Tag: Lobb

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 Neot: leaving for town and new jobs

St Neot is a large parish in east Cornwall stretching from the valley of the River Fowey in the south onto empty moorland as far as Dozmary Pool, to which the Arthurian tale of Excalibur and the Lady of the Lake were attached in the nineteenth century. More prosaically, St Neot shared a little of … Continue reading St Neot: leaving for town and new jobs →

St Erth: two emigrants to Australia

St Erth was a parish that in the 1800s included part of the industrial town of Hayle. Near the northern limits of the parish could be found Hayle Foundry, Cornwall’s biggest engineering foundry in the 1800s. By the middle of the nineteenth century around one in seven of St Erth’s men were foundry workers or … Continue reading St Erth: two emigrants to Australia →

Staying single at Lawhitton

This small farming parish is found just south east of Launceston, bordering on the river Tamar and Devon. As Launceston encroached into rural Lawhitton in the 1890s the parish was split into urban and rural parts. But in 1861 it looks to have been largely farming country. There were only a few children aged 11 … Continue reading Staying single at Lawhitton →

Some Devon placenames that became Cornish surnames

Several surnames derived from placenames not found in Cornwall have either become numerous here or largely confined to Cornwall over the centuries. These have to all intents and purposes become Cornish surnames. some, such as Chesterfield or Kendal, may have origins many hundreds of miles away, but the largest number, as we might expect, originated … Continue reading Some Devon placenames that became Cornish surnames →