St Neot lived as a monk in Cornwall and is remembered for his love of the poor. His relics were stolen from St Neot, the village named after him and taken to a village in Bedfordshire now called St Neot’s. There is a cross in the churchyard; it may have been donated by King Alfred who attributed the healing of a debilitating illness to a local saint St Guerir at whose shrine he prayed, perhaps when St Neot was alive and resident there.
St Neot’s shrine was destroyed at the Reformation. Four crosses stand outside the church door. There is a holy well nearby. There is another at Poundstock near Bude in North Cornwall.
King Athelstan determined the border of Cornwall at the river Tamar but his successor deemed himself King of the English and Ruler of the province of the Britons (i.e. Cornwall). Athelstan made one diocese for the whole of Cornwall under the Archbishop of Canterbury; its bishops were increasingly appointed by the English. By the 11 century, it became part of the united Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of England, though keeping its own language and culture. Some more holy wells of Western Britain.
Every place, however tiny, had to have water. Early Cornwall had hundreds (600) of such places and a good number of them (200?) had their holy well.
St Julitta,(Juthwara?) Camelford
St Ruan (Rumon) Cadgwith
St Mawnan 6C Mawnan-in- Meneage
St Mawgan-in-Pydar
St Germoe’s well St Germoe
St Wenna, Tregonetha
St Kew, Kew Highway
