Constantine, Kerrier
Encyclopedia
Constantine is a village and civil parish in Cornwall
Cornwall
Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...

, United Kingdom. It is situated approximately five miles (8 km) west-southwest of Falmouth
Falmouth, Cornwall
Falmouth is a town, civil parish and port on the River Fal on the south coast of Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It has a total resident population of 21,635.Falmouth is the terminus of the A39, which begins some 200 miles away in Bath, Somerset....

.

The parish of Constantine is bounded by the parishes of Mabe
Mabe, Cornwall
Mabe is a village and civil parish in Cornwall, United Kingdom. The village is situated one mile west of Penryn....

, Mawnan
Mawnan
Mawnan is a civil parish in south Cornwall, United Kingdom . It is situated in the former administrative district of Kerrier and is bounded to the south by the Helford River, to the east by the sea, and to the west by Constantine parish...

, Gweek
Gweek
Gweek is a civil parish and village in Cornwall, United Kingdom. It is situated approximately three miles east of Helston. The civil parish was created from part of the parish of Constantine by boundary revision in 1986...

, Wendron
Wendron
Wendron is a village and civil parish in Cornwall, United Kingdom. It is situated three miles north of Helston.The Revd G. H. Doble served for almost twenty years as the Vicar of Wendron . Langdon recorded the existence of eight stone crosses in the parish, including two at Merther Uny...

 and the north bank of the Helford River
Helford River
The Helford River is a ria located in Cornwall, England, UK, and not a true river. It is fed by a number of small streams into its numerous creeks...

.

Constantine is named after Saint Constantine
Constantine (British saint)
Saint Constantine is the name of one or many British or Pictish saints.- Identification :South-west BritainA Saint Constantine is revered in Devon and Cornwall. Based purely on similarity of a common name, some have identified him with the monarch Constantine of Dumnonia, despite the latter's...

, a 6th century Cornish saint
Saint
A saint is a holy person. In various religions, saints are people who are believed to have exceptional holiness.In Christian usage, "saint" refers to any believer who is "in Christ", and in whom Christ dwells, whether in heaven or in earth...

 possibly identified with a minor British king Constantine
Constantine (Briton)
Constantine was a minor king in 6th-century sub-Roman Britain, who was remembered in later British tradition as a legendary King of Britain. The only contemporary information about him comes from Gildas, who calls him king of Damnonia and castigates him for his various sins, including the murder...

.

History

The history of Constantine is related in The Book of Constantine (2001), as well as an earlier study, A History of the Parish of Constantine in Cornwall by Charles Henderson
Charles G. Henderson
Charles Gordon Henderson was a historian and antiquarian of Cornwall.Charles Henderson's only quarrel with Cornwall was that it had given him no more than a quarter of his blood. His father, Major J. S. Henderson, was half Scottish and half of the Irish family of Newenham: his mother was a...

 (1937). Five Walks Around Constantine (2006) provides brief historical notes and many illustrations.

Early period

In pre-historic times, a fogou
Fogou
A fogou or fougou is an underground, dry-stone structure found on Iron Age or Romano-British defended settlement sites in Cornwall. Fogous have similarities with souterrains or earth-houses of northern Europe and particularly Scotland including the Orkney Islands...

 was constructed near Trewardreva: no-one knows its purpose.

The ancient name of Constantine, "Langostentyn", implies that the settlement was monastic, with the "Lan" prefix. Dr. Lynette Olson (1989) has examined literary and archaeological evidence for all early monastic establishments in Cornwall and found significant doubts about the religious nature of Constantine before the Norman Conquest.

Andrew Langdon (1999) lists twelve stone crosses, or parts of crosses located in the parish. One of these was carved and erected in 1991. Several have been transferred from other sites. The stone cross at now at the cross-roads in High Cross was found in 1992 and re-erected nearby.

