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Updated: June 27, 2025
Gulval holy well was one of the most famous in Cornwall, and there can be little doubt that the saint's early oratory was on the site of the church a few traces, indeed, may remain in the walling, a successful blending of the very ancient and the recent. Even more famous was the well of St. Madron or Maddern, which was quite a Lourdes in its way.
Here she felt herself at one with the world spread round her. The mother eyes of a blackbird, sitting upon her eggs in the ivy-tod, kept their bright gold on Joan, but showed no fear; the young rabbits frisked at hand; a mole poked his snout and little paddle-paws out of the grass; all was peace and happiness, it seemed, with the voice of good St. Madron murmuring love in his brooklet at hand.
Joan had particularly prayed by the Madron altar that the Everlasting would keep her from lying. She remembered the fact as her father put his question; and she also recollected that John Barron had told her to say nothing about their union until he returned to her.
Of Madron baptistery, now a picturesque ruin, it seems clear that until the Reformation regular worship and the service of baptism were therein celebrated. The place has mercifully escaped all restoration or renovation and stands at this moment open to the sky in the slow hand of Time.
A witness states that it took place in Gulval parish, in the summer of 1814: "I remember the black bull being led by four men. This proves that their minds were already uneasy. It is devoutly to be wished that all those whose so-called sports cause suffering to animals may be equally on the watch for judgments from heaven. The village of old Madron is very beautiful and interesting.
In the graveyard is the epitaph of George Daniell, the founder of Madron schools in days when men built schools instead of quarrelling about them: "Belgia me birth, Britaine me breeding gave; Cornwall a wife, ten children, and a grave." It seems to have been in this district that the last bull-baiting took place in Cornwall.
Opportunity presently offered, and through the first misty gray of a morning in early April, she set out upon her long tramp from Newlyn through Madron to the ruined baptistery. St. Madron, or Padern, lived in the sixth century, somewhat earlier than Augustine.
Already she felt her prayers were being heard; already she was thanking God for heeding her cry, and St Madron for the life-giving waters of his holy stream. Thee, where finches chattered and fluttered forward, breakfasting together in pleasant company, a shadow and a swift, strong wing flashed across Joan's sight and a hawk struck.
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