St Patrick’s Chapel ruins, Heysham: The mythical Lancashire ruins with a heavenly view
Annunciata Elwes takes a look at St Patrick’s Chapel ruins, a Morecambe Bay landmark.
There’s a myth that the patron saint of Ireland built this chapel after a shipwreck, but no matter how good Guinness is (or isn’t) for you, he can’t have managed it 200 years after his death. The view over Morecambe Bay from this exposed clifftop is staggering and the 8th-century ruins are only a little uphill from Norman St Peter’s Church.
A walk around the graveyard is a reminder of how easy it is to drown when gathering cockles and mussels on this treacherous coast, but the lives of the eight buried in sandstone-hewn graves at the chapel centuries earlier are more mysterious; the graves are among Britain’s earliest examples of Christian burial and appear on the album sleeve for The Best of Black Sabbath.
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Racton Folly, West Sussex: Flying bricks, faces in windows and a ghost tractor that sneaks up behind you
Our Secret Britain series continues with a look at a crumbling folly in Sussex.
Minchinhampton and Rodborough Commons: The Cotswolds countryside where butterflies roam and stones cure smallpox
Some of the prettiest open spaces in the Cotswolds make the grade in Annunciata Elwes' series on Secret Britain.
Gwennap Pit, Cornwall: 'The most magnificent spectacle this side of Heaven’
Annie Elwes kicks off our series on Britain's secret places with a look at Gwennap Pit.
Credit: Getty/Alamy/Shutterstock
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The secret history of the milestone, from Roman Britain to Industrial Revolution and beyond
The milestones which help travellers find their way across Britain have been a feature of the nation's highways and byways
Annunciata is director of contemporary art gallery TIN MAN ART and an award-winning journalist specialising in art, culture and property. Previously, she was Country Life’s News & Property Editor. Before that, she worked at The Sunday Times Travel Magazine, researched for a historical biographer and co-founded a literary, art and music festival in Oxfordshire. Lancashire-born, she lives in Hampshire with a husband, two daughters and a mischievous pug.
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