After the Norman conquest

Little remains of the Norman church, which was rebuilt between 1420 and 1480: the tower has been called impressive. The chancel was rebuilt in 1862 and there was other restoration
Victorian restoration
Victorian restoration is the term commonly used to refer to the widespread and extensive refurbishment and rebuilding of Church of England churches and cathedrals that took place in England and Wales during the 19th-century reign of Queen Victoria...

 work between 1859 and 1901. There is a brass of 1574 to Richard Gerveys and family.

Trewardreva Manor House was built ca. 1600 and remodelled in 1719-49: the west wing was demolished in 1860.

Extractive industries

The settlement called Constantine Churchtown grew up around the church. Mineral extraction led to a massive increase in population and the village expanded down what is now called Fore Street, during the 19th century. However, one property, "The Bow Window", is thought to be a 300-year-old farmhouse.

The village had three main industries: agriculture; mining for tin
Tin
Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn and atomic number 50. It is a main group metal in group 14 of the periodic table. Tin shows chemical similarity to both neighboring group 14 elements, germanium and lead and has two possible oxidation states, +2 and the slightly more stable +4...

, copper
Copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...

 and iron
Iron
Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is the most common element forming the planet Earth as a whole, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust...

; and quarrying granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...

.

The largest mine was Wheal Vyvyan, which was worked from 1827 to 1864. The production figures for copper 1845-1864 and for tin ore, 1855–1864, are given in Cornish Mines. The value of copper raised peaked in 1845, 1850 and 1855. The peaks of value in tin ore production were in 1856 and 1863. In 1864, the value of tin raised was only a quarter of the previous year's value and the mine closed.

Twentieth century

In 1921, Alice Hext
Alice Hext
Alice Hext was a Cornish philanthropist, garden developer and magistrate. She was the owner of the Trebah Estate and leisure garden, near Falmouth in Cornwall from 1907 to her death in 1939,...

 of Trebah
Trebah
Trebah is a sub-tropical garden situated in Cornwall near Glendurgan Garden and above the Helford River .-History of Trebah:In 1831 Trebah was acquired by the Fox family who built Glendurgan Garden. Trebah was first laid out as a pleasure garden by Charles Fox, a Quaker polymath of enormous...

 gave the playing field and sports pavilion to the village, in memory of her husband, Charles Hawkins Hext, who died in 1917. She supported the development of the Sport and Social Club until her death in 1939.

In 1933, overhead cables, providing electricity to homes were installed in the village.

Port Navas has an ancient oyster
Oyster
The word oyster is used as a common name for a number of distinct groups of bivalve molluscs which live in marine or brackish habitats. The valves are highly calcified....

 farm.

Education and language

A British School
British and Foreign School Society
The British and Foreign School Society offers charitable aid to educational projects in the UK and around the world by funding schools, other charities and educational bodies...

 was opened in 1836 at Ponjeravah. After 1957, the school moved to what is now the Church Hall and in 1966 to its present site, the building being refurbished and extended in 2005, as Constantine Primary School. There is also a Pre-School, set in an eco-friendly building on the primary school campus. For secondary education, children have to travel to Helston, Mullion
Mullion, Cornwall
Mullion is a civil parish and village in Cornwall, United Kingdom. It is situated on the Lizard Peninsula approximately five miles south of Helston....

, Falmouth or Penryn
Penryn, Cornwall
Penryn is a civil parish and town in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is situated on the Penryn River about one mile northwest of Falmouth...

.

Constantine parish is the home of five bard
Bard
In medieval Gaelic and British culture a bard was a professional poet, employed by a patron, such as a monarch or nobleman, to commemorate the patron's ancestors and to praise the patron's own activities.Originally a specific class of poet, contrasting with another class known as fili in Ireland...

s of the Cornish Gorseth
Gorseth Kernow
Gorseth Kernow is a non-political Cornish organisation, which exists to maintain the national Celtic spirit of Cornwall in the United Kingdom.-History:...

, including a former Grand Bard, Vanessa Beeman.

