ST. GERMANUS CHURCH, RAME.
We are very proud of our Parish in S.E. Cornwall and its historic and unique churches. Our visitors include those from all over the Country and beyond, including Australia America and Canada, many of whom have family roots in our churchyards.
This site is dedicated to our oldest church, that of St. Germanus, Rame, and specifically the restoration of its roof, the nails of which are rotten. There has been a community at Rame from Iron Age times. Rame Head nearby was an Iron Age hill fort and you cross its defensive ditch when you leave the mainland and climb up to the old hermit’s chapel of St. Michael, on Rame Head, dedicated in 1397.
There you have amazing all-round views through 220°, from Plymouth Sound on your left, to the Eddystone lighthouse ahead of you, to the unique Whitsand Bay on your right. From the Head you can see why its place, just inland of the Head, but with its distinctive broached spire clearly visible, made Rame Church a navigating and sighting point for many hundreds of years. Those that heeded its warning entered the Sound safely, those who did not, still leave their bones underwater on the rocky shore.
It was its strategic site that made Rame Head such a good vantage point for the hermit to light a beacon to warn ships off the dangerous rocks between it and Penlee Point, and it could give warning of enemy ships offshore, should they come, in Napoleonic times. In its time it has seen Drake sail out to meet the Spanish Armada and the German bombers that came over the Sound in the Second World War.
There has been a church dedicated to St. Germanus of Auxerre, the ‘warrior bishop’, from early times, possibly the C5th.He was a Breton saint who is reputed to have come ashore at Whitsand Bay and travelled inland, converting S.E. Cornwall and refuting the Palagian heresy.
The village of St. Germans and its large and beautiful Church are also named after him. The was a stone building (Saxon church?) from 1259, and parts of the present one are of that date, including the tympanum set in the west wall. The present building got its shape in the 15th century when, from its original cruciform shape, a new north aisle was added. Some of the existing pews and pew-ends date back about 300 years and say a lot about what a different height – and perhaps build, people were at that time! Its small tower, with that distinctive spire still holds a medieval bell, the oldest of what were four there till recent times.
Please help us preserve this wondeful place for the benefit of generations to come!
Rev. Robin Doyle Rector