Zennor Church
St Senara's Church in the village of Zennor on the north coast of west Cornwall is one of the most atmospheric and historically interesting small parish churches in a county famous for ancient places of worship. The church dates from at least the twelfth century and the oldest fabric of the existing building reflects the Norman period of construction, though the dedication to St Senara, an obscure Breton saint connected to early Celtic Christianity, suggests that the site may have had religious significance considerably before the Norman Conquest. The church is most famous for a carved wooden bench end of considerable age, the Mermaid Chair, which depicts a mermaid holding a comb in one hand and a mirror in the other. The carving is the physical anchor for the legend of the Mermaid of Zennor, one of the best-known of Cornish folk tales. According to the story, a beautiful and mysterious woman attended services at St Senara's church over many years, enchanting the congregation with her appearance and particularly the young chorister Matthew Trewhella, who one evening followed her voice down to the sea at Pendour Cove and was never seen again. Fishermen subsequently reported hearing the couple singing together beneath the waves, and the mermaid warned boats away from the cove where she and Matthew had established their underwater home. The age of the carving is debated but is generally placed in the medieval period, making it one of the oldest surviving examples of this type of figurative church woodwork in Cornwall. The bench end remains in situ in the church and can be examined at close quarters, the mermaid's features and the symbolic objects she carries clearly visible despite the centuries of wear on the wood. The church's setting within the small cluster of granite buildings that comprises Zennor village, with the moors rising behind and the Atlantic coast visible from the church tower, is entirely characteristic of west Cornwall at its most elemental. The village and the surrounding landscape appear in the published writing of D.H. Lawrence, who lived in Zennor during the First World War and wrote vividly about the community and its character.