SEVERAL churches in the Post area have been listed in ExploreChurches’ top churches to visit in the UK.

Cornwall’s churches and chapels are some of the most beautiful in the UK, a reminder of the county’s turbulent history and found on its dramatic cliffs, wonderful beaches and wild moors.

Now visitors and residents can find the top churches to visit on ExploreChurches, at www.explorechurches.org, the church tourism website run by the National Churches Trust.

More than 70 churches in Cornwall are featured on the ExploreChurches website, with 12 specially added by the Cornwall Historic Churches Trust.

Cornwall’s amazing churches include St Neot’s, in St Neot, with one of the most complete sets of surviving medieval glass in Britain; St Breaca, Breage, lavishly covered in medieval wall paintings; and St Endellion, the favourite of former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams.

He said: “The mixture of rock and space always gives me the feeling of sea-light, of something wide, ungraspable; very much a North Cornwall and West Wales and West of Ireland feeling, opening out onto a deep and broad horizon.”

Each church listed has a dedicated page revealing its history and architecture.

Cornwall’s churches have been listed with the help of the Church of England’s Diocese of Truro and the Cornwall Historic Churches Trust.

In the Post area, churches listed on ExploreChurches include Altarnun’s St Nonna church, with Daye’s dancers being a particularly favourite feature. At St Nonna’s, Robert Daye carved his name on a bench end with pride in the mid 1530s. He and his Somerset team carved 79 bench ends for nave and aisles here, which include a bagpiping shepherd, sheepdog and parish flock of sheep. There is also a fiddle player, holy water clerk by the south door and, best of all, a pair of sword dancers.

St Swithin’s at Launcells has a whitewashed tomb, which has also been named in the list. When the Victorians set about putting right Georgian vandalism, they usually went a step too far, except at St Swithin’s. Most pews have gone, but the wagon roofs are decently plastered and Sir John Chamond’s 1624 tomb was whitewashed.

There are 17th century Barnstaple-made ‘heraldic’ tiles, large plaster royal arms and a ghostly late 17th century wall painting of Abraham attempting to slay Isaac.

One of Cornwall’s least known churches, St Torney in North Hill is an architectural gem. Wealthy patronage accounts for an early 14th century Exeter-style chancel, and crenellated and buttressed granite south aisle. The Plantagenet fetlock or padlock badge of Katherine, Edward IV’s daughter, who in 1495 married Willian Courtenay of Landreyne, appear, with Courtenay’s coat of arms, in the north aisle roof.

St Paternus church in North Petherwin has records dating back to the early 1490s, 1506 to 1508 and 1518 to 1524. These phases mark the completion of a south chapel, south processional aisle, and north chapel.

For example, it is known that on Valentine’s Day in 1507, the masons were at Hingston Down quarry, but then switched to Rough Tor on Bodmin Moor. This resulted in the white granite south aisle suddenly turning brown halfway along.

The simplest parish church in Cornwall is St Winwalo, Tremaine. Once a chapel of Launceston Priory, Tremaine retains its Norman north wall with a tiny window, door with a dragon tympanum decoration, and font. The interior is mostly 16th century, with domestic style mullioned east window, continuous wagon roof, and rood loft stairs cut into the thickness of the Norman wall.