Boscastle has two churches, that of Forrabury, which has been too zealously restored, deal having been substituted for the sixteenth-century oak benches and for the old pulpit that was covered with arabesques, and Minster. Near Minster, on Waterpit Downs, is a fine specimen of Celtic interlaced work on a cross shaft. It is now rescued, but for many years it served to bear the pivot of a threshing-machine. The church itself stands on the chancel site of an old minster. A doorway, now blocked, once led to the priory buildings, but of them nothing remains.
Inland from Boscastle is Otterham, which possesses two bells dating from before the Reformation and mentioned in the inventory of Edward VI. The inscriptions on these mediæval bells are interesting, a frequent one being, "With my living voice I drive away all evil things." A little to the east of Otterham, on a hill 807 ft. above sea level, is Warbstow Barrows, one of the largest and best preserved earthworks in the county. Its two ramparts have each two entrances, the outer wall being 15 ft. high with a ditch 15 ft. wide. In the middle is a barrow known as the Giant's Grave, perhaps the resting-place of a chieftain who died in defence of the place, and was buried where he fell. Cornwall is thickly strewn with these memorials of the past. Earthworks of different race encampments lie cheek by jowl, strings of forts reach from sea to sea, and even the cliffs are fortified. These cliff castles, and there are traces of fortification on almost every headland, must have been built by people who were actually "between the devil and the deep sea." Foot by foot they must have given way, till at length they stood with their backs to the sea, defending from their enemies one ultimate rock. Only too often is there a grave within these defences, the grave of the last man, strong enough to hold back the enemy, but slain at last.
To the south-west of Boscastle is Willapark Head, and beyond it are some caves which until recently were haunted, as was all this north-western coast, by mild-eyed seals. "A man with a gun" and the English instinct to "go out and kill something," an instinct useful in the days of the mammoth and the cave-tiger, but more than a little tiresome in our present state of civilisation, is responsible for their disappearance. There are still the caves to be seen.