Tim Knight - Photography


Myths and Legends 

 The land was Lyonnesse and legend states that it was all swallowed by the ocean in a single night. Many myths and stories surround this lost land and it is oft said that on a calm day one can still hear the bells of the many churches softly ringing in the seas off the west Cornish coast.

Porthcurno 

Dozmary Pool
In Cornish Legend where Excalibur was cast, it is also bottomless and where the evil spirit Tregeagle spends eternity emptying with a limpet shell with a hole in.
Loch Morar is said to be the home of two mythical creatures; one a mermaid like figure whose appearance is a sign that one of the local families will lose someone to drowning. She is described in a text dating to the Nineteenth Century as "Like the other water deities she is half human and half fish.The lower part of her body is in the form of a grilse and the upper in the form of a small woman of highly developed breasts with long flowing yellow hair falling down her snow white back and breast"
The other is of a serpentine creature similar in kind to the monster that is said to inhabit Loch Ness. In 1969, this beast was even said to have attacked two local fishermen. In a press conference at The London Zoo retired Navy Captain Metcalf and his wife Dora reported that they regularly saw 40 foot otter like creatures swimming by their veranda when they lived besides the Loch ....
Some say that this carving of a labyrinth maze dates to the Bronze Age and is evidence of trade between the Cornish and Knossos, beneath which city the Minotaur lurked, others say that it was carved by the miller who lived there just 400 years ago …..

Porthcurno

At the far end of the headland, the upright granite is known as Maddy Figgy's Chair upon which the witch Maddy Figgy summoned storms to bring wrecks to plunder in the coves below ...

The Hurler's Stone Circle

The name "Hurlers" derives from a legend, in which men were playing Cornish hurling on a Sunday and were magically transformed into stones as punishment.

Sea Monster St Mary Magdalene Church Launceston

The Mermaid of Zennor

 Long ago, a beautiful and richly-dressed woman occasionally attended services at St. Senara's Church in Zennor, and sometimes atMorvah. The parishioners were enchanted by her beauty and her voice, for her singing was sweeter than all the rest. She appeared infrequently for scores of years, but never seemed to age, and nobody knew whence she came, although they watched her from the summit of Tregarthen Hill. After many years, the mysterious woman became interested in a young man named Mathey Trewella,[i] "the best singer in the parish." One day he followed her home, and disappeared; neither was ever seen again in Zennor Church

Pandora's Box

The Padstow Doom Bar 

 According to local folklore, the Doom Bar was created by the Mermaid of Padstow as a dying curse after being shot. In 1906, Enys Tregarthen wrote that a Padstow local, Tristram Bird, bought a new gun and wanted to shoot something worthy of it. He went hunting seals at Hawker's Cove but found a young woman sitting on a rock brushing her hair. Entranced by her beauty, he offered to marry her and when she refused he shot her in retaliation, only realising afterwards that she was a mermaid. As she died she cursed the harbour with a "bar of doom", from Hawker's Cove to Trebetherick Bay. A terrible gale blew up that night and when it finally subsided there was the sandbar, "covered with wrecks of ships and bodies of drowned men

In the Nineteen Twenties two boys from Mawnan Smith claimed to have been chased by a large and ferocious bird. the news came to the Surrealist artists Max Ernst and Leonora Carrington who began to include bird human hybrids within their art. Many years later two girls where said to have spotted an Owlman in the woods below the church. This information was passed to a local prankster called Tony 'Doc' Shields who had also claimed to see the Cornish Sea Monster Morgawr in the same vicinity. I invite readers to make up their own minds....

Trencrom Hill 

 Giant Trecobben , who lived upon Trencrom Hill would regularly hurl his hammer to his brother Cormoran who lived on St Michael's Mount. Alas one day Trecobben missed and slew Cormelian, his brother's wife.

A Chimera, according to Jorge Luis Borges it came from Lycia and was made up of a lion, a goat and a serpent so why it appears on a Norman Font in St Austell is beyond me!

