St Warburgha's church in Warbstow

Warbstow church featured in the lives of James Trease's family. The family would have attended normal services at the church and also would have been present at the christenings of the children and other family specific church ceremonies including the very sad occasions of the funerals of their young mother, Elizabeth, and the youngest daughter.

The church is named after the nun, St Waerburgha, daughter of an Anglo-Saxon king. Her relics, at Chester, were an object of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages. Warburghstow was mentioned in the Domesday Book in 1086.

This photograph is taken from the south west of the church. The church you see before you differs from when James and Elizabeth married there in 1840. It was subject to restoration work in the middle of the 19th century that resulted in the loss of the South Transept.

The graves of the Gynn family and their relatives are ahead of you.


Church Interior
In this photograph the person sitting thoughtfully in the pews is xxx xxxxx from Melbourne. xxx's great grandparents, Thomas Trease and Mary Baker Mably had married in Forrabury Church Cornwall in 1866 and a few months later had emigrated to Australia.

When xxx visited the UK in 2005, he spent several days in Corwall visiting the places where his ancestors had lived. He found the whole experience deeply moving.

His great grandfather Thomas Trease had been born in Warbstow Cross on the morning of Sunday 20th August 1843 (almost exactly 122 years before xxx's visit) and was christened in this church. Thomas's parents James and Elizabeth had married in this same church on 31st December 1840.

Thomas lived in Warbstow until he was at least 17 and became a blacksmith like his father. One can imagine him as a young lad helping his father out in the Warbstow smithy and enjoying the surroundings of the same beautiful rolling countryside that fortunately we can still see today as Warbstow remains rural and relatively unspoilt.