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The Project |
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 The Historic Churchyards Group was set up in 2002 to help make the churchyards of Cornwall's central mining villages safer and more easily accessible for research and education, and to enhance their value as places of tranquility, reflection and peace.
Rural churchyards are like time capsules that preserve a record of those who have lived and died in the parish. They also provide a refuge untouched by the ravages of development and urban sprawl which is particularly valuable as a habitat for wildlife: from mice to lichens; newts to bluebells; song birds to butterflies.
The churchyards are managed to encourage and enhance this biodiversity whilst at the same time maintaining a respectful degree of formality and order.
The group comprises representatives of the local churches and parish councils together with the aid of local historians, naturalists, and volunteer help, and seeks to research and record details of those at rest in the churchyards before time and nature have their effect on headstones and memories. This website collates the group's work and seeks to entice you to visit these fascinating tributes to our ancestors. |
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St Piran, Carharrack |
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 In the 1830s the small village of Carharrack grew dramatically due to the boom in tin and copper mining. The Church began to look at how it might address this growth, but it wasn’t until the 1880s that the village got its own church. Dedicated to St Piran, the patron saint of miners the church was for years a mission church to the parish of Gwennap. After a brief spell in the 1930s when the church was closed, it was re-opened in the 1940s as a mission church to St Day. The church has no graveyard of its own and most burials now take place at Frogpool Cemetery. |
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Christchurch, Lanner |
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 Lanner Church was originally opened in 1840 as a chapel of ease. Following the creation of the ecclesiastical parish of Lanner out of the original parish of Gwennap, the building was consecrated as a full church on St Swithin's Day 15 July in 1845. Two granite crosses which are thought to have originally belonged to a chapel on ‘Chapel Hill’ are erected outside the main entrance to the church.
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St Stythian, Stithians |
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 Stithians, like Gwennap, can trace its origins to Celtic times. It is one of the oldest united parishes in the country and can trace its connections with Perran-ar-worthal to the early thirteenth century. The burial ground around the church has been closed since the 1940’s and a new churchyard established on a piece of Glebe land across the road. It has many interesting features including a ‘vicar’s gate’ and a stone hut which contains discarded masonry from previous restorations. The church is usually open in the Summer during daylight hours and serves as an visitors centre. |
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Old Church, St Day |
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 St Day was already a place of pilgrimage by the 6th century and became a market centre. It served an established local tin industry in the 16th - 17th centuries, which had declined by the early 18th century. With the growth of the ‘Copper Kingdom’ in Gwennap from about 1750 onwards, the town entered a period of growth, as the commercial centre of the area. St Day ecclesiastical parish was carved out of Gwennap parish in 1835. An early church on the brow of the hill at West End fell into disrepair at the Reformation and finally the tower was demolished in 1797. The Old Church, now roofless was dedicated in 1828, it closed in 1956, the walls and tower have been stabilised and it is now open in the summer as a visitors centre with interpretive boards showing some of the history of the local area, as part of the Mineral Tramways Project. The churchyard was full by 1988 and later burials are in the cemetery run by the parish council.
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St Weneppa, Gwennap |
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 The church of St Weneppa, Gwennap is founded on a Celtic monastery thought to date from the late 5th century. The present building dates from the 17th century and is one of only four churches in Cornwall with a detached tower. The churchyard is thought to contain at least 10,000 bodies and has been closed and reopened several times over the centuries. It is particularly beautiful in the spring and early summer when the bluebells provide a carpet of colour and the cherry tree is in bloom. There are a number of very interesting memorials both inside the church and in the graveyard, and the church can provide a very useful book which records the known memorials.
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