Including the modern parish of Newlyn St. Peter

• Statistics
• “Online Parish Clerk”
• Links
• The Spanish Attack, 1595
• Tonkin’s Natural History of Cornwall (1739)
• Lysons’ History & Topography (1814)
• The Topographical Dictionary of England (1831)
• Pigot’s Topography and Gazetteer of England (c1841)—Newlyn
• Kelly’s Directory (1856)
• Blight’s Churches of West Cornwall (1864)
• Lake’s Parochial History of Cornwall (1868)
• Kelly’s Directory (1883) also Newlyn
• Kelly’s Directory (1893) also Newlyn
• The Newlyn Riots, 1896
• Detailed Map of the Parish
• The Parish in Context (44K)
• Gazetteer
• Picture Gallery
• Baptism Registers (Transcript 1844–1904 also Newlyn St. Peter 1851–90)
• Marriage Registers (Transcript 1813–1905 also Newlyn St. Peter 1866–1903)
• Burial Registers (Transcript 1813–1901)
• Monumental Inscriptions
• Methodist Chapels (Transcript of Baptisms, Newlyn Trinity Wesleyan Chapel 1859–79)
• Other Churches and Chapels

Statistics

Paul parish occupies 2153 acres, including the ecclesiastical parish of Newlyn St. Peter which was separated off in 1851 [GENUKI 1997]. It's population is hard to track but has clearly increased considerably with the growth of the fishing port of Newlyn.

Online Parish Clerk

A new (Jan 2001) initiative that has started in Cornwall is the Online Parish Clerk. One person is encouraged from the CORNISH-L or CORNISH-GEN-L mailing list to be the custodian of historical records, including transcripts of registers, for each parish and will supply extracts to researchers as they need them. This person may be geographically distant from the parish, but their heart will be there. Parish information, Newlyn St Peter

Links

Paul Parish Church website has a section on the history and the present life of the church and also the Monumental Inscriptions from the graveyard and a well researched page about the war memorials with a brief biography of each serviceman.

newlyn info is a fully fledged local information site.

SOSKernow (friends of Cornwall) have a detailed history of Paul church.

Cornish Light, the Travel and Tourist Guide, have pages devoted to Mousehole & Newlyn.

The Pilchard Works Museum in Newlyn

The Muster Roll, 1799 for Mousehole can be found on Shaz’s site.

The Saint Peters Players in Newlyn are an amateur theatrical group, founded in 1962 and still going.

The Penlee Lifeboat website has the full history of the disaster in 1981 and some pages about the Mousehole Christmas lights.

The history (legend?) of Dolly Pentreath can be found on the Britannia site extracted from [Harris 1906].

Historical Notes of Lamorna and Morsylla is a page on a holiday let site but has a wealth of detail about Lamorna in the past. There are also a couple of other general interest pages.

See also the general West Penwith Links.

Tonkin’s Natural History of Cornwall—1739

The following description is quoted from [Tonkin 1739] and must be read in the context of that date. The extract is taken from [Polsue 1868]. Other extracts are available online.

Paul is in the hundred of Penwith, and is bounded to the west by S. Burian and Sancreed to the north by Maddern, to the east and south by the Channel and Mount’s Bay.

This parish is dedicated to the famous S. Paulinus, and not the apostle Paul, as it is commonly thought, who was sent by Pope Gregory the First in 601 from Rome, with S. Justus, to accompany S. Austin the Monk for the conversion of the Saxons. In 625 he accompanied the Princess Ethelburgha, daughter to Ethelbert King of Kent, when she married Edwyn King of the Northumbrians, where he laboured so effectually that he converted that King and the greatest part of his people, so that he was consecrated the first Archbishop of York, and Pope Honorius sent him the pall about the year 630; but Edwyn being killed in battle in 633 by Cadwallo King of the Britons, and Penda, King of Mercia, he was forced to fly baok into Kent with Queen Ethelburgha and her children, where her brother Eadbald, King thereof, received them with all kindness, made Paulinus Bishop of Rochester, where he ended his days on the 10th of October, 644.

This church is a vicarage, valued in the King’s Book at £13 11s. 6d.; the patronage in the crown; the impropriation of the sheaf and tithes of fish in William Guavis, Esq.; the incumbent Mr. Henry Pendarves.

In anno 1291, 20 Edw. I. this church was valued at £9 6s. 8d., being then appropriated to the Abbey of Hailes, in Gloucestershire. To this abbey the tithes of corn and fish were appropriated, and so became lay fees at the dissolution of the abbey.

Topographical Dictionary of England—1831

The following is from [Lewis 1831] and must be read in the context of that date.

PAUL, a parish in the hundred of Penwith county of Cornwall, 2¾ miles (S. by W.) from Penzance, containing 3790 inhabitants. The living is a vicarage, in the archdeaconry of Cornwall, and Diocese of Exeter, rated in the king’s books at £13. 11. 0½., and in the patronage of the Crown. In this parish are the villages of Mousehole and Newlyn, both situated on the coast of Mount’s bay, and numerously inhabited by fishermen. The pilchard and mackarel fisheries are carried on to a great extent. The various kinds of fish that frequent this part of the channel are sent in abundance to Penzance and several of the other Cornish towns; and the London market, in the early part of the season, is chiefly supplied with mackeral from this place, by way of Portsmouth. Mousehole, otherwise called Port Enys, was anciently a port of considerable importance, a new quay having been constructed as early as 1392: it was also a market town, but the market has been discontinued since that place and Newlyn were burned by the Spaniards in 1595: it is still defended by a battery. There is an almshouse for six poor men, founded in 1709, by Captain Stephen Hitchens, and endowed with land now producing about £70 per annum.