The Spirit of Cornwall: A Haunted Legacy (Vol. 1) by Mark Anthony Wyatt

Author:Mark Anthony Wyatt [Wyatt, Mark Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-10-04T22:00:00+00:00

Hawker and the Caledonian Girl

Chapter Twelve

“At Morwenstow one is not only reaching the end of Cornwall, but it seems the end of the world too.” – Sir John Betjeman

Before telling you about my friend Harri’s weird encounter in the Bush Inn, I’ll first give you a bit of background to this remote corner of North Cornwall. The parish of Morwenstow and the Reverend R.S. (Robert Stephen) Hawker will forever be bound together, and, just as with Cornwall and the Supernatural, I can’t really tell the story of one without telling the story of the other.

From our last location, somewhere near Sandymouth Beach, we now have a short, scenic, slight detour, up the North Cornish coast towards Morwenstow, which is the extreme north-eastern area of Cornwall that borders Devon. It’s around 8,000 acres of beautiful woodland, fertile fields, Cornish hedges, and 300 foot plus jagged black cliffs bordering the Atlantic Ocean. It’s not a village as such, it’s more of a collection of seven isolated, tiny hamlets: Crosstown; Woolley; Eastcott; Gooseham; Shop; West Youlstone; and Woodford are all accessible via long winding, narrow country lanes off the A39 Atlantic Highway.

Morwenstow was once the home of the eccentric parson and poet, R S Hawker (b.1803) he was the vicar there from 1834 until his death in 1875. He was a fascinating, larger than life character; much loved by his congregation. He disdained conformity and was, literally, a colourful character, known to wear swashbuckling leather boots up to his thighs, red trousers, a baggy fisherman’s blue smock top, flowing yellow capes, crimson silk gloves, and wide-brimmed hats over his long untamed hair. He was a large, sturdy looking man, and must have cut an impressive figure as he strode about his parish.

Hawker was credited with reviving the Harvest Festival custom and wrote ‘The Quest for the Sangraal’ and ‘The Song of the Western Men,’ (aka Trelawny, which is now looked upon as the unofficial Cornish National Anthem.) His Morwenstow parishioners knew him simply as Parson Hawker, and his ghost, which is still occasionally sighted around Morwenstow, is still greeted by some locals in much the same way as he was addressed in life, but we’ll get to that in the next chapter, ‘The Bush Inn Haunting.’

When Hawker first arrived at Morwenstow he found a parish in severe neglect, materially and spiritually, and, as his biographer the Rev Sabine Baring Gould said: “He found dissenters of every hue.” The church and the manse were in a deplorable condition, the church crumbling in disrepair, the manse housing ‘beasts of the field,’ and, as Hawker saw it, many of his new parishioners had become spiritually bankrupt, after spending many years with no parson to keep them in line! Leading by his own hard-working example, he began, from day one of his new ministry, to holistically address the needs of his new congregation. Most of that congregation eked out a meagre living, they only just had enough work in the spring and summer months, mostly labouring for

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