Notable residents

  • John Hellins
    John Hellins
    John Hellins FRS was an autodidact, schoolteacher, mathematician, astronomer and country parson.-Early years:He was born in Devon ca...

     F.R.S., the mathematical astronomer, was curate of Constantine from 1779 to 1783.
  • Vanessa Beeman
    Vanessa Beeman
    Vanessa Beeman was born Vanessa Hocking in Nairobi and at a younger age lived in Tanzania. Her father Kaspar Hocking was employed as a Government entomologist in East Africa.-Early life:...

    , Grand Bard of Gorseth Kernow
    Gorseth Kernow
    Gorseth Kernow is a non-political Cornish organisation, which exists to maintain the national Celtic spirit of Cornwall in the United Kingdom.-History:...

     September 2006 to September 2009.

Government and politics

Constantine Parish Council meets on the Thursday nearest 20th of the month at 7:00 p.m. The Civil Parish has prepared a Parish Plan as a framework for future development/conservation.

Annual events

Saint Constantine's "Feast" is celebrated in the village, on or around 9 March.
The Agricultural Society (founded 1900) and the Cottage Garden Society run Shows early in July. The Constantine Social Club run a Carnival, usually on a weekend at the end of July. The Constantine Art Society has a two-week exhibition, starting at the end of July. An annual "Cornish Talk and Taste" festival takes place in January.

Twinning

Like many other Cornish places
Cornish and Breton twin towns
The following table lists the names of Breton communities which have concluded town twinning agreements with communities in Cornwall:-External links:*...

, Constantine Parish with Gweek
Gweek
Gweek is a civil parish and village in Cornwall, United Kingdom. It is situated approximately three miles east of Helston. The civil parish was created from part of the parish of Constantine by boundary revision in 1986...

, is twinned with a partner in Brittany
Brittany
Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...

 in Western France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

. In this case the village is twinned with Pont-Croix
Pont-Croix
Pont-Croix is a commune in the Finistère department of Brittany in north-western France.The town lies about from Audierne on the road to Douarnenez and is connected to Plouhinec by a small, scenic road that passes through the Goyen valley....

, Département Finistère
Finistère
Finistère is a département of France, in the extreme west of Brittany.-History:The name Finistère derives from the Latin Finis Terræ, meaning end of the earth, and may be compared with Land's End on the opposite side of the English Channel...

. In Breton, "Pont-Croix" is "Pont-e-kroaz" and, colloquially, "Ar Pont".

The Tolmen Centre



A social enterprise, Constantine Enterprises Company, bought the former Methodist chapel in 1998. A wide range of social and cultural events happen there, all run by volunteers. The building is now known as the Tolmen Centre.

In September 2006, Constantine won the Calor Best Village in Cornwall 2006 competition. Constantine was also judged the Best Village in the West of England 2007, in the Business Category.

Place-names in the civil parish of Constantine

Bonallack, Bosahan, Bosanarth, Bosawsack, Bosvathick, Boswarch, Boswidjack, Bridge, Brillwater, Brill (a hamlet to the west of the village of Constantine), Calamansac, Carvedras, Goongillings, Groyne Point, High Cross
High Cross, Constantine
High Cross is a hamlet in south Cornwall, United Kingdom. It is situated one mile east of Constantine village and approximately four miles southwest of Falmouth.High Cross is in the civil parish of Constantine, Kerrier...

, Job's Water, Lestraynes, Maen Pern, Merthen, Nancenoy
Nancenoy
Nancenoy is a hamlet near Constantine in Cornwall, England, UK....

, Penwarn, Polpenwith, Polwheveral, Ponjeravah, Port Navas, Retallack, Scott's Quay, Seworgan, Trebarvah, Trecombe, Tregantallan, Treglidwith, Treleggan, Trenarth, Trengrove, Tresahor, Tresidder, Trevassack, Trevease, Treviades, Trewardreva, Trewince, Treworvack, Treworvall, Tucoyse.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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