Kelly’s Directory of Cornwall 1873

ST. BURYAN is a parish, 6 miles south-west by south from Penzance, 2 north from St. Levan, and 3 east from the Land’s End, in the North-Western division of the county, hundred of Penwith, Penzance union and county court district, rural deanery of Penwith, Cornwall archdeaconry, and Exeter diocese. The church of St. Buriana, on the site of which is said to have been founded by Athelstan, is a collegiate church, in honour of St. Buriana, in the year 930, is situate on an eminence 400 yards [feet] above the level of the sea, having a square embattled tower 90 feet high, forming a conspicuous landmark for miles around in this part of the county, where scarcely a tree or other object is to be seen: It has a chancel, nave, aisles, porch, 3 bells, several old mural monuments, and many curious relics of antiquity. The register dates from the year 1653. The living, which, until the death of the late rector, Dean Stanhope, was a deanery, and a peculiar, including the adjoining parishes of Levan and St. Sennen, is a rectory, gross yearly value £570, with house and 3 acres of glebe, in the gift of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, and held by the Rev. Thomas Borlase Coulson M.A. of Trinity College, Cambridge. Here is a National school for boys and girls: a Sunday school is held at the National school-room. There was a college here, but it was destroyed in the time of Cromwell. There are three chapels for Wesleyan Methodists. A fair is held on the first Tuesday in March, yearly, for sheep and cattle. In this parish are several Druidical remains, consisting of circlets, cromlechs, cairns or burial grounds, and logan stones. At Trewoofe, in this parish, are the remains of an old mansion of the Levelis family, which from its extent and situation shows that it must have surpassed anything of its kind in the county. Trewoofe passed by the heiress of the Levelis family to the Vospers of Liskeard, who disposed of it in 1704. The Rev. John Tonkin, who is lord of the manor, Viscount Falmouth and Mrs. Paynter, are the chief landowners. The soil is killas; the subsoil is granite. The chief crops are wheat, barley and potatoes. The acreage is 6,964; gross estimated rental £[unreadable]; rateable value, £9,192; and the population in 1871 was 1,436.

Parish Clerk, William Thomas.

Post Office.—John Richards, sub-postmaster. Letters through Penzance, arrive at 11.0 a.m.; dispatched at 1.30 p.m. The nearest money order office is at St. Just

Registrar of Births & Deaths, William Thomas

School, Edward Kissell, master