The Redruth RD of the nineteenth century included within its bounds the central mining district. Named such because of its geographical centrality in the emerging eighteenth century industrial region of west Cornwall, the central mining district was also the most prolific producer of tin and copper ore from the early 1700s onwards. Fittingly, after the … Continue reading Camborne-Redruth: Cornwall’s Central Emigration District
Category: emigration
Truro: Cornwall’s ‘county’ town
Truro is now Cornwall’s premier town, leading the way in the transformation of Cornwall into a ‘home county’ by the sea. Its residents might prefer to call it a city though, courtesy of the cathedral built there in the 1880s after an Anglican diocese was restored to Cornwall. A population of just under 19,000 in … Continue reading Truro: Cornwall’s ‘county’ town
St Austell: the clay effect
In the early 1800s St Austell differed little from the other small market towns typical of east Cornwall. Its fortunes were however about to be transformed by the expansion of copper mines to its east and then clay works in the hills to the north. Nonetheless, the population of the urban district of St Austell … Continue reading St Austell: the clay effect
St Columb: life before Newquay
Children born in the St Columb Registration District (RD) around 1850 grew up at a time when Newquay was a small fishing and trading village. Newquay’s population was still under 3,000 as late as 1901. It then grew rapidly in the first half of the twentieth century to overshadow the market town of St Columb … Continue reading St Columb: life before Newquay
Liskeard: Just passing through?
Let’s return to the Cornish Victorian Lives database. Liskeard Registration District (RD) was large in terms of area and, relative to the other eastern RDs, population. Like the Calstock/Callington sub-district that was reviewed in the previous post and unlike the RDs to its north and east, it had been more than touched by mining operations. … Continue reading Liskeard: Just passing through?
Speculations on the swift: celebrating Charles Morton
At this time of the year, bird-watchers will begin to feel a keen sense of anticipation as they await the first sign of migrant birds returning to our skies. Particularly fascinating are the swifts, those black birds with sickle-shaped wings who swoop and swerve above our heads, their distinctive cries alerting us to their presence … Continue reading Speculations on the swift: celebrating Charles Morton
St Germans and Calstock: contrasting patterns of migration
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
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
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
Cornish studies resources 