Perranzabuloe (; ) is a coastal civil parish and a hamlet in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. Perranzabuloe parish is bordered to the west by the Atlantic coast and St Agnes parish, to the north by Cubert parish, to the east by St Newlyn East and St Allen parishes and to the south by Kenwyn parish. The hamlet (containing the parish church) is situated just over a mile (2 km) south of the principal settlement of the parish, Perranporth; the hamlet is also seven miles (11 km) south-southwest of Newquay. Other settlements in the parish include Perrancoombe, Goonhavern, Mount and Callestick. The parish population was 5,382 in the 2001 census, increasing to 5,486 at the 2011 census.
The name of the parish derives from the medieval Latin Perranus in Sabulo meaning Piran in the sand. It refers to Saint Piran (the patron saint of Cornwall) who founded an oratory church in the seventh century near the coast north of Perranporth. In medieval times the parish of Perranzabuloe was a peculiar of Exeter Cathedral. Perranzabuloe at that time exercised ecclesiastic control of St Agnes: the latter's church was a chapelry of Perranzabuloe. In 1846 St Agnes became a separate ecclesiastical parish.
St Piran's Round
St Piran's Round is a circular defended late prehistoric enclosure, later used as a plen-an-gwary, one of only two remaining.
Churches
St Piran's Oratory and Old Church
The site of the oratory of St Piran is in the extensive dunes known as Penhale Sands. Legend has it that St Piran landed on Perran beach from his native Ireland and built the oratory in the Irish style. The structure revealed in 1835 was well preserved, lacking only its roof – however it was almost immediately vandalised, and subsequent misguided attempts at preservation resulted in considerable loss to the ancient fabric. The entirely stone-built high-gabled oratory was a very simple double square in plan and is just long externally, 25 by 12 feet internally. The interior was lit only by a small opening 8 inches above the stone altar where a headless skeleton was found, believed to be the saint himself. Three carved stone 'Celtic' heads, of a man, woman, and cat that originally surrounded the points of the cable-framed, decorated, round-headed lofty portal arch are in the care of the Royal Cornwall Museum following nineteenth-century vandalism.
Stepping down the three steps from the narrow south portal, a timber screen once separated the sanctuary from the square nave surrounded on the three remaining sides; north, west and south, by a foot-wide stone bench. A further narrow 'priests door' gave access directly into the sanctuary from the eastern gable.
The interior was apparently almost entirely unlit apart from two tiny penetrations, and the absence of timber finds on the waterlogged site suggest the roof may have been constructed as a drystone corbelled vault in the early western-Atlantic ecclesiastical tradition found from Ireland to Brittany – see for example the better preserved Gallarus Oratory in Ireland or the late medieval Dupath Well. Later medieval 'holy-well' architecture across Cornwall, Devon and Brittany often follows the earlier Celtic Christian corbelled drystone tradition and early Celtic reliquaries record how early high-gabled religious houses may once have looked.
Local community groups have established a fund for re-excavation of the site which began in early 2014.
The encroachment of the sand led to the oratory's abandonment in the 10th century. The noted 17th-century antiquary Richard Carew wrote:
When the oratory was abandoned, another church (now known as St Piran's Old Church, ) was built nearby on the inland side of the stream. As mentioned by Carew (above) it was thought the stream would protect the church from encroachment by sand. This proved to be the case for several hundred years and the church, completed by the 12th century, was enlarged in 1462. However, mining for tin caused the stream to dry up and eventually the church was engulfed by the dunes. The last service was held in 1795 after which the old church was partially dismantled and the materials used to build a new church inland. However, the old church's graveyard was used for burials until 1835 before sand enveloped it.
The oratory site was excavated in 1910 but the remains of the stone building are now buried in the sand again. The site of St Piran's Old Church and the 10th century cross next to it was excavated in 1919.