St Erth

St Erth (Cornish: " Lannudhno"/"Praze Pras") is a village and civil parish in the Penwith district of Cornwall, United Kingdom. The parish shares boundaries with Ludgvan in the west, Hayle in the north, St Hilary in the south and the district of Kerrier in the east.

The village takes its name from Saint Erc, one of the many Irish saints who brought Christianity to Cornwall during the Dark Ages, and is located at the old crossing point of the river Hayle.

The current church of St Erth was built around 1215, though an older church is said to have stood on St Erth Hill overlooking the village. St. Erth also has a railway station situated 0.75 miles from the village, along the branch line between St Ives and Penzance.

The old coaching road once led through the village, before the building of the Causeway along the edge of the Hayle Estuary between the wars. The Star Inn, in the village centre, is a fine coaching inn dating from the fourteenth/fifteenth centuries. It was along this route that tin was carried upcountry from the stannaries of Penwith.

St Erth Pits was the site of choice for the extraction of clay for the fixing of candles to the helmets of miners. It also was the site of significant fossil finds and to this day is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). However, the main use of the sand in this location was for the metal foundries throughout Cornwall and beyond. The sand grains are found coated with a thin film of clay. With gentle pressure and the correct percentage of water the sand grains will bind together and can be used for making a sand mould into which molten metals can be poured from making engineering castings. A good source of clay for the fixing of candles to the helmets of miners is St Agnes Beacon.

Local Government

For the purposes of local government St Erth forms a civil parish and elects 11 parish councillors every 4 years to the St Erth parish council . The principal local authorities in the area are the Penwith District Council and the Cornwall County Council.

References

External links

* [http://crocat.cornwall.gov.uk/dserve/dserve.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqDb=Catalog&dsqCmd=Overview.tcl&dsqSearch=((text)='st%20erth') Cornwall Record Office Online Catalogue for St Erth]

References