John Betjeman’s grave in Trebetherick
Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman’s (1906-1984) slate gravestone sits in the tiny, Grade I listed St Enodoc church in Trebetherick, North Cornwall, which is between posh Rock and Polzeath. It’s a stunning area, part of the South West Coast Path, with undulating sand dunes and golden beaches looking out across the Camel estuary to equally well-to-do Padstow. The local ferry can take you across for £3.
The church, with its slightly lopsided steeple reminding me of a wonky witch’s hat, is nestled amongst a golf course and sand dunes almost as high as its roof. Indeed, up until the 1850s the church was almost completely buried in sand. It was known by locals as Sinkininny church and the pastor had to be lowered in through a gap in the roof once a year to perform a service (to secure tithes).
John Betjeman, poet, writer and broadcaster, was the people’s poet (despite being a snob), his mocking poems of middle class foibles being responsible for making poetry popular again, and he shifted millions of copies of his own collections of verse. Despite being taught by modernist poet T.S. Eliot, Betjeman favoured old-fashioned Victorian poetry (and architecture). He had a lifelong love of Cornwall, having holidayed there as a boy, and eventually settled in a house on a hill in Trebetherick, from where he could hear the bells of St Enodoc.
Blessed be St Enodoc, blessed be the wave,
Blessed be the springy turf, we pray, we pray to thee,
Ask for our children all the happy days you gave,
To Ralph, Vasey, Alistair, Biddy, John and me.
– From the poem Trebetherick
Previously on Barnflakes
Alfred Wallis grave in St Ives
Cornwall’s master and slave shared gravestone
Inside St. Day Old Church