“In the dusk of evening, with the swallows in vast quantities gathered for their flight to the south, and the white bones lying before me, the wind sighing and piping in the grass, and the sea moaning in the distance, the scene was one that deeply impressed me, and will never be forgotten.” Although the ruin is that of an early church, it is a mistake to suppose that it is contemporary with the founder. It is probably two centuries later. The rock and hermitage of Roche, standing up in a district that has been turned over and undermined for tin, and is strewn with ruined engine-houses, deserve to be seen. The rock is a prong shooting up boldly, and a chapel and the cell of an ancient hermit have been constructed on it. S. Denis is a conical hill with an earthwork round it; in fact, it was an old _Dinas_, or palace of a chief. The church within was called Lan-dinas. The bishops of Exeter, not understanding the real meaning, concluded that it was the church of S. Denis, and dedicated it to the Bishop-martyr of Paris, a somewhat apocryphal personage. So two fortified headlands were each Lan-an-dinas,[22] and they were converted into churches of S. Anthony. S. Columb Major has a fine church, which unhappily suffered from an explosion of gunpowder in 1676, when three boys carelessly set fire to a barrel of this explosive, which had been placed in the rood-loft staircase. The windows and roof were blown away, and the pillars thrown out of the perpendicular. Happily the fine carved benches were unhurt; they are curious. Apparently a travelling show of wild beasts passed through the town when they were being carved, and the workmen reproduced on them the strange beasts they saw. There is an interesting and picturesque old slated house at the entrance to the churchyard. The old custom of hurling is still observed at S. Columb on the feast, which is in November, and the silver ball is thrown in the market-place. S. Columb Minor bench-ends, according to Hals, were of black oak, and bore the date 1525, and it had a fine rood-screen with loft, “a most curious and costly piece of workmanship, carved, and painted with gold, silver, vermillion, and bice, and is the masterpiece of art in those parts of that kind.” This has all disappeared now. S. Agnes’ Head, pronounced S. Anne’s, presumedly takes its name from Ann, the mother of the gods among the Irish Celts, and probably also among the Cymri. She gives her name to the Two Paps of Ana, in the county of Kerry. The parish was constituted late. There was no such parish at the time of the Conquest, and the present church was built and consecrated in 1484. A story is told of a house in S. Agnes. When Wesley visited this part of Cornwall preaching, he was refused shelter elsewhere than in an ancient mansion that was unoccupied because haunted by ghosts.