CALSTOCK

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.
 

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.