Towednack was an unambiguously mining parish in the middle of the 1800s. Three quarters of the men in the cottages scattered over the downs of this parish south and west of St Ives were employed in the local tin mines. However, when Cornish mining began to catch a cold Towednack suffered a severe bout of … Continue reading Towednack: all gone
Category: demography
St Ive: riding the rollercoaster
Outside Cornwall the east Cornish parish of St Ive is liable to be confused with the better-known St Ives in the west. But St Ive experienced a much more dramatic change in the Victorian period than did the stereotypically picturesque St Ives. Within the space of one generation St Ive had been transformed from an … Continue reading St Ive: riding the rollercoaster
Redruth: America’s 51st state
Redruth had been at the heart of Cornwall’s central mining district in the 1700s. In the days of copper, it was surrounded by the riches of Gwennap to the east and the mines of Illogan to the west. As copper faded after the 1860s and the centre of Cornish metal mining shifted westwards towards Camborne’s … Continue reading Redruth: America’s 51st state
Migration from Mount’s Bay
The neighbouring parishes of Penzance and Paul were among Cornwall’s most populous in the Victorian period. That also means they provided more children for the Victorian Lives database, in fact a total of 133. Of those, just over three quarters (102) have been traced through to 1891 or their death. (Health warning: those of a … Continue reading Migration from Mount’s Bay
Linkinhorne: born out of wedlock
The third quarter of the 1800s was a time of profound social change at Linkinhorne, a parish to the east of Bodmin Moor. It was on the edge of the district that experienced a mining boom from the 1830s to the late 1860s. As a result, its population almost tripled during those years as miners … Continue reading Linkinhorne: born out of wedlock
Marriage horizons on Scilly
In Cornwall in the Victorian period people tended to find their marriage partners within a six to ten mile radius, a distance largely unchanged since medieval times. But when most of that six to ten miles is water and the choice heavily skewed towards fish and seals, what did people do? What were the marriage … Continue reading Marriage horizons on Scilly
The call of the Carrick Roads
Falmouth’s deep natural harbour, the growth of the Atlantic trade and the presence of the Post Office’s packet ships had led to boom times in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Ships called in from all over the world, their crew and passengers disembarking in the town. As a result, it’s sometimes claimed that Falmouth … Continue reading The call of the Carrick Roads
‘Away in America’
In the early nineteenth century Crowan was a booming mining parish. Its population rose from just under 2,600 in 1801 to peak at over 4,600 in the mid-1840s. Well over half of the households with a male head were working in or on the mines in 1851. While the slumps of the later 1860s and … Continue reading ‘Away in America’
Victorian Cornwall’s boom parish
To find Cornwall’s boom town in the mid-nineteenth century we have to look east, as far east as we can go and still be in Cornwall, to Calstock on the tidal reaches of the Tamar. In 1851, when the folk in the Victorian Lives database were 11 years old, Calstock was in the middle of … Continue reading Victorian Cornwall’s boom parish
The rise and fall of Wheal Vor
Breage is the first major mining parish on our list. Although its glory days had passed, 60 per cent of the 54 children in the Victorian Lives database living in the parish in 1861 had been born into mining families. In the 1850s Wheal Vor was the major mine in the parish, employing over 1,000 … Continue reading The rise and fall of Wheal Vor
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