CORNWALL ONLINE PARISH CLERKS - helping bring the past alive


The parish of

ST AUSTELL

The parish of St. Austell is located in the Hundred of Powder, on the southern coast, near St. Austell Bay.
 
Originally quite large, the parish of St. Austell has been divided numerous times; St. Blazey was taken from it in 1845; Charlestown in 1848; and Treverbyn circa 1849. While St. Blazey was formed into a separate parish in 1845, the church and its registers existed well before that date. Therefore, BMD records would appear under St. Blazey for the most part.

Par was then formed out of parts of St. Blazey and Tywardreath in 1850. In 2009, the parish is reforming with a Town Council government, and splitting once again; new civil parishes will be Pentewan Valley, St. Austell Bay, and Carlyon.

A market town, St. Austell was, for centuries, a small village, acting as a market centre for the tin mining, farming, and fishing interests in the surrounding area.

The parish was not mentioned in the Domesday book.

 St Austell
St Austell, ©2003, Myra Davey
 

In 1259 the original church of Holy Trinity was founded; the baptismal font dates from that time. The church was enlarged and revised in the late 1400s, and was again heavily revised/remodelled during Victorian times. The church tower still displays the 15th century carvings of Pentewan stone, and has been called "a bible carved in stone".

A market town, St. Austell was, for centuries, a small village, acting as a market centre for the tin mining, farming and fishing interests in the surrounding area. Then the "secret" of Oriental porcelain production was discovered in the late 1700s, and St. Austell parish was found to be rich in the highest grade china clay in the world; it was one of only 5 places in the world where clay of that purity could be obtained.
 
Simultaneously, immense tin deposits were found at Carclaze mine, which for centuries had been returning a steady, if unspectacular, stream
of tin. It soon became the largest open tin-mine in the world; eventually, the pit extended one mile across! After tin collapsed, in the 1860s, Carclaze was found to also contain huge quantities of china clay. Because the demand for china clay continued, miners throughout the County moved to the area as other mines closed. China clay is still a valuable resource to this day, being used in paper and other industrial products.
 
The population of St. Austell (the town) was 1,400 in 1804. It continued to grow through that century and it is now the most populous town in Cornwall, despite "losing" more than half its territory.

There have been Methodist churches and graveyards, Quaker meeting houses - one of which was moved for road expansion - Bible Christian chapels, and Roman Catholic churches over the years. Records for all of these may be obtained from CRO, and most of the records have been filmed by LDS. The Holy Trinity burial ground was closed in the 1880s; all remains inside and outside the church have been removed. High Cross Cemetery has become “Cemetery Park”, with monuments lining the fences 3 to 5 deep. Campdown cemetery on Crinnis Road is maintained for Charlestown, and St. Austell Municipal cemetery on Edgecumbe Road opened in 1882. Both are open to every denomination.

Cornwall Online Parish Clerks

The Online Parish Clerk (Genealogy) for St Austell is Julia Mosman, who can be contacted by Email.

For information about (and contact details for) the current parish council, please see this website.

Please visit my website for extensive records, photographs, maps, and information about the parish (including history).

I've been an OPC since the inception of the project, and really enjoy helping people learn more about my parish, as well as providing parish record information. While I do not live in the parish, or nearby, I do have friends in the area who will be glad to help provide photos of specific areas. Please check my website for information; if you cannot find information there, please contact me and I'll be glad to offer whatever help possible - Julia.

PARISH INFORMATION

CENSUS:

Census data can be found at COCP (Cornwall Online Census Project) which is complete for 1841 to 1891 and has been verified, FreeCen at Rootsweb, which has a very good search engine and information from COCP, as well as GenUKI, which has more reference information and alternate resources.

REGISTERS:

The St. Austell website (with a search function on the Main Menu page) contains:

  • Marriage Registers from 1612 to 1900 from Holy Trinity Parish Church, St. Austell
  • Burials from Holy Trinity for 1565 to 1900
  • Baptisms for Holy Trinity from 1813-1840
  • Charlestown parish registers for marriages, baptisms and burials 1850-1900
  • Treverbyn baptisms, marriages and burials 1848-1900
  • Transcriptions of Wesleyan and Primitive Methodist, Bible Christian, and Quaker records, various chapels and circuits.

For complete Parish Register information, please see the OPC's index of completed transcriptions or our online searchable database (C-PROP) which is updated frequently. The C-PROP coverage page is here.

