The more he uses for others, the more he has himself.

The more he gives away, the more he possesses of his own.

Lao tzu

The Museum of Witchcraft was the creation of Cecil Williamson, whose interest in witchcraft and magic began in childhood. Cecil initially founded a Museum of Witchcraft in Stratford-upon-Avon but after local opposition, moved to the Isle of Man and in 1951 opened The Folklore Centre of Superstition and Witchcraft. Gerald Gardner, the founder of modern Wicca, was featured as the ‘resident witch.’ As time went on, the two men’s interests became increasingly divergent and Cecil returned to the mainland to set up a succession of witchcraft museums.

Eventually, Cecil settled in the Cornish village of Boscastle and opened the Museum of Witchcraft in 1960.

St Petroc himself  brought Christianity and established a Church here around AD 518. Petroc was a Welsh nobleman educated in Ireland. He set out with his followers in boats, or coracles, and the winds and tides brought him to the river Camel estuary. Here he built a Monastery, with a School, Farm, and Church to serve the monks and to minister to the area that became known then as Petrocstow – now Padstow. Petroc travelled widely and founded more Churches in Cornwall, Walkes and Brittany and converted King Constantine of Cornwall to Christianity.

In AD 916 King Athelstan of England conquered Cornwall, and granted Petroc’s Church the right of Sanctuary, one of just three Churches in Cornwall with that status. In Ad 981 a band of Viking raiders destroyed Petroc’s Church, leaving it in ruins. Around AD 1100 a new Norman style Church was built on this site and the thick walled tower base survives from this period. In the 1400s the Church was rebuilt, using Caen stone from Normandy, and remains to this day.*

*Information from a signboard outside the church

Prideaux Place (Cornish: Plas Prideaux)^[2] is a grade I listed^[3] Elizabethan country house in the parish of Padstow, Cornwall, England. It has been the home of the Prideaux family for over 400 years. The house was built in 1592 by Sir Nicholas Prideaux (1550–1627), a distinguished lawyer,^[4] and was enlarged and modified by successive generations, most notably by his great-great-grandson Edmund Prideaux (1693–1745) and by the latter’s grandson Rev. Charles Prideaux-Brune (1760–1833). The present building, containing 81 rooms,^[4] combines the traditional E-shape of Elizabethan architecture with the 18th-century exuberance of Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill Gothic.

The house contains a fine collection of works of art, including royal and family portraits, fine furniture and the Prideaux Porcelain Collection. The recently uncovered ceiling in the Great Chamber is a masterpiece of the art of the Elizabethan plasterer. In 1968 the estate comprised about 3,500 acres, excluding the St Breock estate situated about ten miles away, also in the family’s ownership, inherited from the Viell family in the 17th century.^[5] The deer park is one of the most ancient in England, containing in 1968 about 100 fallow deer, increased from only about six in 1946 following World War II.^[6]

Land’s End is the most westerly point of mainland England, a dramatic clifftop headland near the village of Sennen where the Atlantic Ocean stretches unbroken towards the horizon.

Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Saint Basil