Over the time some great confusion has arisen over how this little village got its name. For centuries it has been associated with St. Neot, a four foot monk who was thought to have founded a hermitage somewhere in Cornwall.
The Patron Saint of Fish and contemporary and advisor to Alfred the Great, St Neot is associated with a Holy Well. Lying just 275m from the parish, St. Neot's does indeed have a Holy Well, rumoured to have curative powers. However, historical research has thrown some confusion on to the matter as it appears that the Parish Church of St. Neot was actually known as St. Anietus in the 11th century. However, if you believe in saints, it's not too hard to imagine that this beautiful, little village may have been blessed with a couple of them!

The ornate granite church of St Anietus has a splendid series of 17 stained glass windows which are at least 500 years old and incredibly well-preserved with over half of the original glass. In general they tell stories of the Bible and portray saints. One, however, depicts the reclusive St Neot himself in a series of different scenes.

One of the very few that managed to keep its windows during the reformation. High up in the tower you will see an oak branch tied to it. This is renewed every Oak Apple Day (May 29) in a ceremony started by royalists to give thanks for the tree which hid Charles 11 after the Battle of Worcester.
 

Outside the church are some beautiful, ornate, ancient Cornish Crosses including a fine cross from the 9th century which is renowned for its ornamental carving.

Exit the church door and turn right down the hill. At the village post office and store take the track opposite which heads upstream, the river to your left. After 200m you will see the Holy Well to your right nestling into a granite outcrop on the side of a hill. 

Gilbert's History of Cornwall records ""The relics of St Neot remained at his monastery in Cornwall till about the year 974, when Earl Alric, and his wife Ethelfleda, having founded .a religious house at Eynesbury, in Huntingdonshire, and being at a loss for some patron saint, adopted the expedient of stealing the body of St Neot; which was accordingly done and the town retains his name, thus feloniously obtained, up to this time. The monastery in Cornwall continued feebly to exist after this disaster through the Saxon times; but having lost its palladium, it felt the ruiner's hand; and almost immediately after the Norman Conquest it was finally suppressed."

A few miles to the west is the hamlet of Warleggan, known for its eccentric rector, known for its eccentric rector, Fredrick Densham, who was the parish priest from 1931 to 1953. Disliked by his parishioners he built a high wall round the rectory and withdrew from the world, as no villagers would go to his church he preached to an empty church and filled it with cardboard cutouts for a congregation. He had put up a barbed-wire fence around the rectory gardens, had threatened to sell the organ, which was a memorial to the Fallen of the First World War. The Bishop listened to the Rev Densham's explanations and found that he had no reason to remove him from his post. With that, the Church Council resigned in a body and the whole congregation refused to enter the church again.