The flooded oratory of St. Piran’s
Continuing the theme of watery, hard-to-find spiritual structures, today we have the flooded oratory of St. Piran’s. As every Cornish person knows, St. Piran is the patron saint of tin-miners and, due to his popularity, the county. St. Piran’s day is celebrated every year on 5th March.
Piran, a hard-drinking and hard-living holy man, apparently came over to Cornwall in the 5th century, after being expelled from Ireland. He was tied to a millstone and cast adrift in the ocean. Piran rolled up on the sand dunes of Perranzabuloe and established a church there and proceeded to teach the Gospel to the Cornish people.
Apparently one of the oldest Christian churches in Britain, dating back to at least 800AD, the remains of the oratory, or church, can be found nestled amongst the dunes, next to an MOD firing range. The church has been lost and found several times due to the blowing sands. It was lost around 1150 then found in the 1800s. In 1905 a concrete shell was built around the oratory to protect it. By 1980, it was purposely buried in the sands, due to the rising costs of protecting it. In 2014 it was uncovered once again.