The encroachments of the sand have caused no less than three churches to be built after considerable intervals of time in this parish. The last was commenced in 1804; and in this year (1835) a building has been discovered more ancient than the first of the churches, and not improbably the oratory of St. Perran himself.
The length of this chapel within the walls is 25 feet,
without 30 feet; the breadth within 12½ feet, and the height of the walls the same.
At the eastern end is a neat altar of stone covered with lime, four feet long by two and a half feet wide, and three feet high. Eight inches above the centre of the altar is a recess in the wall, where probably stood a crucifix; and on the north side of the altar is a small doorway through which the priest may have entered. Out of the whole length the chancel extended exactly six feet. In the centre of what may be termed the nave, in the south wall, occurs a round-arched doorway, highly ornamented. The building is however without any trace of window, and there is only one small opening, apparently, for the admission of air.
The discovery has excited much curiosity throughout the neighbourhood, which has unfortunately manifested itself by the demolition of every thing curious in this little oratory, to be borne away as relics.
Very little is known concerning the saint who has given his name to the three Perrans. He is however held in great veneration, and esteemed the patron of all Cornwall, or at least of the mining district. By an anachronism of fifteen hundred years or more, he was considered as the person who first found tin; and this conviction induced the miners to celebrate his day (the fifth of March) with so much hilarity, that any one unable to guide himself along the road, has received the appellation of a Perraner; and that again, has been most unjustly reflected as a habit on the saint.
It may here be worthy of remark, that, as the miners impute the discovery of tin to St. Perran, so they ascribe its reduction from the ore, in a large way, to an imaginary personage, Saint Chiwidden; but chi-wadden is the white house, and must therefore mean a smelting or blowing house, where the black ore of tin is converted into a white metal.
In the Lives of the Saints, published by Doctor Butler, where all miraculous adventures, like swimming on millstones,
are carefully omitted, the following history is given of our saint.
“St. Kiaran or Kenerin, Bishop and Confessor, called by the Britons, Piran or Perron.