CORNWALL ONLINE PARISH CLERKS - helping bring the past alive


The parish of

CALSTOCK

Calstock Viaduct
Calstock Viaduct and part of the village c. 1907
 
 Calstock Viaduct
Calstock Viaduct and part of the village 2002
 

comprises the villages of Calstock, Chilsworthy, Gunnislake, Harrowbarrow, Latchley and Metherell plus smaller settlements, many with descriptive names such as Rising Sun, Danescombe, Honeycombe Corner - and Slimeford. The spellings of the names have changed over the years, but most are still recognisable.

Mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 (most of the land belonged to a brother of William the Conqueror), the Parish has had a long and chequered history. For much of the time, its prosperity was linked to agriculture, mining and quarrying and its location on the banks of the River Tamar. The building of the railway, and its spectacular arched bridge, played a part in the early 20th Century.
 
Gunnislake Newbridge
Gunnislake Newbridge, taken from the Cornish bank
with part of Devon Great Consols Mine in the background
 

Farming has been mainly concerned with the production of early fruit, flowers and vegetables, thanks to the southerly aspect of the valley and the mild maritime influences, and parts of the parish once produced the first English strawberries of the summer. Many market gardening families owned or rented only a few acres, which they cultivated intensively.

Mining and quarrying were important in Mediaeval Times, but flourished in the late eighteenth century and for the whole of the nineteenth. Products included copper, silver, tin, lead and arsenic. Granite from local quarries was used for paving stones in many British cities, part of Plymouth breakwater and also international destinations such as St Petersburg naval harbour.

Many families moved from parish to parish and back and forth across the county boundary of the Tamar, as one set of small mines closed and another opened. Several Calstock families could be found living in Tavistock (where the Devon Great Consuls mine was at one stage the richest copper mine in Europe), Mary Tavy, Callington and other nearby parishes. The Calstock/Callington area produced 50% of the world's arsenic in the late 1800s.

 
Because of the close association with Devon (and the fact that the parish was in the Tavistock Registration District for several years), it is sometimes mistakenly recorded in online records as being part of that county.

With the gradual collapse of the mining industry, as bigger and more productive mines were opened elsewhere, many parish residents emigrated and Cornish communities can be found in countries worldwide.
 

Cornwall Online Parish Clerks

The volunteer OPC for Calstock is Myra Cordrey, who can be contacted by Email.
 

PARISH INFORMATION

CENSUS:

REGISTERS:

For Parish Register records, please see our searchable database (C-PROP) which is updated frequently. The C-PROP parish coverage page is here.

  • Records for the Parish Church can be found on the OPC's website, as can more detailed information on other subjects.
  • The IGI has baptism records from 1684 - 1772.
  • During the 1800s, several daughter Anglican Churches and Mission Rooms were established at Cotehele, Gunnislake, Harrowbarrow, Latchley and Metherell.
  • Many thriving non-conformist chapels were established, too. Baptism records from these are currently available from LDS Family History Centre films. A start has been made on transcribing them for the website and our searchable database

DIRECTORIES:

Trade Directory transcriptions can also be found on the website.

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:

  • A list of some local surnames that are being researched, and contact details, can be found on the Family Research page of the OPC website.
  • Other transcriptions are available, such as Poor Law Union Rates, a reference list for emigration websites and relevant newspaper articles.
  • Many photographs can be found on the OPC's website.

The Voters List for 1864/65 is available here.

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

MAPS:

For a Parish Locator map, please click here. Calstock can be located at coordinates K - 6.

For further map information, please visit GenUKI (Genealogy - United Kingdom & Ireland).

To see a current, zoomable Ordnance Survey map, visit MultiMap, or for maps and satellite images use Google Maps.

ADJACENT PARISHES:

St Dominick, Callington, Stoke Climsland and, across the Tamar, Beer Ferrers (Ferris) in Devon.

ONLINE BOOKS:

Calstock 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 n192). Also downloadable as a pdf.