The parish of

CALSTOCK

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

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

PARISH INFORMATION

CENSUS:

• 1841 - Cornwall Online Census Project, FreeCen and a slightly amended version on my website, with descriptions of Enumeration Districts.
• 1851 - Cornwall Online Census Project  (N.B. there is a continuation page), FreeCen. A slightly amended version is on my website, with descriptions of Enumeration Districts.
• 1861 - Cornwall Online Census Project, also with a continuation page, FreeCen. Also available on my website, with Enumeration District descriptions.
• 1871 - Not currently on the COCP website or FreeCen, but available here, with descriptions of EDs.
• 1881 - available on the LDS website.
• 1891 - Ancestry.com (subscription-based) and FreeCen (not currently included by COCP).
• 1901 - Ancestry.com (subscription-based).
• 1911 - Is available on this pay-per-view website, or Find My Past, also requiring the purchase of credits.

REGISTERS:

For Parish Register records and other resources, 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.
• An increasing number of images of Parish Registers are being added to the LDS website. Select Browse by Location / British Isles, then England, Cornwall Parish Registers, 1538-2010 / Browse Images and drill down from there. The specific url changes every time a new set of images is added.
• During the 1800s, 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
• 1813 - 1900 A list of residents of Calstock & St Dominick who were buried in Bodmin

DIRECTORIES:

Trade Directory transcriptions can also be found on the website.

For further information 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.

Obituaries of Emigrants:

Dates could be of death or of newspaper publication.  Other obituaries, where the parish name isn't specified, can be found in our resources section and our searchable database contains an index.

1. 1 Apr 1914, Rev. James ROWE
2. 10 Aug 1936, Major Richard Thomas Peardon OLVER
3. 10 Jul 1939, William John OLVER

Settlement Documents:

Voters Lists:

1. 1851/52
2. 1852/53
3. 1864/65

Wills:

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 Calstock 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:

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

ONLINE BOOKS:

1. 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.
2. Venning's New Century Postal Directory of 20 Parishes in East Cornwall, published 1901. Included several pages of advertisements from local businesses, as well as being a parish directory

RECOMMENDED READING:

1. From Calstock to New Cornwall by Marion Hextall. The story of what happened to Matthew East from Calstock, his five sons, and his brother Joseph in Australia. Available in some Australian libraries.