ST GERMANS

The village of St Germans is on the River Tiddy, part of the beautiful estuary of the Lynher which joins the Tamar just downriver from Saltash. The glory of the village is its magnificent Norman church, set in a hollow with two towers and a superb doorway as its west front. This might seem an incongruous setting for such a huge and ancient church, but the parish is still the largest in Cornwall and this church's predecessor was Cornwall's cathedral from AD926, when King Athelstan made Conan the first Cornish bishop, until 1043 when the see was transferred to Crediton, and thence to Exeter in 1050. Down on the river, St Germans Quay was busy in the last century with cargoes of minerals, coal, timber and limestone, and a vigorous trade in roadstone continued until the last war.