The Magazine

The Magazine is published monthly and covers St Tudy, Michaelstow and St Mabyn.

Subscribers will have now received their copy for December.

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NEWS FROM THE ST TUDY HISTORY GROUP RESEARCH TEAM         

We, in St. Tudy, have a Chapel dedicated to St. Nicholas, the Patron Saint of Children, at Tinten Manor.

The Chapel was built before 1330 in the Middle Ages, and the cult of St. Nicholas was second only to the cult of the Virgin Mary.

We speculated that the Chapel was built at Tinten by a childless couple hoping for offspring, possibly Sir John de Tynten and his Wife, Joan. Their first child was born about 1290, and was named Nicholas, so this reinforces our theory.

St. Nicholas is also the Patron Saint for Seafarers, so it is another co-incidence that, from the late 1600’s, the ancestors of Captain Bligh lived at Tinten.

For several hundred years, circa 1200 – 1500, St. Nicholas was the unchallenged bringer of gifts, and the toast of celebrations centred around his feast day, the 6th of December.

The Saint took on some aspects of earlier European deities, like the Roman Saturn or the Norse Odin, who appeared as white bearded men and had magical powers such as flight.

He also ensured that Children said their prayers and practised good behaviour, which hasn’t changed much through the centuries – how often do you hear “if you haven’t been good, Father Christmas won’t come to you”?

When he was young, Saint Nicholas inherited a lot of money. He used this to help save three of his neighbour’s daughters being sold into slavery.

The door of their house was closed, and he couldn’t get in to leave the money, which he wanted to do anonymously. He climbed up on the roof and dropped it through the chimney into some stockings which were hanging on the mantle, and the rest, as they say, is history!    Pam Free

(This, and much more news, is in the current magazine)