"Every tradition was once an innovation and every antique a red-hot artefact.”

There was an old lady devoted to goats. She lived in one room of the small, terraced cottages that lined Richmond Hill, the steep route from Truro city centre to the railway station. She dressed in headscarves and embroidered diurnal skirts “like a Russian peasant”, and wore work boots, or went barefoot.

Every town had such a woman. Where I grew up, ours, Bertha, had a large collection of rescued and stray dogs who she took around town in an old-fashioned pram. She was bloody-minded, of course. Truro’s own bloody-minded woman, Peggy Pollard (1904 to 1996), left more than just memories. She made sure swatches of the Cornish coast were not built on and holds the Guinness World Record for the longest single piece of embroidery. She was also responsible for building a modernist, Brutalist, Roman Catholic church.

For this deep dive, I’m taking a look at the church Peggy Pollard made happen: Our Lady of the Portal and St Piran in Truro. It’s a story that starts a long way from a decrepit cottage in Cornwall. It starts with a bored rich girl born in WC1.