St Sithney Church

St Sithney Church Sithney

Sithney is grade 1 listed and is a 15^th Century Church on a Norman foundation; built of granite in the pointed style.  It  has a central nave and two aisles, two small transepts, a south porch and an embattled 60ft tower with pinnacles.  There are 3 bells all cast in 1771 and recast in 1950.  Under the SE pinnacle is a statuette of St Sithney, facing Brittany, from which country he came in the fifth century.  We are now linked with the Church at Guisseney, they donated the wooden statue of St Sithney, pictured right.  Tradition says that St Sithney is buried in the North Transept.

Suspended from the ceiling is a copy of a letter from Charles 1 which expresses his thanks for the support received during the Civil War. 

The font bowl is Norman, dating from 1080 to 1100 and is made of Greenstone, a volcanic rock found in Cornwall.  The bowl was discovered under the floor  of the Sanctuary in 1853 it has an outside diameter of 19½” and an inside diameter of 14½”, being 12¾” high.  It stands on a granite pedestal dating from about 1750. 

There are several memorial tablets on the walls to various local families & past incumbents.  On the North wall facing the South door is a coffin lid from the Priory of St John’s Hospital, which stood in the area of St John’s in Helston.  There is a tradition that this stone measuring 5’ 7” in length was the lid of the sarcophagus of Prior Penhalurick.

In the churchyard is a memorial to John Oliver of Trevarno erected in 1741 by his son Dr William Oliver the famous inventor of Bath Oliver Biscuits. His friend, the poet Pope, wrote their epitaph.

There are also vaults of the Rogers Family of Penrose and the Pophams of Trevarno in the churchyard.