266 ALTARNON CHURCH. 



gives some countenance to Hals' account of the great age of 

 Peter Joll. The only remaining one of the family is a woman 

 eighty years old, who seems likely to live several years. She 

 tells me that she had two aunts — of the family of Joll, — who 

 lived respectively to the age of ninety ; and that four George 

 Jolls, father, son, grandson, and great grandson, have attended 

 divine service in Alternon church at the same time. But it must 

 be observed that this old woman had never heard of Peter Joll."* 



A general glance outside shews the church to have nothing 

 particularly noticeable ; it is of the usual three-aisled type ; 

 granite ashlar-work, mullions, and jambs ; three-light perpen- 

 dicular windows ; no buttresses, but walls splayed with a batter 

 instead ; the building material partly granite, partly killas, and 

 partly ventrigan, — a kind of tufa, used in church work prior to 

 Polyphant stone. The tower is of three stages ; embattled, 

 with crocketed pinnacles ; up to second string course, including 

 west door and window above, of transition Norman ; third stage 

 perpendicular. The north and south porches have good square- 

 headed granite doorways with pedestals for statues above ; open 

 oak roofs, bossed ; wall-plates carved ; stone benches on either 

 side. 



But the moment the sacred building is entered it is seen to 

 be an exceedingly good specimen of a Cornish 15th century 

 church. Here we see the usual granite arcades of 4-centred 

 arches ; pillars, each a monolith of moorstone ; chancel and 

 chancel aisles cut off from the body of the church by a rood- 

 screen; 15th century bench ends, elaborately worked, in pro- 

 fusion ; north and south doors ; no vestry. Here, too, we see 

 the usual wagon-roofs of oak, with wall-plates carved in vine 

 and scroll work, with bosses at the intersection of the purlins and 

 rafters : also with the usual accompaniment of walls thrust out 

 of the upright — the north towards the north, the south towards 

 the south. For the collars of the rafters being set high up, so 

 as to clear the sweep of the braces forming the wagon-work, and 

 the braces themselves being in four lengths, cut short at each 



* There is an ancient dame now living in the parish who must be 100 years of 

 age, if not more ; and who retains her faculties in a wonderful way. Upon my 

 asking her if she knew a certain person who died recently, aged 91, she said — " I 

 knew her well : she was a bit of a girl when I was a young woman." 



