Culbone Church
Culbone Church, located in the village of Culbone in Somerset, is said to be the smallest church in England. The church, dedicated to the Welsh saint Beuno, has been designated by English Heritage as a Grade I listed building and the churchyard cross is Grade II*.
The church is recorded in the Domesday Book.
The church seats about 30 people, The chancel is 13.5 × 10 feet (4.1 × 3.0 m), the nave 21.5 × 12.33 feet (6.6 × 3.8 m) and the building has a total length of 35 feet (10.7 m). Services are still held there, despite the lack of access by road. The church is probably pre-Norman in origin, with a 13th-century porch, and late-15th-century nave. It was refenestrated and reroofed around 1810 and the spirelet added in 1888. It underwent further restoration in 1928.
Joan D'Arcy Cooper, psychologist, Yoga teacher, author of Guided Meditation and the Teaching of Jesus, and wife of the potter Waistel Cooper, was organist at the church and is buried in the graveyard. The graveyard also contains a war grave of a soldier of the Welsh Guards of World War II.
Culbone
Coordinates: 51°13′16″N 3°39′32″W / 51.221°N 3.659°W / 51.221; -3.659
Culbone (also called Kitnor) is a hamlet consisting of little more than the parish church and a few houses, in the parish of Oare in the Exmoor National Park, Somerset, England. As there is no road access it is a two-mile walk from Porlock Weir, and some four miles from Porlock itself.
The village is situated in a sheltered spot, near the coast of Porlock Bay. The slopes behind the village rise to the height of 1,200 feet (366 m), over which a small stream falls down to the sea.
The South West Coast Path goes through the village, parts of which were closed and diverted in February 2007 following landslips in the woods. The woods around the village are home to the rare Sorbus vexans, a microspecies of self-cloning Sorbus trees which are only found in the coastal area between Culbone and Trentishoe in Devon. It is amongst the rarest trees in Britain. Other Whitebeam and Rowan species found in the area include; Sorbus subcuneata, Sorbus ‘Taxon D’ and Sorbus aucuparia.
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