Culbone Church

Said to be the smallest complete parish church in England — reached only on foot

Saint Beuno's Church at Culbone is said to be the smallest complete parish church in England — barely 11 metres long and 4 metres wide, seating perhaps thirty people. It sits in a wooded clearing on the steep coastal slope, three kilometres from the nearest road. It can only be reached on foot, by walking the South West Coast Path west from Porlock Weir for about an hour through ancient oak woodland.

The church has stood on this site since at least the twelfth century, and may be older. Services are held a few times a year, lit by oil lamps and candles since there is no electricity. The walk to and from is as much of the experience as the church itself — quiet, mossy, slightly otherworldly, especially in late autumn when the leaves are falling.

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A story
It was in a farmhouse near Culbone, in 1797, that Samuel Taylor Coleridge dreamed and composed Kubla Khan after taking opium for dysentery. Famously interrupted by 'a person from Porlock' — believed to be a debt collector — he was unable to finish the poem, and the surviving fragment ends mid-line. The actual identity of the visitor has been debated for two centuries.