Kea is a mile or so SW of Truro. The original Kea Church was located close the Truro River, a tributary off the River Fal, in a location that is now known as Old Kea. It was built in the 13^th Century, with a tower added in the 15^th Century, but was inconveniently located for many of the people living in the parish. In 1531 John Tregian, the Lord of the Manor, obtained a Royal licence to build a new church and cemetery in a more convenient location, but this was not acted on until after 1800. Permission was then granted to build a new church 2.5 miles to the west, in what is now called Kea, and to take down the original church. However, the tower was retained as a landmark, visible from Viscount Falmouth’s Tregothnan house.

The first replacement church was designed by James Wyatt, the renowned architect of Fonthill Abbey. The original Norman font was transferred to this building. However the church which has been described as ‘a very plain rectangular building’ was almost universally disliked. (Henderson described it as ‘hideous’, and according to the church guide it was ‘unsightly in the extreme’). Over time it developed structural faults, fell into disrepair, and was eventually demolished and replaced with a new building.

The current church at Kea was built in 1894, and was designed by G H Fellows Prynne. It is described in Pevsner as ‘the most attractive late C19th church in Cornwall (though very un-Cornish), beautifully situated in its sylvan landscape, the park of Killiow’. It is one of Fellows Prynne’s most successful church designs, in a strongly Arts and Crafts-influenced late Perpendicular style. The massing is straightforward with the nave roof swept over the aisles, and the south transept roof has a parallel ridge to the main roof. The porch is timber framed. The tower is in three stages with embattled parapets and a fine broach spire clad in copper. The walls are in cream Killas stone with granite dressings and prominent diagonal corner buttresses. The interior is generous and spacious; the original pews have been removed. The Romanesque font from the original Old Kea church was transferred once again into the latest church, and is located at the west end of the nave, immediately in front of the opening to the tower.

According to the church guide, Kea, or Landegea, has existed as a parish for many centuries. Henderson suggests that the mysterious land-owning monastery of St. Cheus mentioned In the Domesday Book, 1085, possibly refers to Kea: it is listed as a taxed parish, and it is in the Hundred of Powder. It also appears in the values of Cornish Beneficiaries in 1294. The countryside in which it is set was part of the Manor of Blanchland, formerly Albaland and now Boscawen of Tregothnan. Sir Stephen Heym, the rector, gave the church and chapels to Glasney College in 1265, when Bishop Bronescombe was Bishop of Exeter. From that time there was to be a perpetual Vicar, who was responsible for Kenwyn and Tregenfendn. That parish church was the one at the place where legend says that Gilda’s bell rang to tell St Kea that he should found his cell, and where the Old Kea C15^th church tower remains.

Brought from the original church at Old Kea, the font is believed to be 12thc, although there is scant information about the history of the original church in this location. The font is the only item of Romanesque origin in the current parish church at Kea, but it is an attractive design and in excellent condition. The church is a particularly fine example of Victorian church design, and the interior provides a splendid location for this fine work.

The carvings on the four intermediate faces of the bowl may represent the tree of life on the north and south faces. While the Lion Passant on the west face is a common heraldic motif, some believe it was intended to deter the devil from entering the church. It has been suggested that the carved heads may represent the four evangelists, although they could equally symbolise the four Doctors of the church or angelic figures.

The design has much in common with the superb Norman font in Bodmin: a hemispherical bowl on a thick central column, four slender columns at the corners, summounted by human heads. However, level of detail is less intricate, which suggest its was constructed after Bodmin, and by a mason who had studied it but whose skill level was less developed than the Bodmin mason.