Legend claims Jesus visited a small British island while he was a young boy

Looe Island, off Cornwall's coast, is steeped in a fascinating legend that Jesus Christ visited the island as a young boy with his uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, for tin trading.

The story suggests that Looe Island was the tin trading centre of Ictis, described by Diodorus Siculus in the Bibliotheca historica.

While certainty eludes whether Jesus truly visited Ictis or if Looe Island was that historic location, there is evidence in historical records that Phoenician tin trading did take place in Cornwall.

The story suggests that Looe Island was the tin trading centre of Ictis, described by Diodorus Siculus in the Bibliotheca historica. There are a number of British islands that claim to have Ictis, including Cornwall's St Michael's Mount, Devon's Mount Batten peninsula and the Isle of Wight.

Following the spread of the tale of Jesus's visit, Looe Island morphed into a revered pilgrimage site. However, with Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries, its sanctity gave way to notoriety as a smuggling nexus.

Following this, the island was renamed St George's Island and began to receive rather different visitors as it became a hotbed of smuggling.

Looe Island has been owned by families like the Trewlaney family from 1743 and later by Henry St. John Dix in 1912. It eventually came under Evelyn and Roselyn until Roselyn's demise in 2004.

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