The parish of

GUNWALLOE

Gunwalloe Church Cove, circa 1950 - from a collected postcard

Gunwalloe (sometimes called Winninton) is a parish on the coast, north-west of the Lizard, 12 miles south-west of Falmouth, and four miles south of Helston. Gunwalloe is a small rural parish, with no major towns, and a few smaller villages and hamlets, including Chyanvounder, Chyvarloe, Berepper and Winnianton. The village school was at Berepper where an average of 20 pupils attended in the 1880s. There were only a few commercial premises, at Berepper and Chyanvounder, namely a shop, the Ship Inn, and a Blacksmith. The other commercial ventures revolved mainly around farming.

The church of St Wynwallow is set behind a small headland, and is of a most unusual design with a detached tower set into the solid rock of the headland. The Church is located just to the south of Winnianton, and to the west of The Towans, an area of sandy plains. The Parish is bordered on the north-west by the Looe pool, which backs up behind the Looe Bar, and when the bar is breached it is said to be a most spectacular event as the fresh water mixes with the sea water.   A number of shipwrecks have occurred around Gunwalloe's coast, principally near Poldhu Cove, including the HMS Anson, a ship of 40 guns which founded in 1807 with the loss of the Captain and several crew.   Source: Post Office Directories of Cornwall, 1883 and 1889

St. Wynwallow

The Online Parish Clerk for Gunwalloe is Ken Oates, who can be contacted by Email.

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

I hold transcriptions of many Parish records including: Baptisms 1713-1901 Marriages 1608-1838 Burials 1813-1903   Please check below for links to the data on this website, or feel free to contact me with questions.   Ken

PARISH INFORMATION

CENSUS:

Information can be found at COCP - the 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:

Transcriptions on this website: -

Baptisms
1717 - 1787 ; 1788 - 1812 ; 1813 - 1901

Marriages
1608 - 1837

Burials
1716 -1903

For further Parish Register information, please see our online searchable database (C-PROP) which is updated frequently and GenUKI. The parish coverage page for C-PROP is here.

DIRECTORIES:

For information, see the University of Leicester's website of Historical Directories or GenUKI.

OTHER:

The 1834 Voters' List for this parish.

Gunwalloe Clergy, from 1208 AD to today.

For 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 Gunwalloe 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.

SUGGESTED READING:

1. The Churches And Antiquities Of Cury And Gunwalloe In The Lizard District: Including Local Traditions (1875) by Rev Alfred Hayman Cummings.
 
2. Around Helston in the Old Days by A.S. Oates
 
3. A COMPENDIUM OF THE HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY OF CORNWALL By the REV. J. J. DANIELL, Fourth Edition, Revised by Thurstan C. Peter, 1908.
 
4. The Droll-Teller's Dream - a History of Cury and Gunwalloe from the Iron Age to the Mid Nineteenth Century, by FOOT, Rev Paul
 
5. The Saints of Cornwall. Part 2: Saints of the Lizard District by Gilbert H. Doble Published by Holywell Press, 1962

ADJACENT PARISHES:

Porthleven (post-1846), Sithney (pre-1846), Wendron, Mawgan in Meneage, Cury and Mullion.

ONLINE BOOKS:

Gunwalloe is included in The Parochial History of Cornwall, Volume II by Davies Gilbert, William Hals, Thomas Tonkin, Henry Samuel Boase, originally published in 1838 (page 126). Also downloadable as a pdf.