The Legend of Bolster the Giant
How the Cornish village of St Agnes gained its name.
We love walking the coast around St Agnes and Chapel Porth in Cornwall.
St Agnes is said to have been named after a local character, Bolster. Bolster was an evil, fierce giant who terrified the village, but he fell in love with a beautiful young local woman called Agnes and wanted to marry her.
But Agnes was a clever girl. Seeing an opportunity to free the parish from his tyranny, Agnes asked Bolster to prove his love for her by filling a hole in the rocks by Chapel Porth with his blood. What he didn’t realise was that the hole ran underground and opened into the sea, and in that way Bolster was tricked, his blood drained into the sea until it turned it red and he died there as a consequence.
Agnes was hailed a heroine, and the village later took her name.
You can see a plaque to the legend by the old engine house in Chapel Porth Valley, close to a filled mine shaft which might very well be the hole in question!
In remembrance and celebration, every May the villagers of St Agnes re-enact the legend with a pageant over the clifftops above Chapel Porth.
