariners, their towers being visible from far, far out to sea.

In the seventeenth century this very church (perhaps already in its fourth version on this site?) was probably itself such a landmark until (according to the antiquary William Hals, who should have known something of the matter, since he died in this very parish, at Tregurtha, in 1737), its Tower was struck by lightning "in about the year 1663... and a great part of the roof of the church was broken in." When you go out, look carefully at what remains at the base of the Tower: a considerable amount of work went into those quatrefoil and other mouldings and the whole structure was surely meant to support more than the present two stories. Clearly there was a third top storey until then.

Look also, as you go past the base of the Tower, at the punning sundial, with its inscription from St. Mark's Gospel (xili.33): 'Ye know not when'. We do not even know whether our patron saint was male (like 'Cinna the Poet' - lots of male Roman names ended in -a) or female (like Morwenna). The writer of these words would like you to suppose that he (Wenn) or she (Gwen or Morwenna) went on to preach the gospel in Brittany and Normandy and thus (under the name of 'Ouen') became the patron saint of some, in our view less important, places thereabouts (such as Rouen)!

After 1663 what happened? No relevant records survive to tell us what alterations befell this church between 1663 and 1825. But there will surely have been some. However, in the latter year, we do know, it was largely rebuilt in order to comply more fully than before with the conventions of eighteenth-century Anglican Churchmanship. In this 'Georgian' version, the north and south side-aisle pews faced inwards, i.e. south and north respectively, while in the centre a forest of high-sided, cushion-lined box-pews, most of them with beautifully carved oaken entrance-doors, housed the better class families and provided agreeable sleeping-quarters for their junior members. At the apex of all this stood a high, usually three-decker pulpit. From its two lower decks the parson would recite the prayers and his clerk at suitable intervals would intone 'Amen'! The rest of the congregation would mostly remain silent. Then the parson, assisted by the clerk, would don his black gown and ascend to the topmost desk of the pulpit, whence he would preach his sermon, or more usually and agreeably read out the text of someone else's. The Word was the Thing: and very wise Words were available in print. As for Communion, this was celebrated once a quarter and also on the high days of Easter, Whitsun and Christmas, when a few confirmed people went through the screen into the Chancel, while the rest of the congregation remained silently seated.

With much of this the Tractarian Movement that began in the 1840's was wholly out of sympathy. It wanted the Chancel, with the Altar at its summit, restored to its pristine importance; it wanted the Holy Communion service to regain its regular place in our individual worship. Whereas earlier, a 'Minstrels' Gallery', in this case stretching from the Tower-door to the level of the South Porch, held both a small body of singers and several musical instruments (a violin, a double-bass, a flute and a clarinet are attested here: I only wish we had boasted a 'Serpent'!), from now on the Chancel would house a be-robed choir of young voices and old, and this choir would have at its disposal no less than three aisles up and down which to process at the beginning and at the end of each service, with due ceremony, with the Cross Before.

But how was this to be done at 'Georgian' St. Wenn? Fortunately it was by then possible to dispense with the musicians in favour of an organ. More fortunately still, during those crucial years, the Rashleighs of Menabilly, who had acquired the advowson and thus become our patrons in Hals's time, now supplied us from their own family with two suitably enlightened (and moneyed) Vicars: Stanhope Rashleigh, Vicar 1853-83, and his son Arthur, Vicar 1899-1904. Between them (assisted by their apparently most intelligent and energetic wives) they not only rebuilt the Vicarage (i.e. the present Wenn Manor Hotel) and (despite all gloomy warnings) screened its garden from the southwestern gales, but in 1868 reconstructed the interior of the church so as to answer up to their new conceptions of a house of prayer. But, as their agent in all this, they employed the then fashionable and doubtless overworked architect Piers St. Aubyn, who proceeded to throw out, and doubtless burn, all the oaken box-pew woodwork, substituting his favourite (and then moderately priced) pitch-pine, in short, the pews that you see today.

Coloured glass followed in due course: the East Window in 1873, those in the south aisle in 1901, all paid for by some of the richer families in the parish. You have to look more closely to spot later memorials. For one example, there is the Victorian chandelier illuminating the 'village pews': for many years the pride and joy of the Demelza Chapel, it now hangs here at the request of the principal Demelza worshippers, it having been made homeless when their small chapel was declared 'redundant'. It hangs there at once as a reminder of past discord and as a witness of present harmony.

A second example is to be found on the left of the central aisle, a small brass tablet recording the long service of Mrs. Mary Bray (Churchwarden 1950-1983). She and her husband John Bray before her, when put together, served as Wardens of this Church for some 55 years in all, she herself for some 33 years. The writer of these words may claim himself, a foreigner, to have served as her colleague and successor for some 31 years, but at the same time he feels a certain satisfaction in having carried on her tradition of long service without equalling it.