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Fr Robbie Low writes:

I appealed some time ago for help in putting up a memorial to one of our great local characters, Rachel John who died in 2013. Rachel wrote the book of the Cornish Saints and helped her father write the Penguin Dictionary of Saints inter alia. She was also a fluent Cornish speaker and a Bard. Her door at St Anthony’s (now the Solicitor’s) was ever open to all.

My thanks to those who responded to the appeal to have a memorial on Rachel’s grave. This is now in place. The granite, carved by the nationally known stonemason Philip Chatfield who knew Rachel, reads simply, beneath her name and dates, ‘Catholic Historian, Cornish Bard, Servant of God’. The stone is headed by a carving of the ‘Agnus’ – The Lamb of God – the sign of the Church in times of persecution and a reference to the heart of the Mass and the Presence of Christ.

I will be blessing the memorial in a short service in the Lostwithiel Cemetery on Candlemass, Wednesday 2nd February at 11.00 am. All are most welcome.

Rachel John (rhs) pictured at a Cornish Evening in September 1989 with fellow organisers Margaret Parkyn and Edna Collins.
 The evening was held to celebrate the Cornish Gorsedh and Lostwithiel 800. 

Image Credit:  Jonathan Barker / Cornishmemory.com