Photos by Greg Martin
used with kind permission of Penzance Council
Civic Service 2025
Last Sunday 22nd June, we held the Annual Penzance Town Civic Service, which was also our joint Cluster Worship service. Historically it has always been held on the first Sunday of when Golowan opens, a festival which celebrates the patron saint of Penzance – St John the Baptist.
The word ‘Golowan’ is made up of two Cornish/ Kernewek words Gool and Jowan. Gool means Feast or Festival and Jowan is the Cornish name for John.
Many of you will know that sadly, St John’s ceased to have a Sunday service after Covid, with the congregation moving (mostly) to St Mary’s, although it still maintains a strong, if small, group committed to Friday mornings’ Holy Communion service. Consequently, the church did need a big tidy and clean-up operation by a group of volunteers ably led by Ros Peskett, Barbara Jory and Hilary Tyreman, who spent many hours making it fit for purpose! So – a huge thank you goes to them.
At the service we were joined by our Penzance Town Mayor and his consort, and our Town Clerk, James Hardy, plus many of our councillors and visiting Mayors from the area.
We were blessed to hear Bishop David speak to us after only living in Cornwall for five weeks! The Penzance Junior Strings and Members of Bows accompanied our first hymn and also gave us a rendition of The Sailor’s Hornpipe later in our service – together with an explanation of how the song originated.
As is tradition, we prayed the Golowan Prayer both in English and Cornish, likewise the Lord’s Prayer led by Cornish speaker Roz Peskett, a member of St Mary’s Church. – Derath