‘I am not sure that I do not prefer my congregation of ghosts,’

The Rectory Warleggan 

The beast came after him, but Columba made the sign of the Cross and commanded: "Go no further. Do not touch the man. Go back at once."[19] The beast immediately halted as if it had been "pulled back with ropes" and fled in terror, and both Columba's men and the pagan Picts praised God for the miracle

Loch Ness 

 Green Park

 Green Park has had its own ‘Death Tree’ that the local homeless shun and suicides head to

Roche Rock 

 As he neared the end of his mortal life remorse began to creep up on Tregeagle. There was practically no sin he had not committed and in an attempt to escape the just reward of so wicked a life in the hereafter he lavished money on the church and the poor trusting to obtain the help of the clergy to save him from the clutches of the Evil One.

Porthgwarra - The Lover's Cove
Many Years ago, Nell, a young barmaiden at the Red Horse Inn, fell in love with a sailor named William whose ship came into port one day. Her parents disapproved of him and the two lovers were forbidden to ever meet again. The night before the sailor was due to leave on his ship, the pair managed one last meeting by the rocks on the beach. They vowed that they would be true to one another forever and, living or dead, they would one day meet again. The young sailor left port the next day and no news came from him for many months. Nell, growing more melancholy every day, watched for his ship from Hella Point under the old tree, which later became know as Nell's Point. Eventually, she became quite mad and did little else but lament the loss of her lover. One moonlit night, an old woman sitting up on the clifftop saw Nell walk down onto the beach and sit on a rock that was partially surrounded by water. The tide began to rise but Nell continued to gaze out to sea. The old woman, seeing the danger the girl was in, decided to go down and warn her of the dangerous rising water. When she arrived down on the beach, the old woman was surprised to see a sailor beside the young girl with his arm round her. Believing Nell to be safe, the old woman sat down to watch the couple, and she noticed a think mist forming. But the lovers did not move and, with increasing concern, the old woman called out to them. Neither of the lovers heeded her warning. The old woman started over to them, but to her astonishment the lovers suddenly appeared to float off over the sea and vanish into the mist. Nell was never ever seen again, and word came the next day that William's ship had gone down in a storm the night before with the loss of all life.
Berry Pomeroy Castle
There are a number of legends associated with the castle, and according to the English Heritage guidebook, it "is reputed to be one of the most haunted castles in Britain."[11] Two female ghosts are said to haunt the castle: the White Lady, and the Blue Lady.[17] The Blue Lady is said to beckon for help from passers-by, luring them to her tower. If they go to her, it is said they fall to their death. She is thought to have been the daughter of a Norman lord and is said to wander the dungeons mourning the loss of her baby, which she murdered as it was sired by her own father.[17] The White Lady, said to be the spirit of Margaret Pomeroy, is claimed to haunt the dungeons, having been imprisoned there by her sister, Eleanor, who was jealous of her beauty.

Charlotte Dymond Memorial Bodmin Moor

And your steel heart search, Stranger,
That you may pause and pray
For lovers who come not to bed
Upon their wedding day.

Dragon St Mary Magdalene Church Launceston

Why are some mythical beasts like dragons so credible while others aren't?

Dozmary Pool 

 There drew he forth the brand Excalibur,

And o’er him, drawing it, the winter moon,
Brightening the skirts of a long cloud, ran forth
And sparkled keen with frost against the hilt:
For all the haft twinkled with diamond sparks,
Myriads of topaz-lights, and jacinth-work
Of subtlest jewellery

Before the worlds were created there was only empty void, Ginnungagap; at either end of this space was Muspelheim, the realm of fire, and Niflheim, the realm of ice. These two reached out across the gulf, fire and ice, until they touched. The combination of these elements created The first being, Ymir, the giant.

Green Man Blisland
The Green Man is a figure of a face surrounded by leaves with branches or vines sprouting from his mouth or nostrils. For a pagan symbol they are a very common decoration in churches! 

The Devil's Jump 

And the Devil, in his desperation to escape from his pursuers, leaped  across the valley in one bound and the place where he jumped is now known as The Devil's Jump.