DIRECTORIES:

Transcriptions of the following directories are on the St. Austell site:

  • Bailey's Western and Midland Directory, 1783
  • Pigotts' 1837
  • Post Office 1856
  • Kelly's 1873 - including Holmbush and Mount Charles

Other directories are held by the OPC, such as the Returns of Owners of Land, 1873. Please contact her by email with enquiries.

For further information, see GenUKI (link below) or visit the University of Leicester's Directories website, which has many directories online to view for free.

OTHER:

The St. Austell website also contains:

  1. A brief history of the parish, under "Guide" - similar to the one on GenUKI, but revised.
  2. A large collection of photographs, both old and new, divided into 6 sections.
  3. 3 page List of place names, with OS references, and corresponding maps of the parish
  4. Transcriptions of:
  1. Muster List, 1569
  2. Rents of Manors, 1591
  3. Parliamentary Survey of 1660
  4. Poll Tax of 1660
  5. Hearth Taxes of 1664
  6. 1841 Census returns for the Workhouse
  7. 1591 List of Mines, in the Manorial Records – for all 3 major manors
  8. Index to Probate Records
  9. Transcriptions of various MIs
  10. War memorial photographs - WW I and WW II - and transcriptions
  11. Reference indexes to books written about St. Austell
  12. Note: St. Austell did not submit a list of persons for the Protestation Returns of 1641
  13. List of vicars at Holy Trinity, from Cannon Hammond, 1259 to 1899
  14. Information on where Manorial Records are held - also shown on GenUKI, with the OPC's permission
  15. Articles relating to Life in the Parish, taken from many sources, and articles on Poor Laws and Use of Aliases, among others, are included. You can find out what Mine Captains or tin miners did, as well as how ordinary folk lived (My Grandfather's Home)

On this website:

Indentures: mainly involving land and buildings, often naming owners and tenants:

  1. a long and complex document, dated 21 Dec 1810 but referring to several previous legal documents of the 1700s, regarding Barton Farm and other property in Lanivet, naming Edward COODE of St Austell.
  2. related indentures, dated 2 Oct 1811 and  1 Dec 1811, involving the people and land of a. above.
  3. a draft indenture (dated 26 Jun 1840) made by Bennett and William MITCHELL, regarding John Pascoe BENNETTS and land in St Austell.
  4. a transcription of Settlement Examinations, dated 7 Sep 1847, regarding James Every Beswarick.
  5. dated 11 Dec 1873, mainly concerning land and buildings in Bodmin, but mentioning Mrs HODGE of St Austell.

Voters Lists:

  1. 1851/52
  2. 1852/53
  3. 1856/57
  4. 1864/65

Wills:

  1. John TAUNKYN, dated 1 Apr 1604?
  2. John TONKINGE, dated 12 Oct 1620
  3. John TONKIN, dated 14 Dec 1667
  4. John STEPHENS, dated 23 Jan 1677
  5. Thomas TONKIN, dated 26 Feb 1678
  6. Thomas STEPHENS, dated 4 Nov 1724
  7. Thomas STEPHENS, dated 20 Aug 1740
  8. John DADDOE, dated 24 Jan 1745
  9. Joan STEPHENS, dated 20 Feb 1756
  10. Bond relating to the property of William VIAN, dated 30 Oct 1767
  11. Jane VIAN, dated 25 Mar 1772
  12. Bond relating to the property of John VIAN, dated 9 May 1775
  13. John HOOPER, dated 11 Mar 1801
  14. John HORE, dated 5 Sep 1867

For more information regarding history, population, etc., visit GenUKI.

MAPS:

For a zoomable and printable map of Cornwall please visit Cornwall Council’s mapping website. To see the Parish boundaries, click on the Layers Tab for Government Boundaries.

For maps and satellite images use Google Maps.

To enjoy a "walk" around this parish, search for St Austell at http://maps.google.co.uk/, then drag the person icon from above the zoom commands and place it at a specific location on the map.

 

ADJACENT PARISHES:

Mevagissey, St Ewe, St Mewan, Treverbyn (post-1846), St Stephen in Brannel (pre-1846),  Roche (pre-1846), Luxulyan (pre-1846), St Blazey (pre-1847) and Charlestown (post-1847).

ONLINE BOOKS:

  1. St Austell is included in The Parochial History of Cornwall, Volume I by Davies Gilbert, William Hals, Thomas Tonkin, Henry Samuel Boase, originally published in 1838 (page n80). Also downloadable as a pdf.
  2. The Cornwall Register by John Wallis, A.M. F.S.S., then Vicar of Bodmin, printed 1847. If the in-built search produces no results, use the index pages (474-476) to find your parish of interest. Tables of statistics and other data can be found at the beginning of the book, starting at page n9.