In Victorian St Austell, one of Cornwall’s largest parishes in terms of area, a new industry was emerging, even as mining collapsed and farming faltered. The extraction of clay employed just five per cent of the men of the parish in 1851 but within a generation that proportion had ballooned to 22 per cent. While … Continue reading St Austell’s clay merchants
Tag: clay
Clay labouring families at Roche
Roche in mid-Cornwall is on the northern edge of the clay country. At the time the children in our database were born in 1850/51 the extraction of clay was only just beginning to scar the landscape. The creation of the white mountains of the clay country and the sterilisation of many square miles of countryside … Continue reading Clay labouring families at Roche
Cornish studies resources 