Back in September 2021 I rashly set out to write a blog on every parish in Cornwall as I worked to complete a database containing information on the life-courses of a sample of over 4,000 Cornish children born around 1850. Finally, with more than a sigh of relief, 243 blogs and over 100,000 words later, … Continue reading Zennor: the end of the road
Category: emigration
Wendron: two exceptional emigrants
Most mining parishes in Cornwall saw at least a quarter of the generation born in the mid-nineteenth century leave for places overseas. In that regard Wendron was no exception. In 1861 around two thirds of its adult men were employed in the mines of the parish, most of them in pursuit of tin. By the … Continue reading Wendron: two exceptional emigrants
Tremaine: colonisation
Tremaine begins a run of five micro-parishes – at least in terms of population – all found in north Cornwall. One of them – Tresmeer – doesn’t manage to provide any children at all for our database sample. The placename element tre-, from the original tref, is the most common in Cornwall. It was given … Continue reading Tremaine: colonisation
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
Stithians: Cornwall, Columbus and Cumbria
With Stithians, we arrive at a more industrial parish. Found on the north-eastern edge of the Carnmenellis uplands south of Redruth the parish of Stithians in the nineteenth century included mines in the north and quarries to the south. In 1861 the mines predominated, accounting for around a half of Stithian’s working men and many … Continue reading Stithians: Cornwall, Columbus and Cumbria
St Tudy: shoemakers and carpenters
St Tudy is another of those typical Cornish farming parishes found in the rolling countryside of north Cornwall between Bodmin Moor and the Camel estuary. And yet three of the four children from the parish who appear in our database had a connection with craftsmen over the course of their lives. Even in farming parishes … Continue reading St Tudy: shoemakers and carpenters
St Teath: slate quarrying on two continents
St Teath in the 1860s was Cornwall’s slate capital. The village of Delabole in the parish had grown as the result of the expansion of the former hamlets of Pengelly, Meadrose and Rockhead, which housed the hundreds of quarry labourers who came to work at Delabole Quarry, one of the deepest, if not the deepest, … Continue reading St Teath: slate quarrying on two continents
St Mellion: trees, wooden and family
St Mellion near the Tamar in south-east Cornwall is now home to an Australian-owned up-market golf resort with its hundreds of holiday lodges and periodic controversial planning disputes. In the 1800s it would have been much less manicured. It’s another in what sometimes feels like an endless run of smallish rural parishes that were mainly … Continue reading St Mellion: trees, wooden and family
St Martin in Meneage: the state of agriculture in the ‘Great Depression’
As we saw in the previous blog, farmers in south-east Cornwall were getting along relatively well in the face of the so-called ‘Great Depression’ of British agriculture that began around 1873. Were farmers in the west at St Martin in Meneage equally fortunate? On the Lizard it was reported in 1882 that more farms were … Continue reading St Martin in Meneage: the state of agriculture in the ‘Great Depression’
St Just in Penwith: next stop, America
St Just can be found on the westernmost edge of the Cornish peninsula jutting into the Atlantic. In the 1800s it was sometimes said that the next parish to its west was America. This wasn’t just whimsy as St Just in the nineteenth century was anything but a remote, out of the way place. It … Continue reading St Just in Penwith: next stop, America
Cornish studies resources 