St Cleer Cornwall – Bodmin Moor Village, Holy Well & Ancient Heritage Landscapes

ST CLEER

St Cleer is a village and parish on the south-eastern edge of Bodmin Moor, a few miles north of Liskeard, in a landscape of granite tors, ancient field systems and open moorland. Its parish church is dedicated to St Clarus, from whom the village takes its name.

Like nearby Minions, the parish was overwhelmed and transformed by a copper-mining boom in the mid-19th century, often compared in its intensity to the North American gold rush. The historian A. K. Hamilton Jenkin wrote that on Saturday nights after pay-day, the villages of Caradon Town, Pensilva, Minions and Crows Nest “were crowded with men, and resembled in character the mining camps of Colorado and the Far West.”

St Cleer Holy Well

In the village itself, the holy well stands in a beautiful 15th-century granite building. There was once a total-immersion (“bowssening”) pool here, used in attempts to cure the insane.

TRETHEVY QUOIT & KING DONIERT’S STONE

Trethevy Quoit is one of the finest Neolithic chambered tombs in Britain, dating from around 3500–2500 BC. Five standing stones support a huge capstone weighing about 20 tonnes, with a hole near its highest corner that appears to be man-made. It was originally covered by an earth mound, long since eroded away. The site is in the care of English Heritage and free to visit.

King Doniert’s Stone is made up of two decorated granite fragments of a 9th-century cross. Its Latin inscription asks for prayers for Doniert – probably Dungarth, a king of Cornwall recorded as drowning in 875, the last Cornish king of the so-called Dark Ages to appear in the records.

The parish also has many Bronze Age remains, and the Hurlers stone circles and the Cheesewring are just to the north at Minions.