Saint Endelienta

Endelient (also Endelienta, Edellienta or Endellion) was a Cornish saint of the 5th and 6th century. She is believed to be a daughter of the Welsh King Brychan, and a native of South Wales who travelled to North Cornwall to join her siblings in converting the locals to Christianity. Legend says that she was a goddaughter of King Arthur, and that she lived as a hermit at Trentinney where she subsisted on the milk of a cow. The saint is commemorated in the church and village of St Endellion which bear her name; Endellion being an Anglicised version of her name. Her feast day is 29 April.

Life Tradition makes her a daughter of King Brychan, of Brycheiniog in South Wales. The village of Saint Endellion in Cornwall, named after her, is from where she is said to have evangelized the local population. Two former wells near the village were named after her.

She is called "Cenheidlon" in Welsh records, with Endelienta being a Latinised form of the name. Her feast day is 29 April. The saint is believed to have been a native of South Wales who crossed the Bristol Channel to join her siblings in converting the people of North Cornwall to Christianity. During her journey, she initially landed on the island of Lundy, where she is believed to have founded a small chapel, which would later be wrongly rededicated to Saint Helen. She subsequently moved on to the mainland where she stayed with her brother, Saint Nectan, at Hartland, before eventually choosing to settle at Trentinney, south-west of the present day village of St Endellion, although she would return to Lundy from time to time on retreat for meditation.

She lived at Trentinney as a hermit, where legend says that she subsisted solely on the milk of a cow, and the water from two nearby wells.

Legacy

According to local folklorist Nicholas Roscarrock, a chapel dedicated to Saint Endelienta survived on the site of her hermitage at Trenteney until the 16th century,

Endellion is depicted in the Langdale rosary, a 16th Century work believed to have belonged to Lord William Howard; it is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

In 2005 a local iconographer was commissioned to produce an icon of Saint Endelienta, even though there were no known images of her on which to base the work. after the village of St Endellion, reflecting the fact she was born while the Cameron family were holidaying in Cornwall.