St Germans, Cornwall – Historic Riverside Village on the River Tiddy

St Germans in Cornwall

ST GERMANS

The village of St Germans sits on the River Tiddy, just upstream of where it meets the beautiful estuary of the Lynher – known here as the St Germans River – which joins the Tamar just downriver from Saltash. It is a quiet, historic village of stone cottages and narrow lanes, set in a peaceful wooded valley beside the Port Eliot estate.

The Priory Church

The glory of the village is its magnificent Norman priory church, set in a hollow with two towers and a superb Norman doorway in its west front. Such a huge and ancient church can seem out of place in so small a village – but its predecessor was the seat of the Cornish bishops in the 10th and early 11th centuries, until the see was combined with Crediton in 1042 and later moved to Exeter. The church stands beside the Port Eliot estate, home of the Earls of St Germans.

The Village, Quay & Viaduct

In the village, Sir William Moyle’s Almshouses of 1583, known as the Galleries, are a Grade II* listed landmark with their distinctive upper gallery. Down on the river, St Germans Quay was busy in the 19th century with cargoes of minerals, coal, timber and limestone, and a trade in roadstone continued until the Second World War; today it is home to the Quay Sailing Club.

High above the quay, Brunel’s Cornwall Railway crosses the valley on the St Germans viaduct. St Germans station, which opened in 1859 at its western end, keeps some of the best-preserved original Cornwall Railway station buildings – and it is still served by trains on the main line.

The village’s ancient May Fair, recorded as early as 1284, was revived in 2012 with a mock mayor and a May tree paraded through the streets.

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