The civil servants who drew up boundaries of registration districts in the 1830s were surprisingly modernist. They took scant regard of the boundaries of traditional counties, unchanged for centuries, crossing them whenever they wanted. Launceston Registration District (RD) for example included parishes in west Devon while Calstock was for a time part of the Tavistock … Continue reading St Germans and Calstock: contrasting patterns of migration
Category: demography
Launceston data trigger dilemma
I have to admit to being somewhat perplexed by the migration pattern of the generation of 1850 in the Launceston Registration District (RD) as revealed in my Victorian lives project. In this largely agricultural and rural RD adjacent to the border with Devon one might expect more short-distance migration across that border and a lower … Continue reading Launceston data trigger dilemma
Cautious conclusions from Camelford
As members of homo sapiens (purportedly), we like to impose patterns on the world around us. Often, however, the information available mean that those patterns exist in our minds rather than in the world around us. So it could be with the pattern of migration from the Camelford Registration District (RD) in the later nineteenth … Continue reading Cautious conclusions from Camelford
Sojourners from Stratton
Stratton Registration District (RD) in the far north of Cornwall was the smallest in 19th century Cornwall in terms of population. This was because it had one of the lowest population densities of the 13 Cornish RDs. Yet, the proportion of the Cornish Lives sample born in this primarily rural and agricultural RD was probably … Continue reading Sojourners from Stratton
Where did they go? The Cornish generation of 1850
Back in the mists of time – around 20 years ago – I began a long-term research project aiming to study the migration patterns of a single Cornish generation at a detailed individual level. It was based on a systematic sample of all children born in Cornwall in 1850 and still alive in 1861. The … Continue reading Where did they go? The Cornish generation of 1850
Population growth and gentrification, marine tourism and a 15th century social climber
Here's the final set of brief summaries providing links to recent reviews of academic literature on Cornwall. You're now (almost) up to speed. In an important article on contemporary Cornwall Joanie Willett shows how population growth and gentrification have failed to solve Cornwall's endemic socio-economic difficulties while exacerbating a growing housing crisis and fragmenting local … Continue reading Population growth and gentrification, marine tourism and a 15th century social climber
Towednack: all gone
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
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
Cornish studies resources 