98 CORNWALL Lelant for their services, marryings and buryings. Finding this state of things intolerable they petitioned for a church of their own and completed it in 1426. It was built close to the shore for the obvious reason that the stone of which there was abundance in the neighbourhood, could be more easily brought by water than overland, but it was not so near the sea as now, for in the seventeenth century " there was a field between the churchyard wall and Forth Cocking Rock, and sheep grazed on it." The church of Lelant was rapidly being over- powered by the sand which has swallowed up many ancient oratories or " cells " built low down on the shore, and it was only saved by the planting and rapid spreading of the coarse rush grass which binds the surface of the towans together in a kind of mat and prevents the sand from drifting. St. Ives with its eastern aspect is fresh even in the summor, and yet strange to say not very cold in winter, as the flowering shrubs which grow so well testify. Newquay is not at all like St. Ives ; it has no quaint muddled fishing town behind the " visitors' front," and it lies all along the top of high cliffs so that its main street is almost level, or at any
