Tywardreath, between St Austell and Fowey, had seen its population soar after the formation in 1822 of the Fowey Consols copper mine from three older ventures begun in 1817. This mine boomed in the 1830s, attracting workers from a wide area. In the late 1830s and early 1840s the value of Fowey Consol’s output peaked, … Continue reading Tywardreath: from Fowey Consols to the Great Western Railway
Category: social history
Truro: cathedral and clay pipes
Truro’s location had given it a key advantage. The small medieval port was squashed between the two rivers of the Allen and Kenwyn but this was the point where east-west roads could cross the upper reaches of the Fal estuary. Ships could sail as far as the town: in consequence trade grew around its quays. … Continue reading Truro: cathedral and clay pipes
Trewen: some prospered; some didn’t
Trewen is another of those easily missed small farming parishes west of Launceston. However, not all of its inhabitants in the 1850s were farmers or farm labourers. William and Ann Staddon had moved from east Devon to South Petherwin to the east of Trewen in the late 1840s. They were described in 1851 as schoolmaster … Continue reading Trewen: some prospered; some didn’t
Trevalga: unspoilt haven or development opportunity?
Unlike Cornwall’s other tiny tre- parishes, Trevalga is on the north coast, wedged between the small settlements of Boscastle and Tintagel. The farms of this parish had been neatly distributed across the hills and valleys leading inland by Cornwall’s early medieval inhabitants. Meanwhile, its small church and churchtown are hunched down nearer the forbidding cliffs … Continue reading Trevalga: unspoilt haven or development opportunity?
Treneglos: women wave the farm goodbye
This parish, to the north of Bodmin moor, was possibly the Cornish parish most dominated by farming in the Victorian era. In 1861, fully 85 per cent of its adult men were farmers, farmers’ sons or farm labourers and virtually all of the adult women were married to farmers or their labourers or were servants … Continue reading Treneglos: women wave the farm goodbye
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
Tregony: a clicker and a Jack of all trades
Site of Tregony's former church of St James Below the long street lined with houses that was Tregony the boats serenely sailed up the Fal. On reaching the bustling quay near the church below the town, supplies were unloaded to meet the demands of the folk from the surrounding countryside who thronged Tregony’s market. But … Continue reading Tregony: a clicker and a Jack of all trades
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
Tintagel: not what you expect
Tintagel, on the north coast of Cornwall, was a no-nonsense, workmanlike sort of place in the mid-1800s. Its children, sons and daughters of slate quarriers, farmers and their labourers, lived hard lives wresting their livelihood from the land and braving the frequent westerly gales that swept in off the Atlantic. The Tintagel children in our … Continue reading Tintagel: not what you expect
Talland and the matchgirls of London
Talland, on the south coast of Cornwall next to Looe shared the fishing village of Polperro with its neighbour Lansallos. Polperro provided the larger number of the Talland children in our database, three boys and four girls. Although none of them emigrated, these Polperro children did not all live their lives out in the village … Continue reading Talland and the matchgirls of London
Cornish studies resources 