Perranzabuloe

Perranzabuloe (/ˌpɛrənˈzæbjəloʊ/; Cornish: Peran yn Treth) is a coastal civil parish and a hamlet in Cornwall, England. Perranzabuloe parish is bordered to the west by the Atlantic coast and St Agnes parish, to the north by Cubert parish, to the east by St Newlyn East and St Allen parishes and to the south by Kenwyn parish. The hamlet (containing the parish church) is situated just over a mile (2 km) south of the principal settlement of the parish, Perranporth; the hamlet is also seven miles (11 km) south-southwest of Newquay. Other settlements in the parish include Perrancoombe, Goonhavern, Mount and Callestick. The parish population was 5,382 in the 2001 census, increasing to 5,486 at the 2011 census.

The name of the parish derives from the medieval Latin Perranus in Sabulo meaning Piran in the sand. It refers to Saint Piran (the patron saint of Cornwall) who founded an oratory church in the seventh century near the coast north of Perranporth. In medieval times the parish of Perranzabuloe was a peculiar of Exeter Cathedral. Perranzabuloe at that time exercised ecclesiastic control of St Agnes: the latter's church was a chapelry of Perranzabuloe. In 1846 St Agnes became a separate ecclesiastical parish.

St Piran's Round is a circular defended late prehistoric enclosure, later used as a plen-an-gwary, one of only two remaining.

The site of the oratory of St Piran is in the extensive dunes known as Penhale Sands. Legend has it that St Piran landed on Perran beach from his native Ireland and built the oratory in the Irish style. The structure revealed in 1835 was well preserved, lacking only its roof – however it was almost immediately vandalised, and subsequent misguided attempts at preservation resulted in considerable loss to the ancient fabric. The entirely stone-built high-gabled oratory was a very simple double square in plan and is just 30 feet (9.1 m) long externally, 25 by 12 feet internally. The interior was lit only by a small opening 8 inches above the stone altar where a headless skeleton was found, believed to be the saint himself. Three carved stone 'Celtic' heads, of a man, woman, and cat that originally surrounded the points of the cable-framed, decorated, round-headed lofty portal arch are in the care of the Royal Cornwall Museum following nineteenth-century vandalism.

Stepping down the three steps from the narrow south portal, a timber screen once separated the sanctuary from the square nave surrounded on the three remaining sides; north, west and south, by a foot-wide stone bench. A further narrow 'priests door' gave access directly into the sanctuary from the eastern gable.

The interior was apparently almost entirely unlit apart from two tiny penetrations, and the absence of timber finds on the waterlogged site suggest the roof may have been constructed as a drystone corbelled vault in the early western-Atlantic ecclesiastical tradition found from Ireland to Brittany – see for example the better preserved Gallarus Oratory in Ireland or the late medieval Dupath Well. Later medieval 'holy-well' architecture across Cornwall, Devon and Brittany often follows the earlier Celtic Christian corbelled drystone tradition and early Celtic reliquaries record how early high-gabled religious houses may once have looked.

Local community groups have established a fund for re-excavation of the site which began in early 2014.

The encroachment of the sand led to the oratory's abandonment in the 10th century. The noted 17th-century antiquary Richard Carew wrote: