ABSTRACT
St. Mawgan in Pydar, a Comish beauty spot. In the ist Century A.D. a small fortified Iron Age settlement overlooked the site o f what now is the centre o f the modern village. The present village church dates back to the thirteenth Century. A little to the north o f Mawgan Porth, along a majestic Stretch o f turf-capped and embattled coast, is Bedruthan Steps, another beauty spot, where tumbled rock masses lie in the sea off the shrunken cliffs, thrusting up at low tide from a strip o f golden sand. At the Porth itself there is nearly half a mile o f sand at low tide. A thousand years ago, before the building o f the coast road across the valley mouth and the choking up o f the neck o f the bay with dunes, the Porth end o f the valley was no doubt, like other similar valleys on the Comish coast, a broad tidal inlet. N ow a small, clear stream runs out into the bay through flat meadows.
