Cornwall’s landscape is alive with stories, some are famous, some much more obscure, but all of them help to embellish the intricate tapestry that is the history of this little nation. I have always tried to find and record the near-forgotten tales to make sure they are passed on and this is one such stories. A chance find in the second-hand bookshop led me to obsess over a local legend I had never heard before. What follows is the mystery of the ‘Cross in the Rocks’ at Kenidjack Castle.

It was Beryl James’ book that I found and she who recorded it for us in her 1988 ‘Tales of the Tinner’s Way’, so it is to her that we really owe this discovery or remembrance – though I have tried my best to fill in some of the gaps where I could.

The Setting – Kenidjack Castle

The setting for the cross could hardly be more spectacular.

This headland is the site of an Iron Age Cliff castle and offers amazing views to Cape Cornwall and along the coast to Botallack and beyond. This place is also said to be the starting (or ending) point of the Tinners’ Way, an ancient route across Penwith that runs between Kenidjack and St Ives Bay. Kenidjack Valley, just below, was a major source of tin in antiquity and it is possible that the castle here and the one on Cape Cornwall were built to protect that source and be a hub for the subsequent trade that the mineral brought.

In the past Kenidjack castle was also identified as location for what was described as a ‘neolithic axe factory’, although I understand that that idea has fallen out of favour with archaeologists in recent years.

And the cross is ‘inscribed’ on to the most prominent boulder at the highest point on that headland.

In the 1980s Beryl James was led to the spot by a man from Botallack called Tom Harry, who was very enthusiastic that she should see it and seems to have been mystified and proud of the strange relic in equal measure. At this point we should note that the cross does not appear to have been cut into the stone in anyway, it is the absence of the lichen that creates the shape.

“Standing on a rock I carefully examined the cross. It is some three feet high and one foot nine inches across. As I ran my fingers over it I realised that it was not chiselled into the rock face, and whereas the rock itself is covered with the kind of whitish lichen which grows near the sea, nothing at all grows on the actual cross.” – Beryl James, 1988

And this leads us to the various theories as to how and why it is there.

Who created the ‘Cross in the Rocks’?

One theory is that there is a seam of arsenic in the boulder, a natural by product of tin, which kills of anything that tries to grow there and that by some fluke it has formed the shape of a cross. Another idea is that the cross has been put there, by humans hand, sometime in the past to mark some kind of ancient route (the end of the Tinner’ Way?), perhaps down to the cove below, Porthledden, where it is said that tin was once traded, or perhaps some kind of pilgrim route heading for St Helen’s Oratory in the shadow of Cape Cornwall. A kind of signpost in the landscape.

But Beryl’s guide, Tom Harry, had a local legend about the ‘Cross in the Rocks’ that he wanted recorded.

Apparently in the dim and distant past a priest had been killed, murdered even, at Kenidjack Castle and in his last moments this man laid his hands upon the rock and the cross miraculously appeared. Ever since then that place has been considered a holy spot by the people living nearby.

However, unfortunately there is one problem with this story, no records of a vicar, priest or any ‘man of the cloth’ being killed in the St Just area seem to exist . . . unless of course the legend refers to Saint Just himself. This Cornish saint was said to be the son of King Geraint of Cornwall and although he is considered to have been martyred, how he died is not clear.

In the centre of St Just in Penwith is the Plen an Gwarry open air theatre where religious plays have been performed since medieval times. Which led me to think of itinerant preachers and other possibilities . . .

Carn Praunter – the Preacher’s Carn

In the 18th century it was very common for travelling Methodist and Wesleyan preachers to give sermons outside in the open, in fields, in town squares and on rocky outcrops – anywhere that they could get some kind of elevated position and a crowd could gather to listen.

About half way up Kenidjack Valley is Carn Praunter, which means ‘Carn of the Preacher’ in Cornish, the local tradition is that when John Wesley visited St Just in 1744 he stood on this rock to speak to a large crowd of local people who were lining the valley’s sloping sides.

After his visit Wesley commented about his positive influence on them:

“It is remarkable that those of St. Just were chief of the whole County for Hurling, Fighting, Drinking and all manner of wickedness but many of the lions have become lambs.” 

And it seems likely that Wesley was neither the first nor the last preacher to use that rock.

So, I have been wondering whether it could be possible that the ‘Cross in the Rocks’ is somehow connected to one of these itinerant preachers, maybe even Wesley himself? Was a sermon once given on this incredible headland? The rocky outcrop use to elevate the speaker. And was that moment marked by someone afterwards, perhaps the preacher himself, by the carving of the cross into the delicate lichen on the boulder. And since then . . . well, the mystery has been quietly maintained and perpetuated by some unknown hand.

The Changing Faces of the Cross

It must be acknowledged that what the author Beryl James, who was also a BBC reporter, mayor of St Ives and a Bard of Gorsedh Kernow, saw back in the 1980s and what we can see now, forty years later, is rather different.

Sadly it would seem that the temptation to . . . improve (?) the cross has been irresistible to someone since her visit, as her photograph beside mine will illustrate.

Rather than a plain Latin cross it has become more of a Celtic cross with the rings around it.

But the fact that has survived at all is interesting in itself!

If only we knew when it first appeared!

Final Thoughts

I only have one source for this article, the story of the ‘Cross in the Rocks’, as far as I have been able to establish, has only been recorded in writing by Beryl James nearly forty years ago, and that makes it tricky to understand, verify and unpick. But in fact, it was partly the lack of information out there made me even more determined to record it!

Because what I do know for sure, what my years of writing this blog have taught me, is that there will be local people out there who can tell me (and us all) much, much more, so I will wait to hear from them and then update you as and when I have more to share!

Further Reading

Ballowal Barrow, Cape Cornwall

The Ordinalia at St Just 2021 – Plen an Gwari hosts Britain’s Oldest Plays

The Curse of Pendeen Vau Fogou

Walking Opportunities

Cape Cornwall to Levant circular walk

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